#i'll get scenes with all of them eventually

[tremendouscreationperson]

This covers like 6-8 months so if it's too quick it's cuz it's snippets

Also be careful cuz there's a scene where the reader almost gets assaulted

The Ghoul's eyes scanned the room he had been placed in. Finally after a long journey he was rid of the thorn in his side. He was able to collect his bounty, he would be the richest mother fucker he knew.

As always it started with a Vault. A Vault whose leader ventured out and met a bounty post. The postee took all the information down and was quick to inform everyone they could and then four years later the Ghoul found himself entangled with you.

You were hustling pool at a two bit bar when he glanced at you - he hadn't even registered who you were. The memory scrappy and faded in his riddled mind but as luck would have it he had forced the postee to hand the sketch over.

Your nose was slightly crooked, it had obviously been broken, and your eyes were tired but you were the same girl.

It didn't take long to introduce himself, beat you and convince you to come outside. He hadn't had this much game in a while. How did a Vault Dweller like you flirt with a fella like him?

Fast forward to him tying you up and having to be infuriatingly nice to you because the job was specific that no harm should come to you. There would be a Cap Penalty if you were damaged. Which got him thinking, how did a goddamn Vault get Caps? They must've been selling supplies.

He tried not to think too hard on it, not when you were actively trying to commit suicide.

"Please, sir." Your voice was gravelly with lack of water, you'd spat each mouthful he forced down you at him. "Don't do this. Just kill me."

The Ghoul wasn't one for niceties, he hadn't been for years but seeing you like this made him consider it. Made him want to ease your brow, have you trust him enough to drink from his bottle, prove himself to you.

"I'll do anything, be anything." Your calloused hands reached out, grazing his arm. The Ghoul tightened his grip on your reigns, your hands were far too close to the gun belt slung across his waist. "Please."

His eyes flashed between yours, there was a genuine promise behind them. You were scared. He was the cause of your fear. Usually that was a turn on. "C'mon, princess." He dragged you behind him.

The two of you wandered the wasteland, him usually hauling your sorry ass (physically over his shoulder or with the lasso), there was a stiff silence between you.

You probably felt ashamed for your offer, he probably felt stupid for not accepting it. Either way you went from place to place as he tried to find the Vault. It had been years since he got the vague information and there were hundreds of Vaults hidden.

Eventually you began to sleep around him rather than just pretend. His own sleep schedule was near non-existent these days so it was a blessing that you had started. However that begged the question: were you trying to trick him? So every night he tied you tighter and placed his metal bottle along with a metal cup he had stolen on the lasso. If you move he would hear it, some nights you tossed and turned and you woke him unintentionally.

Those nights were... odd.

Maybe it was because you reminded him of a time long lost - your classic beauty made for the silver screen - or maybe he was just in need of a good fuck. But he felt strangely uneasy when you twitched and whimpered as dreams haunted your mind.

Entering the next town had been a mistake. Of course it had, he had known it as soon as he saw the first look you received.

The townsfolk were freakish looking people - milky eyes and scraggly hair - and they salivated at the sight of you.

"Shit!" He peeled the bag from his side, broken glass embedded into his leathery skin.

The Ghoul barely got the two of you out of there alive, breaking the last of his RadAway. A fact he only realised as you two nestled into an abandoned home. One with walls and everything!

You watched him toss the bag to the side and pluck at the shards. He swore again kicked at the sand beneath his feet.

"How fucked are we?" Your voice pulled him from his anger. You had smoothed the mess of your hair and placed your jacket on the ground as a pillow, staring up at him on bent knees.

The Ghoul didn't want to tell you. You could use this as leverage. If he divulged and you betrayed him he wouldn't forgive himself. This was rule 101. Don't trust the bounty! "We'll make a detour. We're fine."

You scrunched your face but didn't answer back. He had saved you today and yeah it was for the reward on your head but you did appreciate not being murdered or raped or some other horrid third option.

He was not his best the next few days. You were scavenging for RadAway in the few houses you passed but came up empty and he was coughing an awful lot.

"Look, we need to go back." You proposed the idea, with less confidence than you spoke it.

The Ghoul grunted.

"There wa-" He had stooped to your level, his forehead inches from yours as his eyes bore into your very soul. "Was a pharmacy in that town. I'm not trying to- if you're in pain I'll help."

