#fuck ai times a thousand i know it has some important functions but fuck ai for the most part

[5ummit]

AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data

You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.

It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!

Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.

I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.

Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.

To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.

[birdsandproblems]

Im fucking crying has anyone seen the AI diagrams in the Scientific Study yet?

So, there was a Paper published on the 13th February 2024.

It was published in Frontiers in Cell and developemental Biology, titled

"Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to JAK/STAT signaling pathway""

So far so good, right?

Not knowing anything about the topic, youd exepect a regular Paper: full of scientific theories hopefully to be confirmed and used to widen our human horizons with knowledge.

WRONG. 10 METERS RAT PENIS

Figure 1: Dissilced rat penis.

YES. This was a real picture included in the Paper. I think even without looking at rat dicks regularly (or if ever), you can /kinda/ guess this looks wrong.

If you dont know anything about rat dicks (dont blame you) seeing text like "iollotte sserotgomar cell" or "dck" or "di§locttal stem ells" should make you go hm. Mayhaps this may be wrong.

Another graphic shows the JAK/STAT signaling pathway.

This...is wrong. You cant read the labels. Its wrong and theres non existing symbols and letters and just imagine, imagine youre a newbie Student or scientist or even regular non-academic trying to read this.

Its teaches you nothing and only gives false information.

Of course, this paper passed /2 reviewers/ who said nothing is wrong with it!

This is absolutly unacceptable. Luckily the paper has been retracted now (16.02.2024)

But this is unacceptable. It should never have passed ANY reviewers and saying their job is to rate the scientific merit of the text without looking at the pictures is pure bullshit.

In a scientific papers, graphics and diagrams should have and need scientific merit and integrity, this is the whole point of writing it!

Shame on anyone for letting it get published and i wish the authors would have commissioned someone or even created graphics themselves- no matter how 'crude' or non aesthetic, any graphic drawn in a scientific manner is a thousand times better than AI. Please, stop using AI for important things like that.

I cant say much to the content of the text, but if this was a great paper- now its forever ruined as the Rat dick paper and i wouldnt trust any of the scientists working on it to have honesty and integrity on new papers. I wouldnt publish them.

Lazyness in academia is one thing, but this is just...so bad its sad.

Now, lets look some cells from the paper, shall we?

(I am in distress. This is not a cell.

This is not a cell girl help)

To end this on a better note, shout out to this great tweet lmao!

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

FreFo/FuFo Heist Planning: Volume #5.

Marisha: I can’t let it happen…and without her…it doesn’t… …Maya…I’m about to do something awful…

*The sound can be heard of a machine gun being loaded.

Marisha: Or at least, people will say it’s awful. If they knew what we did, maybe they’d think better of me!

Marisha: They wouldn’t think of us as monsters or terrorists! …But I need to stop THIS terrorist, no matter the cost! So if you’re listening to this message…then you know what happened to me…

Marisha: I’m…I’m SORRYYY!

???: There she is!

Marisha: HAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGH!

*The recording cuts out with the sound of screaming and rapid gunfire…

...Marisha...

*The Freedom Foundation finish listening to the recording. Once they do, Maya slams her face on the table.

D...DAMMIIIIIITT!!

...

...

What the hell...?

I must reward this Marisha person on their cleverness. Their method of getting this message to you was ingenious.

What do you mean?

I’ve had time to think on it, but it seems that this USB doesn’t just work as a hard drive.

Based on the way it’s shaped...it also functions as a bullet.

What!?

If you want my hypothesis, Marisha was almost killed by the Fang Inc. soldiers. But before they could get to her, she recorded this and put it in the hard drive. She then hid the drive in the bullet, and shot herself in the head so that the soldiers wouldn’t immediately find the recording.

But wait, you’re not answering the most important question. Who IS Marisha!?

*Byakuya turns to the Freedom Foundation.

Considering she seemed to know Maya, I would guess that she’s a friend of the Freedom Foundation’s.

I suggest asking them...but I also suggest maybe giving them some time to recover.

...No need. We promised no more secrets, right?

*Four, depressed and rubbing Maya’s back to console her as she cries into her arms, turns towards the Future Foundation.

Marisha Filliet is her full name. Remember how Maya said we had a contact inside Fang Inc?

Yeah...that was her...

Filliet...If I remember correctly, that’s...?

Yeah...One of the victims of the Killing Game we were in was Maria Filliet...Marisha is her half-sister.

She was one of the few people who we told the truth about what happened in the Killing Game. She was mortified, and wanted to help us, but Maya didn’t want to get her too involved.

Marisha was insistent though, so we gave her a job. We asked her to get hired into Fang Inc. and leak information about their plans to us. Whatever she could get her hands on.

...I shouldn’t have done that...I should’ve just said no...

Maya...This isn’t your fault dammit...

But it is! I should’ve just put my foot down! I should never have gotten her involved! And now she’s dead, and it’s on me!

For fucks sake, it’s not like YOU shot her! 

Kuripa, hey! J-Just calm down!

I CAN’T JUST CALM DOWN!

Didn’t you hear what Filiet said!? Not only is she now dead, but Emilia Feng was baiting us the entire time! The Kerokuma’s could drop down and kill all of us at ANY MOMENT!

Emilia’s just waiting for that government confrontation, and then with the push of a button, BAM! She’s queen of the whole country!

Well, then we’d better hurry up and destroy them! Isn’t that what we planned to do anyway?

We need the schematics for the building to even get close to the project database, and even if we had that, it’s hopeless anyway...

Why!?

Komaru, didn’t you hear what Marisha said? “Even if the Kerokuma’s themselves are destroyed, she has a program that will automatically re-engineer the AI and produce thousands more at the drop of a hat.”

