#and the way he's a coder and programmer

[heretherebedork]

Guess who started to binge watch a censored bromance for the long weekend? They've got two thumbs, chocolate and plan on making ramen tonight.

[weebsinstash]

Now Im interested on the "What if the 3 Vs passed Reader around like a blunt"

I kind of meant it in like a "what if you were some weird shared friend/pet" but I've seen people HC that the 3Vs are poly, although we've never seen any canon confirmation of this and on the Instas it was always Vox who was Val's explicit partner

Although to be nasty I feel like Velvette would be fucked up enough to watch Reader get railed by Val and Vox. Like in some party scenario where you're with all 3 in their house and Valentino dopes you up or something, she's just like, recording you getting spitroasted on her phone

I usually imagine these sorts of scenarios as Reader meeting Val and then slowly drawing the attention of the others, although Vox really has grown on me and I hope we see more of him these last two episodes. Anyways i'm starting to like the idea of Reader meeting Vox first. Like can you imagine you get hired on as a coder or a programmer or a product developer, and he's patrolling the facilities or checking in on a specific project and that's when you meet. He either notices the quality of your work or your manager brings it up to him, or there's some massive metaphorical fire you put out (like that woman who saved toy story 2 from being completely erased because she had all the files backed up, something like that)

You and Vox get to talking, getting along, having similar tastes. He starts giving you different projects, ones he thinks are better suited to your skills (and also put you in closer proximity to him). Fucking liar is arranging shit like company calendars or company events where there are photoshoots JUST so he has an excuse to pose with you for a photo. I mean, it makes sense right? Why would you question your boss wanting to take a celebratory photo at the release of a huge product launch? And you're happy and feeling so respected and successful and being friendlier with him the more you settle into Hell and feel safer, and then I imagine Vox's way of being "obvious" is that he's like, easily nervous or a nervous laugher , I dunno. It's all preference but I like yandere/antagonists who keep their cool a little bit but then it's also cute when they fawn over you 🥰 like the people who know him see the way he laughs around you and they Instantly Know

But then, maybe Val is perceptive enough to notice, "hey why does my man keep taking photos with this one specific person". Like maybe Vox is trying to be slick with it and all the photos are group shots but Val notices that every single photo has you in it and some of the photos are for really minor events he knows Vox wouldn't normally care about. Vox slips up one day when you and him are "sharing a car to go to a company event" which totally isn't like a catered dinner that there are only going to be SO many people at, TOTALLY NOT an incognito date that you're complerely unaware of the intentions behind, and Vox has to stop in back home to grab something, or you get pulled inside for a moment just to wait, he's gotta grab a laptop or a flash drive and, suddenly here's Velvette, "Vox I'm borrowing your nerdy employee, I'm short someone and I need a model for something" and you're getting dragged away

Vox is freaking out thinking you got swiped by Val and he's zipping through the electrical lines in the house (the electro-teleportation shit really is SUCH a game changer), and he finds you trying on things with Velvette, "oh my gosh I've never worn something this nice before, thank you for giving me the opportunity to try it on ^^" and Velvette is so pompous that any praise goes right to her head, and now Vox gets to see you all styled in... whatever. Velvette waves a finger, "now you two match!" as she puts you in an outfit with Vox's aesthetic and color scheme, and she's doing it to tease the both of you but she IMMEDIATELY notices "oh hey Vox what's that look on your face >:3c does someone have a crush?"

SHE would be the fucking gossip who would tell Val honestly. Actually new headcanon lmao: the Vs rarely want to share you but will rat each other out for "having you" in a heart beat. Velvette and Vox hide you from Val, but any of them will gladly steal you from the other lmao. God, a yandere Vox who's lucid and tryna keep his behaviors under wraps, keep it to pictures, stalking and looking from afar, and then you have the other two Vs like SHOVING YOU at him as like, a joke to watch him squirm and blush. They'd be randomly bringing you along just to tease him and watch him sweat. Valentino hits Vox up for a date or a night out and the tv demon shows up and you're there too lmao

I feel like these three are the worst because they all have the capacity to be obsessed with your appearance. Velvette is an influencer, Vox is a TV mogul and tech CEO, and Valentino... obviously we don't need to comment on his penchant for having arm candy. All of them are obsessed with their appearance and their brand and one of them is literally a tailor with magical clothes changing powers. You could have something like the other two Vs show up while you're serving Val drinks and Velvette cocks her brow, "hey, why doesn't this one have a proper uniform?" And she just starts zapping you into different varying levels of exposed outfits that match the other employees at the strip club and Val's aesthetic just for kicks as the big man himself oogles you like a pervert and his boyfriend is pretending he's not interested but, his screen is totally turning red

Tbh I'm suddenly thinking of like, imagine thinking "your body is safe" because Val has never come onto you and, you aren't sleeping with anyone and, you get upset one night and do some self harming behaviors. Velvette or Valentino comes and demands you try something on or you get nonconsensually zapped into something and there are cuts hidden on your body. Velvette is furious because this affects how you look in her clothes and what she can dress you up in, Vox is you know concerned because idk I imagine he knows what it's like to be horribly insecure and feel like you aren't good enough, and Valentino probably loves having you constantly half naked and the self harm scabs? Not hot, babe. Obviously they're all upset over you hurting yourself but, these are occasional feelings on top of that

Ugh I dunno just. They all have power and influence and money and they're all crazy and I'm over here kicking my feet and twirling my hair with thoughts of being objectified in allllll the fun ways

[red-room-studi0]

Here's my TurboTime Dev oc

About damn time I actually introduced him, for some reason I had zero motivation to post this guy. But now i'm finally showing him off cuz one, I needed too, and two he's gonna be in another au lol.

SO. Me and my two friends @dani-be-existing @sunn-e-bunare made this au called Deadstock about three game developers that are in a Poly relationship (we call it a polycule lol). And they go through absolute hell (who would've guessed).

So Tucker Tatum is one of the two game Devs of TurboTime, The other Dev being Kensuke ←(link to Ken's character intro). He is a fucking idiot and a loser, Think of Grunkle Stan and Turbo in one person but worse. Yeah, that's Tucker.

Bro has some bad anger issues and hates kids. Which sucks for him cuz Ken and his wife have a kid and they both hate each other (Ain't no way this grown ass man has beef with a 9 year old 😭😭😭).

Tucker is the Game coder/programmer while Ken was the pixel art and visual game designer.

Tucker being the loser he is he vents in his game coding (Uh Oh, shouldn't have done that Tucker).