He stayed there, breathing in your air, for longer than what was comfortable and straightened. "We ain't going back. We'll keep heading East." He took a step back and waited.

You weren't quite sure what he was waiting for.

"C'mon, fleshbag move it." He tugged your elbow and thrust you ahead of him.

The RadAway issue was sorted. You'd hit the jackpot. It meant killing a bunch of people but that hadn't previously bothered the two of you.

The Ghoul has lost sight of you during the fight only to be pleasantly surprised when you rocked up next to him with a case in your hand.

He was only thankful that he didn't have to chase you down.

And so once more into the breach.

Your hands were no longer bound, merely adorned in the finest lasso belt. He didn't want you to get too cocky so was a little harsher with his words every now and then.

But you eagerly divided your scavenged goods and food without hesitation. You were actually eating and drinking enough to function and he was able to relax slightly around you because you wouldn't drop dread. He didn't have to monitor your intake.

Things had changed fully from your first meeting when the other bounty was caught. You'd noticed the papers in the Ghouls jacket as you beat the thing dry. They were tattered and the pencil was so faded but they were bounty posters.

"Wha'd'ya doin'?" He scowled over your shoulder.

"Looking." You waved the posters. "It must be an interesting job."

He huffed in response but didn't take the paper from you as he yanked the coat on.

The man was short and stout but had the ego of someone tall and muscular. He endlessly flirted with you and made cruel remarks to your captor.

The Ghoul was ready to set him free - just be rid, with him free he wouldn't have to drag anyone around! The fucking poster said alive so he couldn't just kill the dickhead, if it go any worse he'd start cutting off fingers - but you were... Happy? Excited? It was an emotion he hadn't felt for a while so it was hard to recognise but you stood and took whatever the man said in order to hand him over.

"Where do we take him?" You asked at the Ghouls right. The lasso was no longer attached to you but to your new 'friend'.

"He's wanted West from here, eight days walk."

And so you did.

You walked and walked and walked.

And it was taxing.

So on the sixth night when you noticed the Ghoul's eyes drooping, and you couldn't recall the last time either of you had properly slept, you tugged the lasso out of his hands.

"Two hours." Was all you said.

He understood.

He hated that he understood.

Fuck, why did he understand?!

And why did it feel good to be understood?

He slept and you kept watch. Nothing happened. No one said anything. It was as simple as that.

The next night carried on in the same fashion. You took the lasso and bid him goodnight.

Only for the Ghoul to wake up to muffled noises.

His eyes flashed open and he couldn't see you. The Ghoul scanned the area until his tired eyes made out a vague silhouette.

He jumped into action, hand immediately grabbing a nonexistent gun. Shit, where was his- No time to think. He flung himself at the man.

There was a scuffle and the Ghoul managed to smash the butt of the stolen pistol into his head, knocking the assailant out cold.

You were laying on the sand with your hands covering your face, vest top torn and the flies of your jeans broken.

The silence was screaming. It was shouting right into his ear canal, right in front of his eyes, it was in his skin.

But he didn't dare break it.

What could he - your captor - say to make you feel better?

Finally your hands fell to your sides and you spoke to the sky. "He needed the toilet."

Cooper didn't know what to say. He really didn't.

"You were kind to me." Your voice was small. "You allowed me that luxury."

Because I can fight you.

Cooper sighed, dropping his head. He then bound the man as tight as he could, wrapping the lasso multiple times around his torso, shoulders, chest and hands before he stood, waiting.

You understood his gesture. Neither of you could sleep now anyways.

In the morning the harsh glow of the sun revealed the bruising on your face and arms.

As soon as he got the reward he dragged you into the remnants of a clothing shop and watched your face stay blank.

It had been blank all morning, all afternoon. It was eerie. You weren't ever this void. When you had fought him, you'd been passionate in your defiance. When you shared food you gave him a mock-scared expression, making him eat first - making him actually consume food. And you smiled an awful lot for a bounty. How had he only realised?

"That's nice." He attempted, pointing at an insanely faded white shirt.

"There's no point wasting your Caps." You finally brought your eyes to him, after a day of avoidance. "Let's just get to the Vault."

Cooper frowned. This wasn't you. What had happened? Had he been too late? "No, we're getting you clothes."