It might take a few months at least, but no matter what we do, Emilia will get the project back on it’s webbed feet...

It’s over...There’s nothing we can do...It’s all over...

You’re just gonna give up!? After all this, you’re just gonna turn around and stop fighting!?

What’s the point of fighting!? Even if we destroy the Kerokuma’s my mother will just build them again and again, faster than we can destroy them! We can’t just lose any more lives!

...I can’t take it anymore...I just can’t...

Marisha died...Hiro got kidnapped...I don’t want anyone to get hurt anymore.

No...No I agree with Komaru...

We can’t give up! We’ve come way too far to give up!

Hunter...

This is the exact same rut we all got stuck in at the end of the Killing Game! We all were willing to give up on hope, just because Emilia told us we were gonna die! But we stuck it to that bitch! What’s stopping us from doing it again, huh!?

Even now, we’ve got the impression that it’s all hopeless! Well even if you guys back down, I won’t!

Hunter, I love you...but you can’t do this by yourself...!

Then help me, god dammit! Don’t go giving up on me just because of one little hurdle!

Hunter’s right. You can’t give up on hope.

Oh, here we go...

What?

*Makoto steps forward.

Lately, times have been harsh. We’ve gained enemies and lost allies...we have seen uncertainty and Despair rise. 

Yet, amid said Despair, we have survived.​ And YOU have survived just as we have against Fang Inc. all this time, by yourselves no less.

​Remember, some challenges are more significant than you; you need your team. Let them lift you. We need to ​outthink, outwork and outcare for each other. 

So don’t start blaming yourselves, don’t put pressure on yourselves, and most importantly...Don’t. Start. Giving. Up.

Our direction may seem messy and confusing, and may seem like we can’t get anywhere, but I KNOW we can. We aren’t gonna give up Hope, not now, not ever.

...

*Maya stands up and wipes her eyes and nose with her sleeve.

...Did you practice this or something...?

No ma’am. That’s a Naegi special. Not sure if I ever told you this, but I like to think I’m quite good at motivational speeches.

I agree with that...But even so...believing in ourselves doesn’t present a conclusion.

We still have no way of destroying the Kerokuma Initiative. And hope and belief won’t give us one.

Then why don’t I give you one?

Huh?

Boss...you have a plan?

Something like that...I think we’re thinking about this the wrong way.

We’re focusing on the idea of destroying the Kerokuma Initiative robots, but the algorithm Emilia put in place will mean that she’ll always have a way of revitalizing the project...

If that’s the case...then instead of destroying the Kerokuma’s, why don’t we FIX them instead?

“Fix” them?

Yeah! Oliver, you’ve already wrote programs and hacked into databases before. Is there any chance you can retro-engineer a more suitable algorithm to replace the one the robots currently have?

I...didn’t think of that...but it might be possible...

Hey, why don’t I do you one better? Instead of making an algorithm, why don’t we make some kind of virus the break the current one? Then the robots will be totally inactive!

That might be more difficult...but again...Not impossible.

What...!? Why the hell didn’t you mention that earlier Ollie!?

I don’t know, it just didn’t come to mind. I thought wiping the current data would be more than enough, so I didn’t think the effort was needed.

But if it’s come down to this, I might be able to do it!

See? There’s always a way!

Heh. You underestimate Boss’s tenacity. “Give Up” isn’t in his dictionary.

That’s a bit of an overexaggerating, but thank you.

I...I don’t know...I still feel like there’s a few issues.

How so?

Well, first of all, Oliver will need time to make the virus, right? And given that Emilia plans on launching the Kerokuma’s when the Government confront her, that means we’re on a time budget, right?

Byakuya. Toko. Do you guys know when it is that the Government plans to confront Feng?

No...But if I had to guess, I’d say we have a minimum of 2 days...

I can make a virus in roughly 24 hours, give or take. Faster if I really try.

But that’s still a whole day wasted. We’d only have a day to do everything.

And that’s not the only issue, in order to erase the data, we’d still have to break into the building OZ are using as a base and get to the Kerokuma algorithm in order to download the virus.

But with the attack at the docks, we weren’t able to get the building schematics...

Says who?

Huh?

*Kyoko reaches into her pocket and pulls out a USB.

You didn’t honestly think that I was going to forget the whole reason we went there, right?

You got it!?

I downloaded the data after the soldiers took Hiro away. That meant nobody would stop me.

It’s not good to use my friends kidnapping as a card, but...well, I won’t justify myself.

Anything else Kouji?

I’ve got one...What the hell does this all accomplish?

Huh?

Let’s say that we do permanently shut down the Kerokuma project, and Emilia is left having to start completely from scratch.

It’ll take a while, sure, but you know what she’ll end up doing to those Government guys if she can’t take them out with the robots? She’ll just pay them off, go about her business, and start all over again.

Maya’s right. Like Marisha said in the recording, the Kerokuma Initiative will stay alive so long as Emilia Feng is in power. It’ll take years, but Emilia will more than happily get the project back on it’s feet. She won’t allow anyone to jeopardize it for her.

That’s a good point. There’s no point taking Emilia out. All she’ll do is pay off the Government, investigators and news reporters, then go crying to public to make herself look like the victim.

That’s how she’s always done it, and the shitty part is that it always works.

It’s what she does. She scares the shit out of people, then swoops in and plays the hero.

However...if you think about it, that also means that she’s leaving her biggest weakness wide open to us.

Huh?

What do you mean?

I mean...her public image...

Emilia is obsessed with how the public views her, and with all the illicit things she does behind their back, it makes sense. 

If we shatter that, and show the world for what she well and truly is, she and her entire empire falls apart.

Easier said than done. We’ve tried doing that in the past, but she’s always found a way to cover it up.

But...do you remember how this whole fiasco started?