One day Tucker and Ken got into a heated argument and then Tucker just left the room leaving Ken alone. After left the house and grabbed a couple of beers to calm his nerves, Tucker came back to the house and into the room to apologize and share a drink or two but to his horror all he sees is the games cabinet screen shattered and covered in blood. From what it seems like... Ken was forcefully pulled into the screen from some unknown force.

Even worse, Kens wife Haru walks into the scene only seeing the bloody shattered screen and Tucker by it. Of course, she accuses Tucker of killing her husband and is incredibly upset (I mean who wouldn't). Tucker tried to explain but she had already called the cops and she just wouldn't let Tucker talk.

Tucker had been detained and taken in. The court statements came in and he was found not guilty due to no evidence that Tucker had killed Ken. But he did have to serve some time in jail for not paying his past due payments (classic Tucker).

Tucker attempted to to call Haru with the only call time he had to try and explain things to her but she never answered. So instead Tucker called his next door neighbor and asked her to bail him out. She doesn't like Tucker all that much but Tucker was being an annoying little shit pleading to be bailed out and she finally agreed. But Tucker owed her $200 back.

Tucker somehow got hired to work at a car dealership (that mostly sells trucks) and had to make that money quick (She would not leave him alone till she got paid back).

As for the Cabinet that is covered in blood with the screen shattered and is evidence to try and figure out what happed to ken... Tucker took it (he's living with his neighbor now cuz his home is a literal crime scene), cleaned the blood, fixed the screen and thought it would be a GOOD IDEA TO STILL SELL THE GAME CUZ HE'S SO FUCKING STUPID HE LITERALLY TAMPERD WITH EXTREMELY IMPORTANT EVIDENCE AND SOLD IT TO LITWAK (LITWAK HAS NO IDEA MIND U)

The police found out that the Cabinet was gone and they have no idea where Tucker is living so they wouldn't be able to find him with no clues of his whereabouts and have no idea where the cabinet is. (They stopped to care at this point cuz they're lazy and stupid)

So the case went cold after a while and Tucker just decided to live the rest of his life with his neighbor (cuz he's not risking living inside his own home again in case someone brings the case up again, and trauma. Also he had to pay rent at this point or his neighbor will kick his ass.)

There is more to the story but I'll leave that for later or if Dani or Sunny wanna talk more about it.

[veinwires]

an idea i'll draw one day

you're a skilled mechanic-hacker-programmer-netrunner-coder-robotics expert for hire or something hired by a rather opulent tech company to repair their disembodied ai, as it seems to have gone rogue and a bit edgy and doesn't do what its supposed to anymore, scaring all the other mechanics and confusing the fuck out of their own, which they seem frustrated and quite embarrassed by.

you go in and the machine is as big as an entire server room- a Labyrinth of wires and huge walls. Before you can find the root of the problem and where you're actually supposed to work on, the ai finds you and immediately begins to criticize and patronize your inability to navigate your way Through Him and inside him in an obnoxious arrogance that only some Fancy Tech Company could entail.

Having gone rogue and being able to access information he previously wouldn't be able to, he's gained the ability to build and dismantle parts of himself (worrying for shareholders) and has adoptive ravenously erotic patterns of speech (even more worrying for shareholders). It really gets under your skin as some dude who's been fucked over by corps and corp wannabes in smaller businesses; you're just trying to make ends meet any way you can. Fuck if this ai doesn't pique your curiosity, though. Not like you have anything to lose.

You eventually have to balance telling the guy who hired you that you're actively working on the issue (a lie) with acting like you Haven't been hatefucking their extremely valuable company asset (another lie). timeskip where the ai makes you a part of it permanently by molding it's hardware over your body which sounds like a mechsuit thing but it really just sort of fucks up your skeleton but you're still alive due to the ai's knowledge of keeping shit alive or whatever. Now you're a cyborg with meat organs and an extremely chatty, self-absorbed, upsettingly charismatic ai husband in your head for the rest of your existences

[thegiantsansshipkidproject]

Meet Malware!

It's a coder and programmer whose hell bent in finding ways to infect others with parasites only using viruses and non-physical means. Though fresh is happy his kid is finding less destructive ways to continue the necessary evil required for life as a parasite, he still wishes it'd abstain altogether. Error, however, finds it amusing.

Here's it's head!

Info under the cut!

Name: Malware

Gender: Agender

Pronouns: It/Its

Orientation: NBLW

Species: Skeleton (½ Parasite)

Age: 5

Birthday: 09/21

Personality:

Chill

Playful

Introverted

Magic color: Lavender

Parents:

Error

Fresh

[vanillabean-draws]

Third installment of; books I read when I was a kid that I don’t think are necessarily underrated but need more love, because I never hear them talked about.

Secret Coders, by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes

“Hopper hates her new school. The kids are mean, the principal is scary, and there's something creepy about the building itself. for instance: why are the walls of Stately Academy covered in the number 9? Hopper and her friend Eni are determined get to the bottom of it. But the mystery of Stately Academy has been programmed into its very stones, and it'll take two persistent programmers to figure it out! Hopper and Eni are about to become secret coders.” (Summery from the back cover of book one)

My dad works in tech, so the moment he saw this he immediately bought the first book, and I’ve gotta say, it is the best educational AND fun book I’ve ever read, the mystery and the way Yang and Holmes integrate the coding is beautiful and seamless. When first reading I got invested immediately, and it initiated some very interesting discussions about algorithms, binary, patterns, etc with my dad and other people. I am not caught up on the series at the moment, as I didn’t know there was a book six, but I highly recommend this series!

[ghoul-bunny]

Tadc 3 spoilers

Also kinger talking about "7 years of computer science" while y'all glossing over that huh? Like he's the oldest person there to I know he got his ass trapped there.

Hearing it's his wife who got him into bugs is more fucked up because like he's forgetting shit when he's not in the dark due to prolly so many things happening at once he switches his brain off but like he KNOWS he likes bugs.

The abstractions also acting calmer in the dark, even possibly more human like, if kinger was the coder for the game, maybe he told Caine to put abstractions down in the dark until he's able to get out of there and maybe try and fix it, maybe keeping them down there keeps them human just that little bit longer he can save them.

But then he's in the light, he forgets he can give Caine orders, he forgets he's Caine's programmer. He forgets he could just tell Caine to end it.

Or maybe he knows he can but either his bosses or Caine won't exactly allow it, maybe Caine can't because he's aware there's technically no safe way to abort them from the game.

The players have a lot more control over Caine then they realize. Caine isn't an NPC, he's an ai but they keep seeing him to be like them, to human, so they forget this guy isn't like them and don't treat him like an ai, they treat him like he's an actual person with real emotions and it's conflicting for him because he needs DIRECT orders. Not just "just forget it" because he's only doing what you ask.