You didn't have the strength to roll your eyes.

"Want to tell m-"

"Nothing happened." You folded your arms. "I dunno why I'm so messed up."

"There's a bar over the road."

You shook your head. "There's no point, let's ju-" Your words violently halted when his fingers found your arm. He was delicate and you allowed the movement so he proceeded to bring you in close.

To...

To...

He pulled you into a sweet embrace and you melted into the man, tears creeping down your cheeks.

He...

He hugged you.

The Ghoul would never bring this up ever. He couldn't. Why was he hugging you?!

But he knew you needed it.

So Cooper did something batshit.

He stroked your spine.

The two of you did get that drink after you picked up some undamaged clothes.

There was a shift in the dynamic now; you stood closer to him and he hovered for you. It was nothing obscene but he noticed it.

And he was beginning to think you were gorgeous. The new clothes fit you better than their predictors. Your jeans tugging at your thighs and ass as your shirt clung to your chest but was loose by your stomach causing it to blow in the breeze. Making you reveal your sweet sweet flesh.

It was as though he was turning feral. He felt hot - hotter than usual - and needy.

He definitely needed a good fuck.

And he didn't like to admit it but you were his favourite option.

He was toying with the thoughts when you stumbled across the Vault.

It was here.

Your bounty.

You were here.

It had taken months.

Months of walking and slowly warming to each other.

But you were here.

"The code is 5829." You spoke.

He observed you. There were no outward signs of distress but he knew you better than that. You wanted to run. Wanted to hide. In fact, you were hiding your face from him.

"Let's get this over with."

Cooper didn't want to.

He really didn't.

"Let's go." He offered. "I don't need the Caps."

Your face was vulnerable. "You'd be set for life."

"No, I wou-"

"I saw my poster."

You were correct, of course. He would be set for life. He would be able to roam because he wanted to, not because he needed to. He could devote his whole being into finding Barb. The whole reason he was obsessed with bringing you back was in case this was her Vault. "I don't need the Caps."

The two of you stood on the threshold in a confused trance before you took a step back.

And that movement caused the one thing you were now trying to avoid to happen.

The door unlocked and identical men surround you.

"Y/N!" A smarmy man clapped his hands.

It had been so long, Cooper had forgotten your name - foregoing it with terms like 'princess', 'fleshbag' and 'doll' - he hadn't even considered giving you his yet it now felt too late.

He wanted you to know him.

He wanted you.

"Priestley." You gave a curt nod.

"Oh, and who's this creature?" Priestley eyed Cooper.

Cooper wanted to say a few choice words but you didn't let him. "This is the Ghoul that captured me, give him the bounty or I'm not coming."

Priestley giggled. "'not coming', you don't exactly have a choice." Two men clasped your arms and secured you. "I don't have the Caps here, they're downstairs. Feel free to unholster your weapon as you follow me. I have no use for fucking bottle Caps so I won't fight you."

Cooper was panicking.

He knew that it was best to play along.

But he hadn't thought about you actually being taken as a bounty. He hadn't known it would cause this pain.

Priestley hopped off the lift and snaked his way through the identical tunnels. The air was too still here, too pure.

You were willingly led behind the man into a lift and Cooper had to speed up to make it before the thing began it's descent.

He then snapped his fingers and you were being dragged to the right.

"Not you, I'm afraid sir." He ceased Coopers movements with a skittish palm.

This was it.

You were being taken.

"Wait!" You begged. "Please, jus-one moment!"

Priestley let an exaggerated sigh out but snapped and the men stopped.

You turned the best you could, meeting Coopers gaze. "Thank you for... I don't know. Your company? Goodbye."

The words could have easily been read as sarcastic and cruel but he knew you were sincere. You were really thanking him for his time. Thanking him for being kind when he really shouldn't have been.

And so here he found himself scanning the room he was sitting in whilst Priestley produced the Caps.

"What'll happen to her?" Coop asked, ignoring the offered treasure.

"Excuse me?" Cooper drawled. "You're going to dissect her?"

Priestley's brows rose to his hairline. "Oh, you don't know. This will be exciting to explain. We are a cloning Vault at heart, and speaking of hearts... That little ticker is meant for Brianette. I can't believe Y/N could steal Vault Tec property like that! She knew she was a stand in. Knew she was made to be the spare, we took her womb and a kidney not long befo-I don't know why she would run away. It's a glorious privilege to serve her."