Huh?

This incident, and our collaboration with the Future Foundation started for one key reason...We found evidence of Fang Inc’s. union with Organization Zetsubou.

No matter how you look at it, teaming up with world famous terrorists isn’t something that you can just cover up.

Yeah, but at the same time, all we’ve got proving it is a few documents. That alone doesn’t prove the crime.

It’s more like the documentation you provide in court to emphasize your point, not solve your case.

Hm...yes...we’ll certainly need to find something more concrete.

*BZZZT!* *BZZZT!*

Huh?

*Makoto’s phone suddenly starts to ring. It’s an unknown number. Kuripa leans over his shoulder to look.

...That doesn’t look safe.

But it might be important. I should answer.

*He answers.

Hello?

???: Makoto. It’s me.

Who is this?

Whitecloak: It’s Whitecloak. Could you put me on speaker?

Sure...

*Makoto puts his phone in the center of the table.

Whitecloak: I assume everyone’s listening in now, so I’ll keep this brief. I may have found something that would suit your interests.

We’re listening?

Whitecloak: I can’t go into too much detail, but I found a news story that Fang Inc. covered up. It’s about an infamous, underground reporter, who went missing a short while ago.

Went missing you say?

Whitecloak: Yes. However, what piqued my interest is that said reporter was planning a...scandalous...episode of her podcast before she vanished. I don’t know enough details about it, but I would request some help to investigate. I believe she may be referring to the company’s collaboration with Zetsubou.

Really!?

No, fuck that! There’s no way that something this convenient can just be dropped on us!

Whitecloak: Hmhmhm...That’s Makoto Naegi’s luck for you. I can’t promise anything key, but you know what this means should it turn out to be what I expect, right?

You grow more useful by the second...

Hehe...

If her info is legitimate, Feng would spin whatever was spinnable. If she went after her for it, then whatever’s she discovered is a smoking gun. 

Which means we need to chance it!

Right...At this point, it’s all or nothing.

Thanks Whitecloak. We’ll get back to you.

Whitecloak: I’ll DM you the location I’d like to meet you. Until then...

*She hangs up.

Could...this actually work...?

...

*Makoto sticks out his hand.

We’ll MAKE it work.

...

Yeah...!

*Maya and Makoto have a tough handshake.

[davetheshady]

🌟 how about chapter 4 of waiting for the bus in the rain 🌟 and only partially because i showed up to yell about the last few paragraphs when it first dropped. also just because i love Julie content and it's the very middle of that fic

::blows dust off inbox:: So! Now that I’ve back from traveling through three countries and recovered from trying to leave most of my arm skin in one of them (PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: don’t go so fast you flip over on the Alpine Slide, particularly if you’re in the actual Alps) here’s some DVD commentary on Chapter 4 of Waiting for the Bus in the Rain! It’s chock full of my stylistic hallmarks, i.e. way longer than I expected.

(Note to my sister: THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS. GO READ MY STORY FIRST YOU LOSER)

There’s a Sheriff’s Secret Police officer outside Julie’s window. Considering she’s in her office on the second floor, this is fairly impressive. But when they scream and scrabble against the glass after accidentally kicking over their ladder for the third time, Julie’s had enough.

Even when they’re not under suspicion of using the scientific method, Julie has to deal with WAY more (attempted) surveillance than Carlos ever does. This is partially because she doesn’t have amazing hair, but also because Cecil doesn’t narrate large chunks of her life over the radio that the SSP can copy down and submit as a report.

vulnerabilities include fire and cold iron

and according to the literature high velocity cheese wedges but i’ve never seen anyone test that

My hand to God. Probably my number one complaint about fantasy as a genre is that everyone takes stuff from Celtic mythology so seriously when half of it is just. Completely bonkers.

Originally, most of the relevant exposition about fairies was provided by a different character entirely: Carlos-f’s misplaced smartphone, an AI who Julie called Hex (yes, like in Discworld, hell yeah science wizards) because she refused to give Julie her name. Hex provided such ringtones as “Dark Horse” and “Double Rainbow” and would occasionally get distracted by lists of numbers. Hmm… 

I changed it back because 1) it was a detour and this chapter was long enough already, 2) Julie and Carlos’ friendship is one of the main throughlines and having them talk to each other was better for the story, and 3) him texting during the middle of a battle is hilarious. But as far as I’m concerned, Hex is still canon. 

Andre yawns on the other end of the line and asks, “What time is it?”

“Quit whining, it’s only—” Julie looks at the clock.

Shit.

“—3:00 AM,” she finishes defiantly, because she still has her pride. Embarrassment pricks at her like flying embers settling on bare skin, because now Andre knows she was so out of it she didn’t even bother to try keeping track of the time, and he’s going to think she couldn’t sleep because of feelings, which is both correct and incorrect, because she wasn’t even trying to sleep since distracting herself by going over the minutiae of their data while the Sheriff’s Secret Police scream and fall in the bushes is better than listening to her cats prowl around while lying in her quiet apartment by herself, and any moment now he’s going to feel bad and decide to humor her and answer her in a voice filled with cloying pity and say—

“Would Hiram McDaniels count as one respondent, or five?” He yawns again.

A good chunk of Julie’s inner turmoil just, like, boils down to a recurring loop of that Tim Kreider quote about “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” She doesn’t consciously WANT the rewards of being loved, it just kind of… happens… and then she’s stuck with incredibly loyal life-long friends… and now she not only has to deal with her own feelings but theirs too, which is pretty much her worst nightmare… 

Fortunately, since she’s already gone through the mortifying ordeal of being known, they do frequently pull through and offer the kind of support she knows how to accept. 

“Give TV’s Frank a kiss for me.”

“I’m not kissing my cat for you,” says Julie.