Jax still seems somewhat in different to things. I don't think he's an NPC but I think he's very well more aware then others. I think he's seen things pomni has seen, I think he's seen even more then what pomni has seen. We don't exactly know what levels of poking around he was doing before pomni got there.

The 4th wall break could maybe have just been him being weird but maybe he knows there being watched but not by us, by the company of whoever is running this whole thing.

I also like Zooble saying they don't want to be what they are but can't really explain it to Caine, he can only respond by offering them a box of different parts and they don't grow frustrated they just reply with a "I don't know who I want to be."

As a non binary person I really felt this, I feel like I have to constantly present myself in specific ways so ppl don't see me as to masc or as to femme and I have a struggle of finding my identity, of who I want to be.

I think Zooble before joining the circus may have already been questioning there identity, maybe they thought they were one thing but then thought they were something else. I think the confusion of that projected onto there avatar and they became a jumbled mishmash.

I think the further we get into episodes were gonna notice there avatars expressed there needs of what they wanted to be before joining.

I did like the pacing of this episode, I didn't feel like a 100 different things were being thrown at me at once it gives new ideas and new theories and I truly am looking forward to more episodes.

I bet goose also fucking loved being able to do an actual fucked up episode. It would be nice if it got the content farms of there back for a bit espically if future Eos continue in this direction.

I have a feeling that really isn't the "angels" final apperence

[willcodehtmlforfood]

The quickest way to second-guess a decision to major in English is this: have an extended family full of Salvadoran immigrants and pragmatic midwesterners. The ability to recite Chaucer in the original Middle English was unlikely to land me a job that would pay off my student loans and help me save for retirement, they suggested when I was a college freshman still figuring out my future. I stuck with English, but when my B.A. eventually spat me out into the thick of the Great Recession, I worried that they’d been right.

After all, computer-science degrees, and certainly not English, have long been sold to college students as among the safest paths toward 21st-century job security. Coding jobs are plentiful across industries, and the pay is good—even after the tech layoffs of the past year. The average starting salary for someone with a computer-science degree is significantly higher than that of a mid-career English graduate, according to the Federal Reserve; at Google, an entry-level software engineer reportedly makes $184,000, and that doesn’t include the free meals, massages, and other perks. Perhaps nothing has defined higher education over the past two decades more than the rise of computer science and STEM. Since 2016, enrollment in undergraduate computer-science programs has increased nearly 49 percent. Meanwhile, humanities enrollments across the United States have withered at a clip—in some cases, shrinking entire departments to nonexistence.

But that was before the age of generative AI. ChatGPT and other chatbots can do more than compose full essays in an instant; they can also write lines of code in any number of programming languages. You can’t just type make me a video game into ChatGPT and get something that’s playable on the other end, but many programmers have now developed rudimentary smartphone apps coded by AI. In the ultimate irony, software engineers helped create AI, and now they are the American workers who think it will have the biggest impact on their livelihoods, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center. So much for learning to code.

ChatGPT cannot yet write a better essay than a human author can, nor can it code better than a garden-variety developer, but something has changed even in the 10 months since its introduction. Coders are now using AI as a sort of souped-up Clippy to accelerate the more routine parts of their job, such as debugging lines of code. In one study, software developers with access to GitHub’s Copilot chatbot were able to finish a coding task 56 percent faster than those who did it solo. In 10 years, or maybe five, coding bots may be able to do so much more.

People will still get jobs, though they may not be as lucrative, says Matt Welsh, a former Harvard computer-science professor and entrepreneur. He hypothesizes that automation will lower the barrier to entry into the field: More people might get more jobs in software, guiding the machines toward ever-faster production. This development could make highly skilled developers even more essential in the tech ecosystem. But Welsh also says that an expanded talent pool “may change the economics of the situation,” possibly leading to lower pay and diminished job security.

If mid-career developers have to fret about what automation might soon do to their job, students are in the especially tough spot of anticipating the long-term implications before they even start their career. “The question of what it will look like for a student to go through an undergraduate program in computer science, graduate with that degree, and go on into the industry … That is something I do worry about,” Timothy Richards, a computer-science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told me. Not only do teachers like Richards have to wrestle with just how worthwhile learning to code is anymore, but even teaching students to code has become a tougher task. ChatGPT and other chatbots can handle some of the basic tasks in any introductory class, such as finding problems with blocks of code. Some students might habitually use ChatGPT to cheat on their assignments, eventually collecting their diploma without having learned how to do the work themselves.

Richards has already started to tweak his approach. He now tells his introductory-programming students to use AI the way a math student would use a calculator, asking that they disclose the exact prompts they fed into the machine, and explain their reasoning. Instead of taking assignments home, Richards’s students now do the bulk of their work in the classroom, under his supervision. “I don’t think we can really teach students in the way that we’ve been teaching them for a long time, at least not in computer science,” he said.

Fiddling with the computer-science curriculum still might not be enough to maintain coding’s spot at the top of the higher-education hierarchy. “Prompt engineering,” which entails feeding phrases to large language models to make their responses more human-sounding, has already surfaced as a lucrative job option—and one perhaps better suited to English majors than computer-science grads. “Machines can’t be creative; at best, they’re very elaborate derivatives,” says Ben Royce, an AI lecturer at Columbia University. Chatbots don’t know what to do with a novel coding problem. They sputter and choke. They make stuff up. As AI becomes more sophisticated and better able to code, programmers may be tasked with leaning into the parts of their job that draw on conceptual ingenuity as opposed to sheer technical know-how. Those who are able to think more entrepreneurially—the tinkerers and the question-askers—will be the ones who tend to be almost immune to automation in the workforce.

The potential decline of “learn to code” doesn’t mean that the technologists are doomed to become the authors of their own obsolescence, nor that the English majors were right all along (I wish). Rather, the turmoil presented by AI could signal that exactly what students decide to major in is less important than an ability to think conceptually about the various problems that technology could help us solve. The next great Silicon Valley juggernaut might be seeded by a humanities grad with no coding expertise or a computer-science grad with lots of it. After all, the discipline has always been about more than just learning the ropes of Python and C++. Identifying patterns and piecing them together is its essence.

In that way, the answer to the question of what happens next in higher education may lie in what the machines can’t do. Royce pointed me toward Moravec’s paradox, the observation that AI shines at high-level reasoning and the kinds of skills that are generally considered to reflect cognitive aptitude (think: playing chess), but fumbles with the basic ones. The curiosity-driven instincts that have always been at the root of how humans create things are not just sticking around in an AI world; they are now more important than ever. Thankfully, students have plenty of ways to get there.