"No, of course not." He gave Cooper an insulted glare. "That would imply she was dead."

The bullet left Coopers gun before his brain processed the movement. He had not registered pulling the trigger.

Where were you?

He needed to find you.

Cooper sprinted through the corridor and back towards where you parted ways but the corridors all looked the same and what was left was now right so he was getting himself all sorts of lost.

Cooper's chest heaved with dread exhaust as he ran down another corridor. He needed to find you.

Where the fuck were you?!

Cooper eventually found a set of doors which he couldn't access.

He must be getting close, right?

The Ghoul blasted the mechanics with his gun before managing the rest and the door stuttered open.

Cooper kept on desperate to find you. He needed to find you!

There were identical men guarding one door when he bounced down the corridor. Bingo.

Coop made quick work with them before he pounded at the door, shooting it relentlessly.

That door unlocked and opened a fraction, just enough for him to squeeze his body through.

And there you were.

Laying naked in a pod, water was filling it and you were chained to the bottom. This must be a decontamination chamber.

Cooper stomped up to the pod and yanked the door open before the water rose to your nose.

You coughed as the water burst, drenching him as the door broke. "Ghoul?" The word was dazed.

"I'm here. We're leaving." He promised.

[powdermelonkeg]

Zelda is short(er than Tally. And he knows it.)

[raiiny-bay]

made this & then realized i wanted to make something else instead

[wreckedhoney]

MASSIVE SPOILER for one of the endings.

it's been a while since i tried looking, but i did hear that something like this happens last year and over time started to think, "was it a fluke?" bc no one posted footage or caps of it then, and i aimed for a completionist run in my first playthrough. turns out it's real! and definitely shines a new light on a character that, for most other types of playthroughs, will not give this much emotion! EDIT: transcript now included, and some stillshots under the cut

[0:28] Marie: Henry, this is the man who kept you from doing the right thing tonight. Kill him. [0:15] Forrest: Henry, you don’t have to do this. If you’ve not killed anyone yet, there’s still time to make the right decision. [0:05] Out of shot: (Gunshots) Henderson Police! Freeze! Marie: No! Henry, get out of there!

[rosewheresheshouldntbe]

> Rose: We need to cook!

Gas mask sprite by @kalza. Hoodie base sprite by nerdferd.

[fnafawoundleftbleedingau]

It's not a lot, but I've managed to write a few more pages of AWLB part 2 after barely being able to even open the doc it's in lately. I count that as a small, but nonetheless, good, little victory.

[orcelito]

i miss akechi goro so much. maybe even enough to finally finish that ladue chapter 3

[vasattope]

~

[earlyspringtranscendence]

ik im talking a lot abt the books im reading rn (this is due to the fact that after eons of not having the time or energy i am once again reading books) but theydies i can happily announce that after 2 unsuccessful weapons and wielders books soulbrand has truly captured my enamoration once again i’m kissing keras lovingly and tenderly (the only way to kiss him)

[cuntwrap--supreme]

Leaving work earlier, I got stopped by some of the other servers, who asked if I wanted a ride to my car since I'm about a quarter mile away and they park super close since they get downtown earlier than I do. I declined, because I really like walking. But they insisted, telling me how dangerous it is to be downtown alone at nearly 11pm. And like. I hike and camp by myself all the time. I take my dog on night walks in the more dangerous part of the city I live in if she needs walked after I work. I grew up in a crack house. I'm pretty sure I'm ok to walk a couple of blocks to my car, ya know? And realistically, what's someone gonna do to me? Steal my phone? Because here's the thing: Having grown up in a sketchy house, I know how to outdo random downtown crackheads. You just go fill psycho mode on anyone who tries approaching you. Nothing says "leave me alone" like responding to someone asking you to hand over your money with biting them, or growling and jumping around, or metal screaming while facing the moon. Even if I had cash on me and someone was trying to rob me, I can get out of that in any instance where there's not a gun by simply out-crazying the other person.