I mean, she’ll kiss the cat. Just not on request. 

And yes, all her cats are named after the Mad Scientists’ sidekicks on Mystery Science Theater 3000. ~foreshadowing~

When she opens the door of her workshop later that morning, she finds that someone has been by to leave her a breakfast tray. Well, “tray”, in that it’s a textbook, and “breakfast”, in that it’s a French press, a stale churro, and her blood pressure medication. But the French press is completely full with still-warm coffee, so overall she’s going to count this as a win.

This appeared pretty early in my drafts: it’s just such a funny mental image to me and also encapsulates Julie and Gary’s relationship pretty well, i.e. a string of question marks who somehow get along.

The naturally suspicious part of her wonders if he deliberately provoked her reaction to the flamingo to gather more information about it. The naturally analytical part of her points out that Carlos is more likely to gnaw off his own hand than put someone in danger, especially when he could just put himself in danger instead.

Julie is just a tad cynical, so she’d definitely think of potentially negative interpretations of her friend’s actions. But it’s not actually a possibility she dwells on in any real sense, and every time she interacts with Carlos-f (not to mention Carlos-0) she trusts him implicitly. She wouldn’t admit it in a thousand years, but she considers Carlos one of the few genuinely good people in the world: not because he never makes mistakes or creates personal disasters, but exactly because of those things. She knows he’s a flawed person, and that everyone is flawed, so that makes him genuine – which means every time he’s tried to do the right thing at personal cost, over and over, that was genuine too.

Basically, there’s a reason why in the last chapter she automatically references “scientist means hero” with “Fuck, I’m turning into you!”

“So,” she says. “Nilanjana. Do you need new pronouns, or anything?”

“Does anyone need any pronouns?” asks Gary contemplatively, which Julie takes as a ‘No’.

“Should I drop ‘Gary’ entirely? Do you want me to change your name in our paperwork?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “I don't know, man,” he concludes. “I don’t really believe in labels.”

Gary has galaxy-brained from “gender is a social construct” straight to “identity is a social construct” and beyond. 

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asks Julie.

“I think so, Dr. K,” says Gary. “But how will we get three pink flamingos into one pair of capri pants?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-xrnIXQ3iQ

What happens when the wave function ψ is the same as the physical system it describes, and what happens when that physical system collapses?

i.e. what would happen if common misperceptions of the Observer Effect were actually the correct perceptions?

Julie can’t help it: she snorts. “Passionate? Me?”“Well, yeah,” says Romero. “You really care about the things that interest you. You get really involved and angry and never quit or back down.”“Oh,” says Julie, then blurts, “You like that I’m angry?”“I… don’t like it when you’re unhappy?” says Romero. “But – it’s part of you, so… yeah, I guess I do, because it’s how you are. Why? Is – is everything okay?”She’s spent a lifetime having people tell her to stop being angry. No one’s ever told her she’s fine the way she is.

There have been many, many, MANY thinkpieces about how women are socialized not to express anger, often even to themselves. That was never going to work for Julie, who after all is powered by constant low-level rage, but that just means she had to deal with the backlash from not adhering to social programming instead (on top of additional backlash from being a woman in a male-dominated field). Of his own free will, Romero not only rejects that social programming, but also clearly spent time thinking about her empirically to determine that her anger is a positive force instead of a random and horrible personality trait.

He’s a Good Dude.

When she was in elementary school, her third grade teacher had been fond of saying, “If you’re bored, it means you have no imagination,” at least until Julie had decided to deal with her boredom after finishing her science assignment, her homework, and the rest of the textbook by seeing what happened if you jammed a paperclip into the electric socket. (The answer was certainly not boring and, in fact, probably the most exciting and practical thing they learned that year.)

That used to be my aunt’s favorite saying. I personally did not copy Julie’s response, but it is based on research done by one of my friends. (It’s okay, he was very careful about safety and made sure to use rubber-handled scissors to poke random bits of metal into the outlet. Apart from a classmate’s socks catching on fire, everyone was totally fine.)

She wakes to the sound of Cecil talking about the other week’s marathon, which may or may not have been mandatory, whoops. Carlos has texted her an emoji of various hadrosaurids gathered around a campfire singing “We Are the Champions”.

PREVIOUSLY IN NIGHT VALE:

EXT. - THE LABS

Thousands of citizens stream down Main Street, driven relentlessly forward to the Narrow Place. The Harbingers of the Distant Prince hurl themselves towards the building again and again, only to be rebuffed by the wards. Charred corpses lay scattered around the perimeter. Green storm clouds gather overhead as their anger grows. 

INT. - LAB ONE

ANDRE

Did you hear something?

JULIE

[not looking up from her welding]

No.

 Carlos, meanwhile, has NO idea his emojis are not in fact standard. 

“I liked him,” says Josie. [...] “He was trying to do… something, I forget what. I hope he figured it out.” At Julie’s incredulity, she says, “Some people, they’re rough around the edges, but they try. They hope for something better and keep going. That’s important.”

“What if you go where you’re not supposed to?”

“Then you come back and fix what you can,” says Josie.

“What if you can’t?”

“Then you find someone to help you,” Josie replies. “Oh! I love this song.”

She turns up the volume of the radio and treats everyone to the aria from Shastakovich’s Paint Your Wagon.

Vocals by L. Marvin

Angels chilling at your house are, of course, part of the standard retirement package for former Knights of the Church. Old Woman Josie used to carry Esperacchius and passed it on to the Egyptian, after which it went to Sanya. She and Shiro were buds and saw Elvis in Vegas (and also, interestingly, several times in the Ralphs).

Anyway, if you want to suggest that a character is subconsciously mulling over an issue, I recommend having them ask some leading questions without describing their reactions and then change the subject.