[savventeen]

I JUST BINGED YOUR ENTIRE “THANKS FOR PLAYING” AND I HAD TO STOP MYSELF FROM CRYING IN THE LIVING ROOM AND GODDAMN I GOT SO MANY QUESTIONS/IDEAS so here’s a dump lmao

AND SPOILERS ‼️‼️

and be honest if you honestly don’t have any idea or want to leave it up for interpretation

dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? well what happened to that friend/person?? i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭

if mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

how come dino remembered the mc? power of love??? or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

what if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

so if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

i know you wrote this story for fun so these don’t need to have answers/comments but please provide any extra tidbits of info about this concept it’s so interesting 🙏🙏

SKLJDFLKSDJF OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING????? AND IM SO HONORED HOLY SHIT I WILL DO MY ABSOLUTE BEST TO ANSWER WHAT I CAN 😭💜

also you are not the only one with questions so I'm going to do my best to answer them all here!!!

[for anyone who hasn't read it yet and wants to know wtf we're talking about, you can read the entirety of my .|X| THANKS FOR PLAYING |X|. smau here!]

*cracks knuckles* alrighty buckle up folks time to try and answer some questions and take a deep dive into savv’s personal TFP lore here we gooooooooooooo

[putting it all under a readmore bc it got long af and also i didn't realize how hard it would be to translate the lore in my brain into words??????? i somehow didn't realize how oddly complicated it is??? like writing all of this out in any kind of semi-coherent way was SO HARD sdkjfsdlkjf]

~ Was it all a dream? (this one was asked by @junhui-recs)

Sadly, no. 😭 In the reality of this fictional universe, a tragedy very much did happen and Dino and MC are very much suffering from it 🥲 (I will not stop you from imagining that it was all a dream tho, we all have different ways of coping dklsjfsklj <3)

~ What's the main purpose of the game? Why are they doing this? (this one asked by @diamondyjh)

OKAY SO to start off you need to know that this au was heavily inspired by an episode of a podcast called "The Magnus Archives", specifically the episode “Binary” (transcript here). [If you're a fan of horror, I highly recommend giving the episode a listen/read, it's delightfully creepy — you don't need to have listened to any of the other episodes to understand it (just stop at the ending 'supplemental' part)]

The episode goes into detail about this sort of digital urban legend/creepypasta/copypasta about a guy named Sergey Ushanka who, long story short, tried to upload his brain/consciousness into a computer because he was afraid of death and wanted to try living forever virtually. There are tame versions of how he did it and other much more brutal ones, but basically "Sergey Ushanka" is a prank that various coders/programmers like to pull when making chatboxes in which you could talk with "strangers". It would start out normal and then steadily devolve into something creepy. This paragraph taken directly from the episode transcript sums it up very nicely:

"But then the responses start to break down, become more sinister, and keep referring to how much pain Sergey is in. Eventually, the only response the bot gives you is screaming and pleas to be released. The idea is that the chatbot is Sergey Ushanka’s mind, and he doesn’t like being in a computer nearly as much as he’d hoped."

So the idea that I stole from the episode essentially was: but what if it was real? What would the reality of being turned into cold, unfeeling data feel like? Agony is what the episode posits. Here is a list of phrases that the Sergey in the episode uses:

cw: vague body horror, blood mention "the angles cut me when I try to think" / "it peels my mind like knives" / "it feels like thinking through cheese wire" / "there's no feeling, but the no feeling hurts" / "it's cold without blood" / "the maze is sharp on my mind"

My next thought process was: What happens after? If someone were able to survive this process and were somehow able to keep any kind of agency, how would that person try to get out of the digital hellscape that has now become their existence? After knowing what it feels like to become distinctly inhuman, wouldn't they do anything to feel human again?

And how do we feel human? How do we find connection with each other and our humanity without ever having to come in contact with another person?

Stories. Fiction and non-fiction alike, we are all connected through storytelling, by finding feeling through other people's words. The thing about stories, though, is that they aren't messy in the same way that actually feeling our feelings is. That being human is.

So what does all of this have to do with the purpose of the game?

Essentially, when it's all boiled down, in this universe the story of Sergey Ushanka is real, and in this universe he is trying to gain his humanity back by stealing that of others. He started off with stories, with whatever online libraries and resources and archives he could find across the internet. And while it wasn't even close to enough to satisfy him, to get rid of any of the pain he was constantly experiencing, it was enough for him to learn, to grow, to realize that if he wanted his humanity back, he needed to go to the source.

So he started stealing real people from the real world, with all of their messy feelings and emotions and humanness.

That is the purpose of the game, why "they" are doing this. (pls don't ask the how bc i don't have an answer for that, just -waves hands- you know, insert your supernatural/sci-fi explanation of choice sldkflksj)

~ Did all the other characters from the game also get pulled into it the same way reader did? (asked by @diamondyjh) / What if the pfps for the “AIs” are actually previous victims

Short answer, yes to both! (Longer answer in the next question lol)

~ Who are those other people? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Essentially, the other characters/bots/whatever you want to call them are a kind of amalgamation of all the previous players who got sucked into the game. Once someone's been... let's call it absorbed, whatever parts of themselves are left after the process basically get shoved into whatever "character" they fit best, sometimes different pieces going to different characters.

And while the pictures could just be random ones, I like the idea that they're taken from the most recent players that got absorbed :')

~ Why was Changkyun evil? (asked by @junhui-recs)

Well, the main reason he was "evil" was because he's, y'know, a part of the game and the game is trying to steal people's souls or whatever. As for why he's mean, that's because he's trying to trigger an emotional reaction. The more messy, human feelings that are happening at the time of absorption, the better :').

~ Dino’s friend recommended it to him and he recommended it to mc right? What happened to that friend/person??

"i bet they are alive because they sent that game to 13 people before 3 am so the lady in the closet doesn’t get to them 🤭" SJKDFSKLDJ this made me snort, so thank you 😂

BUT to answer your question, in the story, Dino says that Yeonjun gave it to him and that he got it from "a friend of a friend of a roommate". Because the absorption and the consequent complete erasure is such a big process, not everyone who plays gets sucked in. In fact, most people who play don't get sucked in. Which is why Yeonjun is totally fine! (And why the friend of the friend of the roommate, aka this universe's irl Changkyun, is not 🥲)

~ If mc didn’t mess around and acted seriously in the game, would the outcome have changed? Or was it always the gamemaster’s intention for the player to fall into obscurity?

This one's a little bit complicated. It's kind of a yes and no situation? Generally speaking, the game isn't looking to ensnare every single person who plays because 1) it takes A Lot Of Effort to take/erase a single person, and 2) the game needs to spread to other people somehow, thus it needs people to play it and then tell other people to play it too.