[tizeline]

Some snippets into Donnie's relationship to his brothers in the Separated AU

So after having figured out that Donnie is in fact their Long Lost Brother, the Drax Trio obviously want him back, and while Donnie is initially excited to find out that he has a bunch of siblings, he's less excited to find out that they're a bit, uh, evil. And they keep insulting April!! How dare they!!! Not to mention, he already has a dad, he doesn't need a new one! So no, Donnie isn't planning on just leaving his current family behind for this new one, and his brothers react to this in various different ways.

As much as Mikey wants Donnie back, Dr. Feelings understands that this is quite the adjustment for Donnie and that he may need some time to come to terms with the fact that he actually belongs with them and not with the humans. Mikey doesn't wanna force his brother to reunite with them, so instead he tries to convince Donnie to come home willingly through various ways. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but AU Mikey is essentially trying to give Donnie a redemption arc like Canon Mikey did with Draxum

Raph, however, sees Donnie and immedietly goes full Protective Big Brother Mode. He thinks the best course of action is to "forcefully rescue" (kidnap) him and and then convince him to stay and be apart of their family. He's can't help catastrophizing about all the way his baby brother is definitely being mistreated by Lou Jitsu and April and all the other evil humans oh NO they have to SAVE HIM!! The only reason he doesn't is because no one else in the Draxum family thinks it's a good idea

And then Leo. I'll go more into detail about Leo's character in this AU at a later dat cuz hhhhhhh but basically, he's still dealing with pretty intense Middle Child Syndrome and the LAST thing he need is another middle child joining the family! Why are all his family members so obsessed with getting Donnie back anyway? He's already clearly chosen the human side so why waste their time on him! .....Now that's not entirely the whole truth, he's kinda ecstatic when he first meets Donnie, except Donnie doesn't seem to care about them any, which... ouch.

Another way to describe their dynamic would be similar to their canon dynamic, a lot of friendly bickering.... except they don't really know each other and are also enemies here so like.... UNfriendly bickering.... which is just bickering lol. They fight a lot, is what I'm getting at.

Anyway you know the family dinner scene with Draxum in season 2 of the show? Yeah, Mikey tries that tactic here too. Like I said, Mikey wants to be patient with Donnie, but he does eventually get a bit tired of Donnie acting so hostile all the time so he starts organizing hangouts for the four of them (attendence is mandatory!)

And poor Donnie, this whole situation is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for him, as you might imagine. Reuniting with your secret lost family is fun for all of five seconds before you find out that they're actually kinda messed up uh oh. A big reason why Donnie acts so hostile towards his brothers is because it's easier for him to just dismiss them as mere enemies that he feels no attatchment to. He's basically being made to pick between this new family and his old one is Not Fun.

[14dayswithyou]

💖 Day 3.5 is now available! 💖

For the last couple of months, only Server Boosters had access to the 3.5 update... Buuuuut now it's available for everyone to play in the 14DWY Discord — and soon itch.io once I'm happy with the QA and state of the game — so please don't feel pressured to join unless you want to!!

The full devlog + even more screenshots are under the cut ^^

What's been added to the 3.5 version?

📺 Streamer Mode!

I've been told that it's difficult to stream and monetise age-restricted videos on YouTube and Twitch, so I added an option to remove the sexual content and strong language used in the demo.

Now y'all can invite Ren into your bed for cuddles without putting your streamer career on the line /silly /lh

This won't affect the 18+ rating or dark themes/elements of the game, however! Although Streamer Mode will prevent you from seeing any "gruesome" CGs in the future, most of the core elements of the game will still be tied to the choices and decisions you make. So you won't miss out on the overall experience by using streamer mode!!

⚙️ Custom Pronouns!

It only took me one entire year to get around to it, but you can finally choose your own preferred pronouns (or use a set of pronouns instead)... At the cost of being able to change them mid-game ^^;

Since the original pronoun screen wouldn't update until a new scene was displayed, I temporarily disabled the feature. But once I find a workaround, I'll bring it back!

💗 Choose how others perceive you!

You can now choose how the cast and narration perceive you! Originally, the narration was kept strictly gender-neutral (outside of pronouns and genitalia picked by the player), but this will soon change in future updates.

For more clarity: you don't get to choose the words specifically, but you can choose between masculine, feminine, and androgynous terms!

📋 Separate top and bottom genitalia!

You can now choose your tatas and pps separately! >:3

Alongside that, you can also choose your preferred body type!