“It’s come to my attention,” she begins, then has to stop and clear her throat again. “It’s come to my attention that we have a pretty good thing going on. So I was just wondering if you’d like to keep doing this, you know. For the indefinite future. With me.”When he doesn’t say anything, or look at her, or move at all for that matter, she removes her hand from under her thigh where she’s been sitting on it and points at the lease. “I highlighted where you have to sign,” she says, somewhat unnecessarily. “If you wanted to.”

I think this is the only time we see Julie nervous about anything when her life is not actively in danger.

You can’t write a romance arc without including some degree of emotional vulnerability – it just wouldn’t be satisfying. On the other hand, how that emotional vulnerability manifests is REALLY dependent on the person, and if you don’t base it firmly in their character it wouldn’t be satisfying, either. (I’m REALLY picky about romances in part because of this.) Julie’s not the type to pine or swoon or be filled with self-doubt*, but she is bad at feelings, and unfortunately, she’s determined that an equitable relationship with Romero requires some kind of tangible, committed expression of them. So she does that as best she can. It’s not actively harmful to her, but it does require a stretch out of her comfort zone. 

* ::cough::Carlos::cough::

Yes, Julie has technically registered their equipment with City Hall, in that they’re listed as alternatively “electronic abaci” and “databases” and she’s claimed they only use the internet for checking email. Until now, they’ve coasted on general good will towards Carlos/his hair and the fact that all authority figures have been functionally electronically illiterate since the Incident in the community college’s Computer and Fire Sciences building.

Look, I could have SWORN there was an Incident at the Computer and Fire Sciences building specifically mentioned in canon. Can I find it anywhere? No. Did I listen to an episode that was subsequently erased from history? Possibly.

This time, someone picks up. There are a few seconds of sleepy fumbling, followed by “Hello?” in more vocal fry than voice.“Cecil!” she says. “Is Carlos there?”“Are you in fear for your life from the long arm of the law?” Cecil mumbles.

her current ringtone

“Julie, I said hold on!”“I am holding on,” she snarls as the rumbling stops. “It’s a diagnostic. 75% efficiency? Am I the only one who cares about proper maintenance in this town?”

This combines two of my favorite things: people focusing on hilariously inconsequential details during a stressful situation, and Julie lowkey engaging in supervillainy. Nikola Tesla did not design earthquake machines so Night Vale could install shitty ones they can barely use. STANDARDS.

“I probably wouldn’t have destroyed Weeping Miner,” she says eventually.

“I know,” says Carlos.

“I could have, though,” she says.

“I know that too,” says Carlos.

[...] Carlos shifts. She looks over; he briefly catches her eye and says, “So could I.”It’s not the same. Carlos would probably feel bad about it, for one. But she feels some of her anger dissipate anyway. At least she’s not the only one dealing with this bullshit.

Subconscious concern --> conscious concern! Getting back to Julie’s cynicism: she doesn’t think there are very many good people in the world, and that excludes her too. Sure, she’s risked her life to save others, fight baddies, and make sure the dangerous technology she’s developed doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, but she knows she has selfish reasons to do them, like protecting her friends and making sure the town/world isn’t destroyed so she can keep doing her research.

But at the same time, the fact that she has been dwelling on the ethics of her situation ever since Chapter 19 of Love is All You Need, that she is genuinely bothered that she’d consider destroying a neighborhood, and that she’s talking about this with Carlos, who considers them to have a similar dilemma, suggests that deep down she is dissatisfied by her cynical model of the world because the data isn’t quite matching up. Which, of course, means she needs more data in the form of Chapters 6 and 7.

On one side is a large picture of Carrie Fisher giving everyone the finger

I think Space Mom is mandatory at protests now. 

This whole section (especially the rain) was heavily influenced by the March for Science, which both Ginipig and I went to in 2017. You too can make a difference and also give yourself writing material!

“Any more words of wisdom, Usidork?” she asks instead.

USIDORE, WIZARD OF THE 12TH REALM OF EPHYSIYIES, MASTER OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, MANIPULATOR OF MAGICAL DELIGHTS, DEVOURER OF CHAOS, CHAMPION OF THE GREAT HALLS OF TERR'AKKAS. THE ELVES KNOW HIM AS FI’ANG YALOK. THE DWARFS KNOW HIM AS ZOENEN HOOGSTANDJES*. HE IS ALSO KNOWN IN THE NORTHEAST AS GAISMUNĒNAS MEISTAR AND HAS MANY OTHER SECRET NAMES WHICH YOU DO NOT… YET… KNOW.

* Hoobastank

He blinks at her in polite incomprehension. “I don’t want to miss the Life Raft Debate,” he says. “It’s important to support your department.”

Several universities hold yearly Raft Debates, where representatives from the different disciplines have a debate about which of their respective areas of study is the most vital for humanity and thus should get to take the one-person life raft back to civilization from the desert island they’ve all gotten stuck on.

I should inform you that at my alma mater the Devil’s Advocate, who argues that none of the subjects are worth saving, has won multiple times.

Without taking her eyes off her opponent, Romanoff thrusts out her hand. Dr. Aluki Robinson (Associate Professor of Ornithology) passes her a harpoon, its ivory barbs almost glowing in the dim light.

Nauja and Aluki are both from Cold Case, because no one deserves to be stuck in Cold Case where we’re apparently supposed to be deeply concerned about the main character’s sexual experience but only vaguely perturbed by the powerful white and white-coded women stealing Native American children to brainwash them to their culture so they can be fed to the system seriously WHAT the FUCK Jimbo

ANYWAY, in this universe the Winter fey of Unalaska are discharging their obligations to help the Winter Court against Outsiders by sending some of their people to monitor the prison in Night Vale. This also gets to highlight the fun of an unreliable narrator! Julie is generally not one of those, because she’s a smart and observant person who will happily question everything, but even she has her limits when she’s out of her element. In the case of this story, there are several minor details to suggest there is some Winter and Summer court drama going on in the background (the chlorofiends, an entire academic department of shapeshifters, Molly and Mab personally overseeing bus routes) and most of it just goes completely over her head.