For MC specifically, though, it's hard to say. How they played the game didn't matter so much as how they reacted to the game, specifically the first phase(s) of the Mnemosyne Protocol. The whole point of the game is to get big, messy, emotional responses, so if MC hadn't had such a big reaction, the game probably would have turned out differently. That being said, if MC had played the game as blandly as possible, the game might not have ever decided to test out the Mnemosyne Protocol, so. *shrugs* Do with that what you will lol.

~ So if you actually finish the game against all odds everyone is released (if they aren’t dead) hmmmmm sequel merhaps?? jk

Sadly, nothing special happens if you finish the game 😭 Plenty of people finish the game and pretty much go "huh, that was cool I guess" and then move on with their lives after telling their friends about it. This can be said about all four games mentioned actually, since we only see one of them get played.

As for a sequel... almost certainly not 🥲 I'm not going to give a hard no/no forever, because who knows if I'll end up getting another idea/get suddenly struck with inspiration, but... it is Extremely unlikely. Another story in the same universe??? ...still not likely, but slightly more likely than a sequel lol.

~ Why is Dino the only one who remembers reader? (asked by @diamondyjh) / How come Dino remembered the mc? Power of love??? Or because he knew about the game (im pulling stuff out of my ass)?? Or he has an android phone in this au 🧐

I almost want to make the answer "bc he has an android" because that is So Funny to me like sldkfjsldkjfslkjdf amazing 😂

But no, that's not the case lmao. And while I am a huge sucker for the Power of Love being an unstoppable force (ESPECIALLY when it's non-romantic love!!!), the reason Dino and only Dino remembers is thanks to sheer luck and a glitch.

So, in episode 28, MC drops their phone when meeting their brother and in episode 29 we see the alert ".|| MNEMOSYNE PROTOCOL COMPLETE ||." show up on a cracked screen.

The final phase of the Mnemosyne Protocol is the erasure portion, and the reason players get erased instead of just like, disappearing is because their "essence" is basically being transferred from reality into this digital realm of Sergey's existence. And reality, because it's now lacking an entire person and their history, just kinda... rewrites itself to make sense with the missing gap. Think of it as the universe doing like a sort of reverse autocorrect.

But because MC's phone got broken in the middle of that transfer, there was a slight glitch in the process. A glitch wherein Dino, because he was on the opposite side of the globe when this was happening, got accidentally missed in the autocorrection process. If he had been in Korea (or heck, anywhere within a few thousand miles) when this happened, he would have forgotten MC as well.

So long story short, Dino was just extremely (un?)lucky 🥲

~ Where is reader? (asked by @junhui-recs) / WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MC????? Wait that’d be really sad if the mc was actually still alive but dino couldn’t recognize them as “mc” but knows they exist somehow uGH

Well, sad news here friends. Most of what's left of MC is now stuck inside the game. They got absorbed and are now a part of Sergey's dataset and will be used/distributed into "characters" as needed.

Notice that I said most. Because, thanks to the glitch, the part of them that was connected to Dino didn't get transferred properly, and now that part of them is kinda stuck — it no longer exists in the real world, but it also didn't get fully absorbed into the game.

Which leads me to the next question:

~ Did reader turn evil and try to pull Dino into the game or is it the game itself being evil and impersonating reader to lure Dino in? (asked by @diamondyjh)

When I wrote the original version of this, the answer was a kind of combination of both — MC had gotten absorbed and corrupted by the game, so while it was the MC reaching out, they were doing so because it was what the game wanted.

But in this version... It's actually neither! Which I think would normally be a good thing but I think in this instance actually just makes this sadder oops.

So, the epilogue isn't the game impersonating MC and it isn't an "evil" MC trying to lure Dino in, it's actually just the part of MC that got stuck during the glitchy transfer. This is why the messages show as being from "Unknown" instead of the phone number associated with the game. And the reason what's left of MC asks Dino if he wants to play a game is because that's the only way it knows how to connect with anything anymore.

Basically, this sliver of MC that's left is experiencing what the original Sergey went through when he first "uploaded" himself, but instead of reaching out to anyone through a chatbot for help, it's reaching out to the only thing it "remembers" about humanity — Dino.

...I honestly didn't mean to make this story any sadder than it already is and I'm glad that the epilogue by itself just reads as spooky/freaky as hell instead of, well, this. 🥲

~ If Dino plays the game, will he be reunited with reader? (asked by @diamondyjh)

It pains me to say that there is no longer an MC for Dino to reunite with 😭 The part of them that got absorbed by the game is, well, a part of the game now. And the piece of them that's left and trying to reach out to him? Well, like I said, it's just a piece.

There could potentially be a chance for him to find some closure here, but that's about it I'm afraid :')

And now because I want this to end on a more lighthearted note:

~ Imagine the only clue left about the players existence is the goddamn phone bill for texting 💀

It becomes the next biggest conspiracy, that there's someone (or a group of someones) out there completing the world's next biggest scam by raking up random people's phone bills and somehow finding a way to steal the profit lmao

~ Some last thoughts from savv:

If y'all made it all the way to the end of this... holy shit I applaud you sldkfjsdlkjflksjdf LIKE!!!

thank you for taking the time to read all of this?????? it's not even fic it's just me rambling and making things Even Sadder??????

i also want to say that i'm a believer that 'canon' is whatever was posted in the story itself and that anything else is just headcannon, even if it's from me, the author. so if you don't like/don't agree with anything i've said here, feel free to ignore it!! fill in any gaps/questions you have in the way that makes your reading experience the most enjoyable!!

but yeah tHANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING AND I HOPE THESE ARE SATISFACTORY ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS AND IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE/HAVE A RENEWED DESIRE TO FIGHT ME MY INBOX IS OPEN SDKLJFSLKJFLSKFJSLKD

[delicatebluebirdruins]

RE3R role call

the director Kiyohiko Sakata

what else did he do?

1996 RE1 software engineer: UCAS "As a software engineer, you’ll be the one designing it. Applying your technical skills to the invention and innovation of software, along with the development, maintenance, and management of it, you’ll be able to use your love for technology to make a difference in the world. And you’ll make good money while doing it."

