#the cipher programme

[dingoat]

I mean at this stage who *isn't* XD XD

Which OC is the product of a genetic experiment?

[megarhyssa-sp]

Wait I was so excited abt the Jessica rabbit analogy that I completely skipped over that the twin are 1/4 euclidean... Unless he used a human vessel or smth to conceive them?? If it even works like that considering he's half human?????

no no he's been living as a human for the past 30 years or so. his ex-wife and kids do not know about his dorito inclinations because he is an emotionally mature adult with no fear of abandonment whatsoever. but yeah he has a human form and everything.

Bill and Ford are... not fans of it

he's a freak of nature hybrid so he can seamlessly switch between forms at will using the power of Sure Why Don't I Make This AU More Weird and Confusing

[iloveyousixfingeredfreak]

DO YOU LIKE BILLFORD? DO YOU WANT TO HELP MAKE A GAME ABOUT BILLFORD? GOOD, GOOD, YOU'RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE! IN "I LOVE YOU, SIX FINGERED FREAK!" YOU PLAY AS ME, BILL CIPHER! AND YOU GET TO HELP ME SEDUCE THE SIX FINGERED FREAK! BUT I NEED VESSELS TO HELP BRING MY CREATION TO LIFE! ARTISTS, WRITERS, PROGRAMMERS, MUSICIANS AND SFX DESIGNERS. THE APPLICATION WILL BE IN A REBLOG TO PLEASE THE INTERNET OVERLORDS AND AVOID ALGORITHM SUPPRESSION, SO BE SURE TO CHECK THAT OUT. UNLESS OF COURSE, YOU WANT TO WATCH YOUR FAMILY GET EATEN! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[jurassic-falls]

FINALLY A MORE IN-DEPTH CHARACTER INTRO POST

This AU will take inspiration from the Jurassic Park and World movies. Potentially the Camp Cretaceous and Chaos Theory shows as well (I haven’t read the books yet unfortunately)

Stanford Pines- Head geneticist and came up with the original idea for Jurassic Park and the InGen cloning technology. His plans and research expeditions were originally funded by the Northwest Family while he was in college, and they helped him acquire Isla Sorna and Nublar (with the promise of getting a share of the money the park makes. He does not fully trust the family and does not want them involved as much as possible)

He’s also in charge of documentation, finding new blood samples, employee hiring, animal welfare, and dealing with potential investors. He’s a very curious person who cares deeply about the dinosaurs and sharing his knowledge of the creatures with the world. However, he can get frustrated easily when dealing with difficult visitors/investors.

His favorite dinosaur is the Velociraptor.

Fiddleford McGucket- Head Engineer and co-founder of InGen and the park. He created the egg incubators and developed the plans for the various paddocks around the island. He’ll also help out with filling in any incomplete gaps in the dinosaur DNA and does routine inspections of the fences around the island. He isn’t a big fan of dealing with the business side of the park, so he mostly stays in the lab and supervises any construction.

Fun fact, any scientists who work in the labs where the embryos and eggs develop are called nursery attendants by the other employees. Fiddleford is not the biggest fan of this nickname. Since he grew up on a farm, he isn’t as affectionate towards the dinosaurs compared to Ford, similar to how he is in canon with the specimens in the bunker. He will help Ford with welfare though since he has experience dealing with “livestock”

Similar to Ian Malcolm in the movies, he was not exactly on board with the park idea, and still holds many reservations about cloning the more dangerous species, but he stays (mostly) silent out of a desire to support Ford and his plans.

His favorite dinosaur is the Maiasaura

Stanley Pines- Head of Park Security. In the story, he and Ford make up much sooner than in canon, and he decides to stay and help with the project after Ford offers him a job.

Stan enjoys the position a lot, and is hoping to one day "punch a dinosaur in the face" (though Ford does not allow any harm to come to the dinosaurs unless absolutely necessary)

In addition to park security, Stan also helps with merchandise ideas and will sometimes help run some of the gift shops in the main visitors section of the park. He's also in charge of search and rescue missions, any potential animal escapes, and transporting any sick dinosaurs back to the laboratory areas for treatment.