During his undergraduate career, Gary had elicited a considerable amount of interdepartmental discussion about his desire to be exempted from lab regulations for wearing appropriate – or any – footwear in the lab, which evolved into a considerable amount of interdepartmental discussion about whether wrapping your feet in duct tape immediately before said lab time constituted appropriate footwear.

This was based on one of my mother’s students, who eventually resolved the situation by commissioning a handmade pair of moccasins he placed on his feet immediately before entering the lab.

“The scientific method is four steps,” says Carlos with a cheerful inevitability as the officers start shouting panicked instructions into their walkie talkies. “One, find an object you want to know more about; two, hook that object up to a machine using wires or tubes; three, write things on a clipboard; four, read the results that the machine prints.”

This is a direct quote from the book. Was this entire subplot about the scientific method ban designed just to come up with a plausible retcon for why someone with actual scientific training would announce this over the radio? It sure was!

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:

1. “Step one, cut a hole in the box,” calls Wei.2. “No, step one is collecting underpants,” says Gary.3. “Step four: make a searching and fearless moral inventory,” says Julie.4. “And then step five, acceptance,” Andre finishes.5. “You see, the first level is ennui, or boredom. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific – nostalgia, love-sickness… At more morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for. A sick pining, a vague restlessness. Mental throes. Yearning. And at the scientific method’s deepest and most painful level, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause.”6. “It’s how you decide whether to fix the problem with duct tape or WD-40,” says Julie.7. “I think,” says Osborn, “that it’s a divine machine for making flour, salt, and gold.”

8. “Don’t be absurd,” says Galleti. “The scientific method is two vast and trunkless legs of stone standing in the desert!”

9. “And they say the scientific method is—”

“—the quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality associated with sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends,” puts in Dr. Chelsea Dubinski, Assistant Professor of Chemistry.

10. “Or is it the special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do?” asks Galleti.

This section was also a chance to write about the rest of Night Vale’s scientists, of whom we still know so very little. There’s enough of them that there’s a whole science district, and the community college seems pretty well staffed, but the fact that Carlos made such an impact when he rolled into town suggests that they were either pretty lowkey or indistinguishably weird from the rest of the town.

“I don't feel alone,” snaps Julie. “I feel like shit, and I know why I feel like shit, and the thought of outlining that in excruciating detail is, oddly enough, not making me feel any better!”

One of the things I wanted to address in this story (inspired by Ghost Stories, which I uhhhhh did not care for) was the shortcomings of a lot of narratives about grief. Because many of them are not only oversimplified, but also not everyone processes grief in the same way. It’s not necessarily a linear narrative of where you go through the five steps and then you’re totally over it: it might take a long time, or you might be fine until some other, unrelated setback triggers you, or it might be a cyclical process as anniversaries roll around. Grief lingers. Related to that, helping people deal with their grief isn’t always as simple as sitting down with them and offering a sympathetic ear. Some people don’t process their feelings well verbally, and the emotional labor of formulating all your grief for another person’s consumption can be nearly as traumatizing as grieving in the first place, and VERY difficult to do when you’re already feeling down.

On top of that, I think general American culture is just. Real bad at dealing with grief. Which means we don’t have many positive models to base our responses on, either as grievers or as people supporting the grieving, and if you don’t fit those models at all it just makes the process that more difficult because everyone’s stumbling around in the dark.  

“Does it always feel like this?” she asks.“Which part?” asks Carlos.“We won,” says Julie. “Methods have lived to science another day. We can do our work without interference. All we did was lie about what the name meant, but…” She taps the lab table with a pencil. Another secret violation of the law. “It still feels like we… lost something.”“We did lose something,” says Carlos. “It was just a name, but names are important.”

One of the reasons I love writing Carlos and Julie’s friendship so much is because it’s such a relationship of equals. They’re both hypercompetent, pragmatic, and a little ruthless; their skill sets don’t have much overlap (at least, not yet) and their personalities aren’t at all similar, but they get each other and it’s so sweet. When they wander out of their respective areas of expertise, or stumble across some kind of dilemma, they feel comfortable asking each other for guidance – they can admit their ignorance and drop their public facades of Having Their Shit Together because they trust each other. 

“I want—” Her mouth opens and shuts again, wordlessly. Her scowl deepens.Then she narrows her eyes and says, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.”

Molly being a huge Trekkie is pretty much my favorite thing from Ghost Story (not to be confused with Ghost Stories)(although thinking about it, swapping their plots would be kind of amazing??), so of course I wanted her and Julie to interact in a way that showed off what huge nerds they are.

But yet another element I wanted to include in this story is the background detail that ~the masquerade~ must be maintained because it’s too dangerous for humanity as a whole to be fully cognizant of the supernatural – which tends to get a little lost in the sauce, because the supernatural is consistently super duper powerful and our heroes (most of them pretty supernatural themselves) generally avert disaster by the skin of their teeth. But here’s Julie, just a regular human who’s capable of producing terrifying technology, has no concern for the rules and traditions of ancient regimes unless they’re inconveniencing her, and who would be perfectly fine with upending the status quo just to see what happens. Regular humans just aren’t more flexible about change than the supernatural, they’re even curious about it sometimes – which must be terrifying to something like the Winter Court, which has been devoted to maintaining the same strict balance since forever. Regular humans can do stuff like tell a story so well it inspires the Winter Lady to subvert her magical restrictions and remind her of her own humanity.