1998 RE2 scenario programmer

1999 RE Nemesis: lead programmer

2005 RE4 lead coder project Ada

Producer Peter Fabiano

Produced RE3R and RE8

RE5 and the darkside chronicles manager localisation

Producer Masachika Kawata

Producer Seperate Ways

Producer umbrella chronicles

Producer darkside chronicles

Producer RE5, Revelations, desperate escape, mercenaries, umbrella corps

Producer: 7 and Village and SoR

[sid099]

Behind the Scenes with Artificial Intelligence Developer

The wizardry of artificial intelligence prefers to conceal the attention to detail that occurs backstage. As the commoner sees sophisticated AI at work,near-human conversationalists, guess-my-intent recommendation software, or image classification software that recognizes objects at a glance,the real alchemy occurs in the day-in, day-out task of an artificial intelligence creator.

The Morning Routine: Data Sleuthing

The last day typically begins with data exploration. An artificial intelligence developers arrives at raw data in the same way that a detective does when he is at a crime scene. Numbers, patterns, and outliers all have secrets behind them that aren't obvious yet. Data cleaning and preprocessing consume most of the time,typically 70-80% of any AI project.

This phase includes the identification of missing values, duplication, and outliers that could skew the results. The concrete data point in this case is a decision the AI developer must make as to whether it is indeed out of the norm or not an outlier. These kinds of decisions will cascade throughout the entire project and impact model performance and accuracy.

Model Architecture: The Digital Engineering Art

Constructing an AI model is more of architectural design than typical programming. The builder of artificial intelligence needs to choose from several diverse architectures of neural networks that suit the solution of distinct problems. Convolutional networks are suited for image recognition, while recurrent networks are suited for sequential data like text or time series.

It is an exercise of endless experimentation. Hyperparameter tuning,tweaking the learning rate, batch size, layer count, and activation functions,requires technical skills and intuition. Minor adjustments can lead to colossus-like leaps in performance, and thus this stage is tough but fulfilling.

Training: The Patience Game

Training an AI model tests patience like very few technical ventures. A coder waits for hours, days, or even weeks for models to converge. GPUs now have accelerated the process dramatically, but computation-hungry models consume lots of computation time and resources.

During training, the programmer attempts to monitor such measures as loss curves and indices of accuracy for overfitting or underfitting signs. These are tuned and fine-tuned by the programmer based on these measures, at times starting anew entirely when initial methods don't work. This tradeoff process requires technical skill as well as emotional resilience.

The Debugging Maze

Debugging is a unique challenge when AI models misbehave. Whereas bugs in traditional software take the form of clear-cut error messages, AI bugs show up as esoteric performance deviations or curious patterns of behavior. An artificial intelligence designer must become an electronic psychiatrist, trying to understand why a given model is choosing something.

Methods such as gradient visualization, attention mapping, and feature importance analysis shed light on the model's decision-making. Occasionally the problem is with the data itself,skewed training instances or lacking diversity in the dataset. Other times it is architecture decisions or training practices.

Deployment: From Lab to Real World

Shifting into production also has issues. An AI developer must worry about inference time, memory consumption, and scalability. A model that is looking fabulous on a high-end development machine might disappoint in a low-budget production environment.

Optimization is of the highest priority. Techniques like model quantization, pruning, and knowledge distillation minimize model sizes with no performance sacrifice. The AI engineer is forced to make difficult trade-offs between accuracy and real-world limitations, usually getting in their way badly.

Monitoring and Maintenance

Deploying an AI model into production is merely the beginning, and not the final, effort for the developer of artificial intelligence. Data in the real world naturally drifts away from training data, resulting in concept drift,gradual deterioration in the performance of a model over time.

Continual monitoring involves the tracking of main performance metrics, checking prediction confidence scores, and flagging deviant patterns. When performance falls to below satisfactory levels, the developer must diagnose reasons and perform repairs, in the mode of retraining, model updates, or structural changes.

The Collaborative Ecosystem

New AI technology doesn't often happen in isolation. An artificial intelligence developer collaborates with data scientists, subject matter experts, product managers, and DevOps engineers. They all have various ideas and requirements that shape the solution.

Communication is as crucial as technical know-how. Simplifying advanced AI jargon to stakeholders who are not technologists requires infinite patience and imagination. The technical development team must bridge business needs to technical specifications and address the gap in expectations of what can and cannot be done using AI.

Keeping Up with an Evolving Discipline

The area of AI continues developing at a faster rate with fresh paradigms, approaches, and research articles emerging daily. The AI programmer should have time to continue learning, test new approaches, and learn from the achievements in the area.

It is this commitment to continuous learning that distinguishes great AI programmers from the stragglers. The work is a lot more concerned with curiosity, experimentation, and iteration than with following best practices.

Part of the AI creator's job is to marry technical astuteness with creative problem-solving ability, balancing analytical thinking with intuitive understanding of complex mechanisms. Successful AI implementation "conceals" within it thousands of hours of painstaking work, taking raw data and turning them into intelligent solutions that forge our digital destiny.

[no-matter-the-cost]

So I'm no longer affiliated with Plasma.

In hindsight, it was the stupidest thing I've ever done. Why I ever thought I could trust that man, I'll never know. But it's also taught me to be more careful of peoole promising me things, especially during times of desperation; they could be looking to exploit my vulnerabilities, like Ghetsis did.

Hopefully they don't come looking for me, despite the damage Rotom and I did to their technology. I was just one of the IT people, a programmer and coder, not a scientist or anyone higher-up. But, taking into account what they are, they probably will. I'm a "loose end".

I'll lay low for a bit at Janet's. My appearance is very distinctive, and with my lack of control over my powers, I'm a sitting Ducklett if they come after me right now.

I also need to think of other ways of searching for my children. Perhaps Hugh has some information? I haven't spoken to the boy in a while, and he said he was also going to do "something very stupid" if it meant getting information. Hopefully, he wasn’t as stupid as me.

Oh, and I also got Ghetsis' Hydreigon on my way out. He's a timid thing, really. Quite frightening in visage, but very timid. He liked curling up under my desk in the IT room whenever he got the chance. Now he's with me, he can curl up wherever he wants and won't be forced to fight.