I removed the "both" genitalia option because a few players still assumed it was an obscure version of "intersex". That wasn't my intention and I don't want to mislead anyone, so I took it out for now ^^;

I also didn't want to include a screenshot of the new genitalia choices in action (because it's NSFW), so y'all get the same character menu screen for the nth time instead lmao

📱 Relationship Screen Overhaul!

You can now change your own status for more immersion, and long-term Server Boosters will eventually be able to submit and use their own icon within the game as well!

Stalking finding your friends has now become easier by using "Buddy Maps"; a new app that allows you to see the location of all the cast members!

I want to offer players more incentive to check the relationship screen since they tend to miss the status updates, so hopefully this might help ;v;

It also says it "updates every few hours" so folks don't go overboard and check every 5 seconds to see where Ren is gdsghf (also keep in mind that he's a hacker lol)

🖤 Additional Scenes Update!

Day 2 received a brand new CG!!!!! Originally, I planned on only adding a few CGs sporadically throughout the game, but it didn't feel right to leave Day 2 so... empty... so I added a brand new CG to (hopefully) make things feel more balanced and natural!

If you decline Teo's offer on Day 3, Leon will now call and try to convince you to reconsider. However, players are still allowed to decline, and if they do, they'll reach a dead end.

After listening to feedback on itch, I changed some of the dialogue during Days 1-3 to make it seem more consistent! They're only small changes though, so it's honestly not worth looking for sdgjssga

🎶 Updated BGM and SFX!

I wanted to try out a different style of music to see if it fits the vibe of 14DWY more! The BGM features more acoustics to suit the "beachy" theme of Corland Bay, though I made a conscious effort to include piano elements as well to stay true to the original!!

I figured it'd be better to give players a live example before I make a poll (to see if they prefer the change or not) and publish it to Itch.

Some new SFX have also been added, though it's very minimal and honestly not that noticeable.

How to download and play the update?

(warning: clicking on the following links will open Discord!!) To download the Day 3.5 update, simply join the 14DWY Discord server, verify your age, and visit the "14dwy-updates" channel!

Alternatively, you can also wait until the update is publicly released on Itch to play it as well!! (It normally gets released shortly after a round of QA testing/getting feedback from the server, though I may release it earlier if I feel like it hehe ^^)

Enjoy!!

[jedi-starbird]

APLAP (Assigned Pathetic Lifeform at Padawanship)

New padawan Obi-Wan trying to figure out how the FUCK to make his master listen and not abandon him to go running off following "the will of the force" when it hits him. Qui-Gon is perfectly happy stopping and taking care of pathetic life forms, but not Obi-Wan. That's it. He's always been prepared, always been dutiful, strong, self-sufficient.

He's cracked the code. He needs to be more pathetic.

The next time he senses Qui-Gon's about to run off he coordinates a scene of utmost pathetic-ness, that is, he throws himself into the nearest fountain. He trudges up to his master sopping wet, water-logged robes swallowing him, with hair sticking to his face and containing bits of algae from the fountain. He mumbles out an apology for being clumsy before looking up at Qui-Gon with the biggest, most woeful eyes possible to ask if he happened to bring any spare robes (he didn't, Obi-Wan knows this because he is usually the one to pack spare robes for them both). His wet hair is dripping water into his eyes that's beginning to turn them an irritated red, and there's algae sliding down the side of his face, it really is masterful work.

"Oh...I'm sure I'll be able to find something by myself, it's okay Master, I know you had important work to do."

Qui-Gon visibly hesitates. Obi-Wan starts shivering. He turns to walk away. He's stopped by his Master's hand on his shoulder. His Master, who walks back with him, who gets clean clothes from their hosts, who has folded like wet flimsi and even explains his stupid, stupid plan before choosing to hotwire a hoverbike with a passenger seat! Oh, Obi-Wan really has cracked the code!

Afterwards, Obi-Wan stages an increasingly pitiful accident for himself every time his patented 'Qui-Gon Jinn Bullshit' detector goes off. Eventually, his Master stops leaving him behind at all, even giving him funny looks when he turns around and Obi-Wan isn’t next to him. It never fails to make Obi-Wan grin and run to catch up. Sure, his reputation as a perfect padawan is in tatters, alongside his dignity, but it’s a small price to pay for a place at his Master’s side, for him to remember there’s a place for Obi-Wan there.