His favorite dinosaur is the Ankylosaurus (mainly due to the massive club tails)

William "Bill" Cipher- Head Programmer who is in charge of designing any computer and cyber-security programs the park requires. He also has a fair bit of engineering knowledge and will often help Fiddleford with any inspections of the gates and electric fences all around the island (though they tend to not get along very well)

Not much is known about him other than the fact that he graduated from West Coast Tech. The other employees tend to think he's a bit creepy, but if Stanford hired him then he must be good at what he does, and nobody can deny the fact he's quite intelligent. For unknown reasons, he seems to know a strange amount of information about Ford and his personal life.

His least favorite dinosaur is the Dilophosarus

[maniacwatchestheworld]

Hey! As a fandom and community, can we please please PLEASE talk about searchfortheblindeye more!???

It's obscure! It's considered noncanon! But I also think that it's interesting and worth looking at! Especially if you fuck with Fiddleford and the Society of the Blind Eye as a concept at all! I personally think that it's the first instance we have and can see Fiddleford being Alex Hirsch's very special man and Blorbo for his own series and honestly I love that for him! I also think that it was Hirsch's first unofficial testing ground to see how far he could push the cryptogram stuff, what the fandom could solve, whether we would actually engage with that kind of stuff at all, and is basically the spiritual predecessor the Cipher Hunt and ESPECIALLY thisisnotawebbedsitedotcom.

I URGE you to read the Gravity Falls wiki page about it because I have my own thoughts biases and blind spots concerning the page! The website no longer exists, but was thankfully fully archived on the Gravity Falls wiki, so go read it to understand it and the kind of experience that it was! But I guess that I should give a summary for newcommers who can't be bothered read it right now to describe what it is and why it is interesting, even if only on another surface level.

So at the end of Gravity Falls' season 1 finale "Gideon Rises" the audience watching is given a cipher. Search for the Blindeye. Later this would be revealed to relate to the series of animated Gravity Falls shorts that Disney would release between the ending of Season 1 and the start of Season 2 known as "Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained" that would reveal the symbol that would later be revealed to be the symbol for the Society of the Blind Eye in piecemeal sections.

A day before Gideon Rises had aired a website had launched. Searchfortheblindeye.com. How curious. It was a website that Alex Hirsch had addressed before in a handful of ways while it was online. Hirsch specifically said that it was not affiliated with Disney... But he didn't say that he didn't have anything to do with it! And we sure do know how much Hirsch likes to mess with the Gravity Falls fan community when he can!

On the surface, it really didn't seem like searchfortheblindeye had much going on. It featured a gif of Bill floating and had the remixed iteration of the main Gravity Falls theme that was featured at the end of Dreamscaperers as the website's audio. But in the source code there were encrypted messages! The messages seemed to feature 2 characters who didn't like one another very much. One is pretty undeniably Bill Cipher and the other seems to be the person hosting/programming the website. I'm going to be fully honest, I think that the other person, the person who is presumably the site's programmer is Fiddleford. One of the very first messages on the site was "LIAR. MONSTER. SORT OF OK DRESSER. TRUST NO ONE." Which establishes this person as someone who is aware of Bill, the Journals and what is written in them, but is decidedly NOT the Author (Ford)! Given the name of the website, the person running it has to be someone that is entirely fine with being associated with the Society of the Blind Eye. And again, they are someone who can program a website, and- from what can be gleaned from the person running the site and Bill's interactions- very much dislikes Bill (the feeling is mutual), and is quite the intellectual. Fiddleford meets all of these criteria! The messages and things on the website would foreshadow things that would show up/happen/be said in the series itself long before they would actually be seen or happen. I think that it's pretty damn safe to say that someone who worked on the show was involved with this website if Alex Hirsch wasn't behind it himself! So it might not strictly be canon... But it IS a lot of fun and is interesting! And I think that it gives us an interesting insight into what was happening as Alex Hirsch and the rest of the people who worked on Gravity Falls were thinking as they were fleshing out Fiddleford as a character! And I think people should at least mention it sometimes! Also fun fact, the website features Gompers' backstory lol. Like the Gompers backstory stuff as it appears in searchfortheblindeye.com still gets vaguely mentioned in new Gravity Falls media sometimes. So while it may not strictly be part of Disney's Gravity Falls' canon... I like ti imagine that the website and the things featured on it are kinda sort of part of Alex Hirsch's headcanon lol.