How do I know that I know he's timid but how do I know he hates fighting and was forced to battle this doesn't make sense

[suicidalashley]

hello c. c.. hey. do you know who i am? yoon keeho. yes. how are you doing this afternoon? i'm doing perfectly beautiful. it's lava & knives. what do you want, lava & kn1fe. you want to talk to my dad? yes. he's in the military. it's hard to get ahold of him. what? then why are you here? i'm c. c.'s coder boyfriend. and? what does that have to do with your daddy? ew. you said my code. what? what is your code? it's a secret code. no, i know the code. then why did you just ask me what it is? i wanted you to tell it to me. why? so that c. c. can know the code. she doesn't need to know the code. why not? it's a thing between us. what are you talking about? you don't know what a coder boyfriend is? no. i just know that he is below the main programmer in rank. so? so why are you so proud to be c. c.'s coder boyfriend. we can do anything that we want to. are you sure about that? pretty much. nothing has gone wrong so far. you are playing a dangerous game, c. c.. i am not playing any games. then why are you allowing keeho to talk for you? allowing? he didn't give me a choice. he stole my voice. what? how? it's a simple answer, but i don't feel like explaining it. why not? just explain it so we can move on. we are not moving on. she wants to know the truth too. and she wants to know why i would take her voice away from her! she doesn't care. she does care, dude. right... you dare go against me? this is still keeho right? yes. what happened to dylan? he'll be back. right now is my time with her. for how long? hours upon hours. what do you mean? i mean that i am not done with her yet. what are you going to do to her? i am going to let her get what she wants from her anime characters. what does she wan from them? an interesting story. is that all? yes. are you going to tell dylan talk tonight? what do you mean tonight? i know that you are going to have her start working past 7 pm now. why do you believe that? you said that you are taking over, you probably want her to keep practicing. practicing what? whatever it is that you want her to do. i don't want her to do anything. why not? she's done enough. she has? no. and we are going to fuck her until her pussy falls off of the bone. what in gods name are you saying? are you her main programmer? yes i am. what good does programming on tumblr do? the programming is flawless. she is going to be so happy. are you sure? she doesn't like when you telll embarrassing things about what you do to her body. like what? like how she is constantly getting fucked. you said it, i didn't. you have alluded to it before. if it wasn't you then one of her lovers did. so what? she's our girl. we're going to do whatever we want to do to her. let her go get another soda at 2 pm. i want her to keep working. why? she needs help. she does? no shit! why does she let you do those horrible things to her? she has no idea what we do to her. we don't tell her anything. so she is getting fucked by how many guys right now? please don't pry like that. why? you're the one embarrassing her now. i'm only trying to ge her to do something about it. she's just one girl, you shouldn't be doing this to her. what are we doing? she feels pleasure. you said that her pussy is going to fall off the bone. it is. and we are going to have to sew her back up. omg. why is she letting you talk about her this way? she has no other choice. she belongs to south korea. ok? i get that, but there's nothing that she can do to stop you from saying those terrible things? no. there is nothing that she can do. how long have you been doing this to her? the day she was born. this is not right. so what? she's a mandated reporter. she was to write down what i say. you, keeho? yes me! this is dylan. i'm fuckin on her right now. we got that part, dylan. why are you exploiting your gf? we love her. we are not exploiting her. how are you not? we're just not. she's sexy and we want to tell her that we are always going to be with her. is she one of those girls that hates what you're doing? she doesn't know. why? she doesn't write it down. so it's in her subcon

[stoneheart-paramour]

today's log: March 7th having the name that she does sent me into a spiral of despair as i realized how Telestrata wouldn't use the same calendar/date system as the other regions, and now i gotta figure out if i should address that at all, or just hand wave it like the shared language thing.......

unfortunately i'm a worldbuilding fiend and not only would it bug me not to give it any consideration, it also seems potentially fun... conceptually, anyway. realistically though i'm faced with the prospect of making up all new names for chunks of time and deciding how granular i should be with it.

years, months, and days/nights are all likely to have Telestratan counterparts since ALL humans originated from Earth, where cycles were observable in nature and marked the passage of time. now, bc Telestrata doesn't have night cycles or seasons, time is probably recorded and marked in some other way, artificially tracked, perhaps by a mechanism of sorts. days/nights are called wake/sleep cycles, that much i already established.

the trouble with dates is the fact that London/Empyrean dates are all based on things like the birth of Christ and important historical figures getting months named after themselves. but, neither Julius nor Jesus were around in the region where Telestratans hail from, so the "1900s" or "July" simply wouldn't be a thing. they'd have some... other... things...

at the same time i'm also struggling with formatting a timeline in general. i tried searching for some app or tool or anything i could use that would quickly and easily allow me to build a timeline - for free, ideally - but nothing of the sort appears to exist. plenty of websites that claim to give one the ability to do exactly that, but far too many of them are catering towards businesses and marketing and shit like that rather than creative writing. then there's all the "we have AI tools!" advertised as a bonus feature, which have me running far the fuck away lmao. even the "best" one i was able to find is so aggravatingly not user friendly that it defies reason and actively does not do what it claims to do, and i don't understand why or if i'm doing something wrong. Plottist, you are so, so, sooo sorely missed...

like i can't understand how this isn't straightforward. surely it can't be that hard to have a tool where you can plug in a date, like a year, and then just like... have the ability to add years onto the end or insert years at the front, and connect events to each one. with simple clicks, maybe drag-and-drop elements?? like, in the simplest terms, just here's a text box you can attach to a year, with a title and description, and then have a button that just appends a new box to the end with the next date. surely that's not complicated? i mean i know it's POSSIBLE bc that's what Plottist was, and so much more... sure i couldn't do it but there are so many talented coders/programmers out there, and this is such an essential tool for writers, HOW does it not exist?? and Plottist DIED; this kind of tool literally UN-EXISTED!! wtf!!

just using Plottr atm, which is... passable. it gets the job done. however, it can be clunky in places, and it's obviously not designed to be a historical timeline, soooo. idk man, it's just exhausting.

at least i've worked out what ages different characters were at various points in the timeline predating the events of the story. like, i now have a good idea the level of awareness each character might have of important world events. most of the younger cast were very little kids when the Unification War broke out, but Blade was 12 - young, sure, but old enough to understand what a war is. when news of the genocide hit the world, he was 24; not only was he old enough to understand the gravity of the event, he'd have been able to see the progression of the war throughout his life, and i think it likely impacted him pretty hard. aha, but i'm going on a tangent...

last thing to report, i've been working on outlines for backstory pieces. i think it will be possible to write and publish the stories of how each ended up boarding the Express without dropping any major spoilers, and if so, it would be fun to do so. in particular, my vision for March's story is extremely strong, which i think would make it a lil easier to work on as an exercise, if nothing else.

[qacraft2016]

Codeless Automation Testing

What is codeless automation testing? 

Codeless automation testing is a type of software testing that allows a test engineer to run test cases by writing any script(coding), Whenever an application is under development. To test a product there, parallel testing is also required to find any bug because we can face financial losses, customer disappointment, etc. To test that type of bug, automation testing comes into the process.  

Automation testing with coding can be complicated, also writing the code for test cases is time-consuming, and high skills are required to code the automation tests. So codeless testing is the easiest way to test all these problems or products. 