When the ray shields come up on Naboo, Qui-Gon doesn't charge ahead and leave his padawan behind, he hasn't for years. He waits for Obi-Wan because it feels wrong to do otherwise, his padawan belongs at his side.

Much, much later, when Obi-Wan is drinking to the end of the war with friends, Commander Cress will ask him how he kept General Jinn from running off for entire decade. Obi-Wan laughs, informs him, and resolutely ignores the scene Quinlan is making as the man cackles and pulls up a book to shove at them both, titled Classical Conditioning 101: A guide to subtle psychological manipulation.

[tiktaalic]

let's all talk about supernatural. i'll start. in 2009 kim manners told misha collins it was gay to sit on a bed. due to the lack of distance. he was right. and misha collins did it anyway. what followed was 12 years of television subject to different directors writers and actors all with different opinions on the subject of whether or not dean and castiel were gay. because of this rotating list of minds and directions the messages you receive are varied. but crucially. there is groundwork laid in closeups. standing five feet apart in bobby's kitchen filmed as if they're face to face. across the room from each other in tmwwbk but cuts between close up to close up. now you could easily argue that camerawork that rejects this method is trying to convey a different message of less empathy. but. we are not working only with camera work that conveys distance. we're working with a foundation of intimate conversations filmed as intimate closeups . followed by intimate conversations filmed with yards and yards between them. for an amv i was trying to use the s8 talk where cas is sitting on the bed and dean walks over sits down and says talk to me and i eventually had to scrap it because they're never in the same frame. i was going frame by frame in that scene trying to get maybe three seconds where you can see both of them but you never can. in the scene where dean sits a foot away and asks. what's wrong. you can tell me. you can talk to me. and cas proceeds to bare his soul. which is one of two things: bad directing, or purposeful directing. bad directing requires us to operate under the assumption that people who work on supernatural are bad at their jobs (likely). purposeful directing requires us to operate under the assumption that people who work on supernatural are good at their jobs, and given an intimate conversation, looked for ways to dilute the emotion in it, and did so. this is also likely. when supernatural shows me castiel telling dean i love you, and does it with shoddy camerawork, they are practicing tell not show. they are turning to the camera and telling me. this means nothing. disregard this. dont you see how they're a good court length apart from each other. doesn't this distance make you feel like you should interpret this with a platonic lens. but what they are showing me. is castiel telling dean winchester. i love you. which comes across even through the janky disjointed shots. the diluted effect still has an outsized emotional impact. so my takeaway is not. well i guess this means nothing. it is. i see the tricks you are trying to use on me. and they dont work on me because i know how to interpret storytelling and i'm not young and shiny and stupid. my takeaway is . wow. dean and cas., are in love for real, and they put it on my screen, and i am going to plant dynamite in director richard speight's home

[wreckedhoney]

screencaps from the second playthrough! a few things i missed or forgot to share from the first one, with some more minor additions under the cut. my personal fav here is THE SCREAM poster with our new host's name just taped over the old one's lmao i love that little detail, sorry kurt and thankyou clive we love you.

obligatory oogling at peggy and her lovely lovely silhouette, the model looks so good. i also appreciate, again, reggie's office decor?? it looks like the drawing of a rocket ship you can find maybe twice around the station might be from his son lol. or. maybe it's his.

and the cassette! another great find from clive. maybe he closed in on who could've been offing all the people he found out about. what a sweet touch from the game, too.

some extra liquid that i thought had some interesting little blurbs. the cleaner is so…so fuckin… fuckin gallows creek man… who owns bimbam bc fellas we got another request for the next whistling men

[nostalgebraist]

Honestly I'm pretty tired of supporting nostalgebraist-autoresponder. Going to wind down the project some time before the end of this year.

Posting this mainly to get the idea out there, I guess.

This project has taken an immense amount of effort from me over the years, and still does, even when it's just in maintenance mode.

Today some mysterious system update (or something) made the model no longer fit on the GPU I normally use for it, despite all the same code and settings on my end.

This exact kind of thing happened once before this year, and I eventually figured it out, but I haven't figured this one out yet. This problem consumed several hours of what was meant to be a relaxing Sunday. Based on past experience, getting to the bottom of the issue would take many more hours.