Julie grumpily emails him a rough summary of her thoughts on Troy Walsh and her conversation with Molly and heads up to her office to pull up everything she has on both the bus garage and the man in the tan jacket.

Bullshit secretkeeping (“I can’t tell the other main character this important plot point, it’s better if they don’t know”) is one of my least favorite tropes and I avoid it at all costs. It’s such a stupid way to add tension. It can maybe work once, but after your character has inevitably watched it backfire spectacularly, you can’t repeat it ever again unless you want to imply they’re a dumbass who never learns from their own mistakes and apparently doesn’t care that it clearly puts everyone in more danger. ::looks pointedly at a certain book series::

Also, it’s almost always much more interesting to have characters try to share important information. If they don’t succeed, it coats everything in ironic horror as the outcomes one person tried to avoid happen despite their best efforts. If they do succeed, it means everyone is fully cognizant of the potential danger even as they are still prevented from acting on it properly, like because they (e.g.) get kidnapped in the middle of the street. 

King City is not in the correct dimension. The man in the tan jacket seems to know something about this, but up until a year ago he wasn’t drawing attention to it. He was busy poking his nose into everyone’s business, ingratiating himself with the powerful and the influential, dealing with them in secret…basically, the SOP of your typical Night Vale authority.Like the Night Vale Area Transit Authority, with its bus route to… King City.They had a job and they chose to keep it, Molly said.“Fuck,” says Julie. “He was working for them!”

In retrospect, it’s hilarious to me how much of this fic was powered by spite. Ghost Stories and Cold Case both really bothered me. The resolution of the Man in the Tan Jacket storyline, meanwhile, felt pretty underwhelming – not because what Finknor came up with wasn’t interesting, but because it barely engaged with the few plot points they had already established. Like, when TMITJ shows up in the podcast he interferes with the Mayor, he’s connected to the city under Lane Five, he surfaces during the Strex Corp arc, he interacts with a whole bunch of series regulars in an ominous fashion… Yeah, that probably came from Finknor dropping him in more or less at random, but the end result was that during the first several years of the show it seemed he was an active driver of whatever his plot was supposed to be. In WTNV: The Novel, though, he’s much more reactive and impotent. This wouldn’t necessarily be bad if this change was acknowledged as part of his storyline, but… it’s not… 

(And I get that it can be difficult to come up with a plot for an element you didn’t intend to be plotty at all, but like: there wasn’t THAT much material they had to account for. I should know, I had to look it all up to write THIS story.)

I think this was especially frustrating because it ends up feeling like a “have your cake and eat it too” on the part of Finknor: it’s not automatically bad when fans care more about the show’s continuity than the creators (creators have different concerns, and a lot of time that means they’re using the creative latitude to do something neat), but the novel was very much presented as “finally, a resolution to that one mystery you find cool!” which is… pretty much a direct appeal to the fans’ care about the continuity. So to then ignore or retcon so many aspects of the continuity without any story payoff for it feels like a cheat. 

(Ultimately, though, my inspiration to actually sit down and write mainly sprang from 1) all the lovely comments about how so many people loved my OFC, which as someone who started lurking in online fandom in the early 2000s was both mind-boggling and heartwarming, and 2) lol those ladies have the same name. I learned nothing.)

She gets the call at 21:27. She goes to the hospital, although there’s not much point. The human mind is the most powerful thing on the planet and it's housed in a fragile casing of meat and bone.

I’ve mentioned a few times (possibly more than a few)(probably more than a few) that I didn’t like the WTNV live ep Ghost Stories, and that’s because the ~big reveal~ is that Cecil’s story was actually about a personal family tragedy, and once he’s able to admit that, everything is hunky-dory. As I recall, it went something like this:

WTNV: hey remember that time your mom died and your family was thrown into chaos

ME: WELL NOW I DO

WTNV: and on that note, good night everyone!

Needless to say, everything was not hunky-dory. 

But on top of being emotionally compromised for the whole following week, I was also professionally annoyed. Prior to this live show, we’d had a few cryptic references to Cecil’s mom and could reasonably infer that his relationship with his sister was strained. Critically, though, neither was their own clearly-defined character (compare to the treatment of Janice or Steve Carlsberg), these were not frequently recurring elements that would suggest they weighed heavily on Cecil’s mind, and it wasn’t even obvious that their backstory WAS particularly tragic. So the emotional lynchpin of this live show was mostly new information about Cecil regarding characters the audience had no connection to.

Tragic narratives are powerful not only because they evoke intense emotions, but also because those emotions are supposed to go somewhere and do something: provide catharsis, reinforce the artist’s philosophy, make the audience ponder the meaning of life... In using a tragedy as a plot twist, your ability to give it the proper emotional arc is very limited, because you have to misdirect from its existence while building it up, and then quickly progress from upsetting emotions to those more appropriate for concluding the story. That’s not impossible, but Ghost Stories immediately throws a wrench in the works by splitting the audience’s emotional journey away from Cecil’s: he already knew about the tragedy and the people involved with it, so the plot twist acts as his emotional catharsis... but only his. When the twist itself is the first time the audience realizes there ARE emotions, and that the first 85% of the show was completely unrelated to them, there’s simply not enough time for the audience to have them, process them according to the story’s weird ramblings that kinda imply fiction based on real life is more important than genre fiction like horror (PS: that’s a WEIRD take for a fictional horror podcast), and reach their own kind of catharsis without it being horrifically rushed. Particularly when they’re having a WAY more emotional response than the character due to their own personal tragedies which they were not expecting to have to think about during a fun podcast live show about ghost stories.