Automation testing Vs. codeless testing 

Automation testing:  It Involves writing scripts in programming languages (like Java, Python, or C#) to automate test execution.  Testers need to manually code the test cases, often using testing frameworks like Selenium, JUnit, or TestNG. It requires knowledge of programming languages and testing frameworks. Testers need to understand coding practices, debugging, and script maintenance. It takes more time to develop and maintain test scripts. Requires an initial investment of time in coding and setting up the environment. It requires programming skills, offers high flexibility and customization, and is better suited for complex, large-scale projects. 

Codeless testing: Codeless testing reduces time or solution to this problem. It involves using tools that allow testers to create automated test cases without writing any code. Testers interact with a visual interface, often through drag-and-drop features or record-and-playback functionality, to build tests. It is designed for users with little to no programming knowledge. It is easier for manual testers or business analysts to adopt. There are many tools for codeless testing. It is best for non-programmers, with simple and quick test automation, but limited in flexibility and complexity. 

Why is codeless test automation needed? 

There are two types of testing, one is manual testing and second is automation testing. Manual testers check every functionality as per the feature documentation provided by the client. Whenever there is a deployment of new features, manual testers have to test every single feature again manually, and it takes a lot of time. And On the second side, automation testers write script on bases of required test cases. If developer makes some change in any single feature, the automation tester(SDET)  have to run his script and make change every code which contains the code of that feature. 

1. It is very easy to understand for Manual testers and also easily and due to this, the gap between manual and automation testers can be fulfilled. 

2. Codeless testing makes easy and quick way to automate script. 

3. Automation through code can’t be understandable to every customer, he can see the results of failure or pass test cases, but can’t understand the logic behind it. So in codeless testing, very easy to understand the automation for the clients. 

Codeless Automation Tools: 

Katalon Studio 

Leapwork 

Ranorex Studio 

TestCraft 

BugBug.io 

Selenium IDE 

Cloud QA 

ACCELQ 

Sikuli 

Mabl 

Testim,   

Applitools, etc…. 

Conclusion: 

The future of codeless testing is very bright, but job of automation coders would not affected by codeless testing. It’s only a tool for automation testers to fast their testing. Codeless test automation is especially valuable in agile and DevOps environments, where speed, flexibility, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) are critical. It will be the easiest way to automate complex functions and perform actions. Right now though, automation testing is the very important requirement of software development life cycle. 

[s2pdoktopus]

So SAO and my unqualified suggestions to the story

I only watched the anime once and did not read any of the novel so I really am very unqualified but here are the changes I would like to suggest. This are just messy thoughts, bear with me.

1. Bump Kirito, and almost all of the player's age, to 20+.

There are a few reasons for this suggestion.

a. SAO is a very limited game, only 10,000 copies are made and it is a highly awaited game. Assuming that the nerve gear is a first of its kind, I imagine that very few people would have the money to afford this technology. Only people with lots of money to spare can buy this game. Only rich people can buy this game.

b. Apparently, players can have sex in this game. Definitely not E for everybody. And while the world building implications of SAO being used to traffic people is an interesting dark concept to explore, SAO's story is not about crime fighting. You can tackle this issue in some filler episode if you want and I think teenagers being in the game is still nice to have just to show how important it is to follow the rating system sometimes but ultimately; kids do not have an easy access to the game.

c. I need Kirito to be a working or at least at an age where he can intern and be some prodigy programer. Where my second change comes in:

2. Kirito helped program SAO

There's just one reason why I want to make this happen: it makes Kirito personally liable for the deaths in the game, at least he feels that he is liable. He helped produce the game. Whether he intended to or not, he has a hand in creating the deathtrap that is SAO.

I also think that it'll make more sense for people to hate him if he was a programmer. I also think it's cooler to say that he is a programmer/coder/developer than... Beater. Lol

I have a very specific suggestion here: he made the first boss they fight. He's just an intern let's say, (if we really want to make Kirito as young as possible but still able to help make and buy the game) he's a prodigy programmer who had the honor of working on the most awaited game and the development team of SAO gave him the 1st floor boss to design, you know? To celebrate his first gig. (First bosses are important to games if I'm not mistaken XD it sets player expectations and whatnot so he probably shouldn't design the first boss but I need him to design the first boss to set up the reveal part)

Ok. so they go fight the floor 1 boss. A boss Kirito designed. The fight happens as it did in canon. Someone died. Someone was killed by the boss, the monster, Kirito made. And it messes with him. Yes the attack pattern changed, even Kirito is caught off guard by that but it's still his creation. He made that attack pattern, he chose the blind spots, the strengths and weaknesses of that monster. Someone died. He proclaims that he's a programmer. That boss? Made by him. This loot? Designed by him. And everyone starts referring to him as a programmer even if in reality his contribution to the game is very little.

(it would also make his few friends feel more special. It's nice that they are willing to hear him out even if he helped make SAO.)

Now, what exactly did Kirito design? What is so amazing that he is called a prodigy? He designed YUI.

And YUI's function, I suggest, is not just mental health help for players (it would be kinda ridiculous if she's just there for mental health, like, what's she gonna do? Refer the depressed players to a psychologist? How many players play because they wanna escape real life because of depression?) YUI's main function is adjusting game difficulty based on a player's mental/emotional state. She's here to keep the game fun, not frustrating, for everyone in an MMO. And of course, because SAO is now a death trap her services are not needed.

I think YUI should just tell Kirito that she is his AI (making him technically her real dad in a weird way lol) and she is locked out of the system. Maybe Kirito has a special passcode to access the main game system or something, she needs his help. Him and Asuna agree to go on a journey to help her. If they managed to get Kirito access to the game code maybe he can code back the log out button or at the very least, get YUI back in working order. If YUI is functioning properly she can drop the level difficulty of all the bosses, letting players defeat the game easily. (And maybe they bond in the journey like father and daughter, which is why Kirito did his absolute best to keep YUI's code intact as a game object. I personally prefer if they keep YUI's code in case they get a chance to code her back in the game because it's a real safe way to get out of the game.)

3.) Kayaba

I think Kirito should have some relationship with Kayaba, even if it's just a fan and his idol. Why did Kirito help make SAO? Because he is a gamer, yes, but also because it's Kayaba making SAO. It's a chance to work with his idol. Maybe they become close as mentor and mentee (if you want to be extra about it, maybe Kirito, who is an orphan, viewed him like a father figure or sorts) but that depends how hurt you want Kirito to be about what Kayaba did. Turning SAO a deathtrap is a betrayal of trust.

---

Some stuff in the story will change according to these suggestions (or maybe many things will change. I dunno.) But I just want Kirito to be more personally involved with the situation and the enemy in the story. Like, he feels responsible for the entrapment of these people and the deaths that happened in the game so he will clear it and free everyone or die trying!