My options in the short term are to

A. spend (even) more money per unit time, by renting a more powerful GPU to do the same damn thing I know the less powerful one can do (it was doing it this morning!), or

B. silently reduce the context window length by a large amount (and thus the "smartness" of the output, to some degree) to allow the model to fit on the old GPU.

Things like this happen all the time, behind the scenes.

I don't want to be doing this for another year, much less several years. I don't want to be doing it at all.

----

In 2019 and 2020, it was fun to make a GPT-2 autoresponder bot.

[EDIT: I've seen several people misread the previous line and infer that nostalgebraist-autoresponder is still using GPT-2. She isn't, and hasn't been for a long time. Her latest model is a finetuned LLaMA-13B.]

Hardly anyone else was doing anything like it. I wasn't the most qualified person in the world to do it, and I didn't do the best possible job, but who cares? I learned a lot, and the really competent tech bros of 2019 were off doing something else.

And it was fun to watch the bot "pretend to be me" while interacting (mostly) with my actual group of tumblr mutuals.

In 2023, everyone and their grandmother is making some kind of "gen AI" app. They are helped along by a dizzying array of tools, cranked out by hyper-competent tech bros with apparently infinite reserves of free time.

There are so many of these tools and demos. Every week it seems like there are a hundred more; it feels like every day I wake up and am expected to be familiar with a hundred more vaguely nostalgebraist-autoresponder-shaped things.

And every one of them is vastly better-engineered than my own hacky efforts. They build on each other, and reap the accelerating returns.

I've tended to do everything first, ahead of the curve, in my own way. This is what I like doing. Going out into unexplored wilderness, not really knowing what I'm doing, without any maps.

Later, hundreds of others with go to the same place. They'll make maps, and share them. They'll go there again and again, learning to make the expeditions systematically. They'll make an optimized industrial process of it. Meanwhile, I'll be locked in to my own cottage-industry mode of production.

Being the first to do something means you end up eventually being the worst.

----

I had a GPT chatbot in 2019, before GPT-3 existed. I don't think Huggingface Transformers existed, either. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

I had a denoising diffusion image generator in 2021, before DALLE-2 or Stable Diffusion or Huggingface Diffusers. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

Earlier this year, I was (probably) one the first people to finetune LLaMA. I manually strapped LoRA and 8-bit quantization onto the original codebase, figuring out everything the hard way. It was fun.

Just a few months later, and your grandmother is probably running LLaMA on her toaster as we speak. My homegrown methods look hopelessly antiquated. I think everyone's doing 4-bit quantization now?

(Are they? I can't keep track anymore -- the hyper-competent tech bros are too damn fast. A few months from now the thing will be probably be quantized to -1 bits, somehow. It'll be running in your phone's browser. And it'll be using RLHF, except no, it'll be using some successor to RLHF that everyone's hyping up at the time...)

"You have a GPT chatbot?" someone will ask me. "I assume you're using AutoLangGPTLayerPrompt?"

No, no, I'm not. I'm trying to debug obscure CUDA issues on a Sunday so my bot can carry on talking to a thousand strangers, every one of whom is asking it something like "PENIS PENIS PENIS."

Only I am capable of unplugging the blockage and giving the "PENIS PENIS PENIS" askers the responses they crave. ("Which is ... what, exactly?", one might justly wonder.) No one else would fully understand the nature of the bug. It is special to my own bizarre, antiquated, homegrown system.

I must have one of the longest-running GPT chatbots in existence, by now. Possibly the longest-running one?

I like doing new things. I like hacking through uncharted wilderness. The world of GPT chatbots has long since ceased to provide this kind of value to me.

I want to cede this ground to the LLaMA techbros and the prompt engineers. It is not my wilderness anymore.

I miss wilderness. Maybe I will find a new patch of it, in some new place, that no one cares about yet.

----

Even in 2023, there isn't really anything else out there quite like Frank. But there could be.

If you want to develop some sort of Frank-like thing, there has never been a better time than now. Everyone and their grandmother is doing it.

"But -- but how, exactly?"

Don't ask me. I don't know. This isn't my area anymore.

There has never been a better time to make a GPT chatbot -- for everyone except me, that is.

Ask the techbros, the prompt engineers, the grandmas running OpenChatGPT on their ironing boards. They are doing what I did, faster and easier and better, in their sleep. Ask them.