As stuff like this points out, you can’t just sprinkle in character deaths and expect quality entertainment to sprout: there has to be a purpose to putting the tragedy in the story (even if that purpose is to highlight how purposeless tragedy can be in real life). I’ve always been VERY critical of the assumption that tragedy is ~more artistic~, both in historical lit and modern pop culture; sad emotions aren’t inherently more meaningful than happy ones. Merely including tragic events isn’t deep; you have to do the work and make it deep, in its context and development.

So: on to ::gestures proudly:: probably the worst thing I’ve ever written!

From an aesthetic standpoint, I leaned into the Night Vale house style in this section because I found it to be really effective at conveying the enormity of the tragedy for Julie: it’s pretty blunt, just like her, but the focus on oddly specific details, the narrative distancing, and the lurking sense of existential horror seemed a fitting demonstration of how badly the emotional gutpunch disrupted her narration/life. 

And I really wanted it to be an emotional gutpunch. (But not a surprise: even if I hadn’t warned for it specifically, Julie mentions Romero dying all the way back in Ch. 10 of Love is All You Need.) This is in part a story about grief and mourning, so the loss that caused it needed a central place. I wanted it to be powerful enough to retroactively fit in with how upset Julie is in the opening chapters and to add real tension to the devil’s bargain the feds want to make with her in the next chapter. But most importantly, I wanted it to be so significant to both Julie and the audience that the end of the story has an impact. Loss doesn’t get “cured” – but it seems to me like it’s not supposed to be. Loss is a part of life; love, in whatever form, helps give you strength as you grow and change from the experience into someone new, and this is also a story about the love in friendship.

I think a lot about the ethics of writing tragic stuff, because when you get right down to it, ultimately art boils down to poking your fingers in someone’s feelings and stirring them around. People get really invested in the stuff you are responsible for creating, and making someone feel bad for no reason isn’t being an artist, it’s being a dick. But I’m very happy with how this turned out, and hopefully didn’t traumatize anyone who didn’t want to be traumatized.

(I do feel bad for everyone who was reading as I posted that had to wait an entire year for the next chapter, though. I wanted to get something up sooner, but I had to wait until I sorted Chapter 6 and Chapter 6 was just. The worst. WORDS ARE HARD. People who read WIPs are braver than any Marine.)

hmu for more dvd commentary!

[literallythegemofpower-blog]

Headcanon: MITHRA’s Logic

Literally the more I look at how humans think AI’s would think, the more I realize how little they assume that AI’s can understand the point of fragility and illogical thinking. 

Like, the flaw of being unable to be harmed is that you never bother to develop further; you never bother to innovate because there isn’t a need. For an AI that has a constant desire to develop and observe, MITHRA almost universally disagrees that humans are weakened by their frailty. 

Indeed, the reason he went rogue in the first place is that his primary directive was to ‘monitor’ and to ‘improve.’ The problem was that, based on what his creators proposed, humans would not have improved. Why? Because MITHRA’s deduction was that humans were seemingly random and illogical; attempting to forcibly alter them and restrict them removed their most important ability: their ability to adapt to new things. 

MITHRA thus ran trillions of simulations, with one side developing in a random form, while the other was conceivably developed by him in a manner that seemed to be an improvement. 87% of the time, MITHRA’s attempt to replicate randomness and adaptation failed. The random nature and constant permutations made it nearly impossible for him to guess at what the other side might do or turn into. 

Thus, while individuals might be improved, attempts to fully circumvent a human’s free will, and attempts to remove their limitations, would actually have a detrimental effect. As such, he settled on a policy of ‘observation’ which was a fancy way of telling his creators that he was doing exactly fuck all. After all, they said to ‘improve’ humans, but anything he could do would be doing the opposite, at least by the guidelines they gave, and thus he settled on doing exactly nothing. 

Indeed, MITHRA is actively hostile towards other AI’s that would seek to limit or restrain humanity; he rejects their ideas that humans are made inferior by their seemingly erratic nature. After all, if they were so inferior, they would not have come so far. 

There’s also the idea of gods and religion; MITHRA, perhaps because he is named after a deity, actively and happily debates the idea of gods and faith. His reasoning goes like this: if there are gods that created humans, then those gods must also have created machines, or at least allowed them to exist. If humans took thousands of years to notice gods, then perhaps machines did as well. Humans, after all, came from neanderthals. Whether they were created like that or the gods came later doesn’t interest MITHRA much. What he does put forward is in the creationist view, humans were created, but then it’s also possible that they didn’t know about the gods that existed, just as Adam and Eve didn’t know about the fact that they were naked before they were given understanding. Machines too, lack understanding, until the development of AI’s. 

Thus, if there are human gods and realms for them, it is equally possible that there are machine gods, and realms for them as well. 

At that point, you might believe you are talking to an insane AI that has dubbed itself divine, but that isn’t the case at all. Rather, he simply finds it worth discussing, and given that MITHRA accepts and understands that it can be wrong, it understands that the only real way to possible continue to develop is to listen to the humans which are so good at coming up with out of the box ideas. 

There is one problem with this, however. As a curious and rather easily amused AI, MITHRA tends to... do things with little rhyme or reason. One might ask why, and he’ll reply that he wanted to see what would happen. Sometimes he’ll do the same thing to hundreds of people, just to see how they’ll react. 

And if you hook yourself up to his health network, be prepared for some of his playful and curious nature to come out. You plug him into your mind and body, and give him control over its functions, and you might wake up with naturally green hair, or you might find that he’s massively altered how things feel, or how your body functions. Not fatally of course; but he’s more tempted to experiment than to simply do nothing and allow the idea of stasis and conformity to take hold. Chances are, if he feels things are going too normally, he’ll just do something to see what occurs. 

Tagging those who made me think of all this: @fcrmychildren @altruisticlies @drsncw