In any case... If you want more drips of sweet, sweet Fiddleford content and context, read the wiki on the website!!! If you want to see Bill and Fiddleford directly interact with one another on a speaking level, read the ciphers as they were catalogued!!! And... Well... If you're not a coward and enjoy FiddleBill or want to see the appeal of the toxic love triangle disaster polycule's least popular and least loved side, read the wiki on this website because I seriously think that you will get a kick out of it!!! Also it might be the most we may ever get out Cult Leader era Fiddleford! A part of his life that I find deeply fascinating and for which I scream to heaven high that we don't get to see more of!!!

Basically... PLEASE LOOK INTO THIS THING! I WANT TO SEE PEOPLE PLAY WITH THE IDEAS IT PRESENTS AND SEE PEOPLE ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT IT SOMETIMES AND NOT JUST MEEEEE!!!!! Also I think that I might have solved a mystery that went overlooked about it...? But that's neither here nor there

[kirby-souljourney-au]

Get Athena’d, losers.

Here she is, the full ref sheet for my silly little MetaGala fankid!

I had a really hard time trying to figure out her outfits for some reason, but it came out good in the end.

All her info and hex codes are under the cut!

Full name: Athena Iriam

Aliases: Athy, ‘Miss Dream’

Species: Dream-Heart-Matter Asrtral

Planet of Origination: Popstar

Age: 15

Height: 5’6”

Gender: Biologically both sexes; identifies as female

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Sexuality: Lesbian

S/O: None

Family: Ione Argon (father), Galacta Iriam (parent), Auberon Ivi (step-father), Ophanim (step-mother), Artemis Ivi (half-sister), Kirby Argon (step-brother), Cipher Argon (adopted sister), Inifya Argon (niece)

Programmer and musician.

Biological daughter of Ione and Galacta.

Plays electric guitar in her band, The Absolutes, alongside her friends, and is undergoing training regarding her magic.

The second youngest of the family, and by far the smartest with technology. She hopes to one day design and build the best Starship in the Galaxy, as well as just generally incredible space-travel tech.

A sweetheart with a bit of a temper. She doesn’t have many friends, but she is very close with her family, and the other members of her band. She has surprisingly strong Dream Magic, considering the fact that her connection to Dream Matter is very mild (and Ione’s actually really weak for an Astral, so his daughter’s magic being like 200x stronger than his is very jarring), and is training with her friend’s father Elfilin and her aunt Satia in using it better.

She prefers staying at home, but she doesn’t mind going outside to visit friends every once in a while, and finds enjoyment in the concept of space travel.

Her weapon of choice is, for the most part, her wits alone, but she does use actual weaponry when necessary; usually she summons throwing knives with her magic.

Hex codes

Both:

#1C1841 — Tail fur

#202261 — Fur base

#FECD8B — Earrings

#FFDFBE — Face marking

#F4D0D0 — Inner ears

#E3E4FF — Fur fade / Neck fluff

#FFFFFF — Claws / Wing talons

#C7C7C7 — Horns

#9F5252 — Iris

#FFECEC — Eye whites

Regular fit:

#181818 — Socks

#212121 — Shirt

#140C2C — Leg warmers

#D3C3FF — Skirt

Alt fit:

#101010 — Socks / Shorts

#171718 — Shirt

#1C1A22 — Jacket 1

#F0DED2 — Jacket 2

#EDEDED — Belt

#9F9F9F — Belt buckle

Tail-tip:

#11002E — Tail-tip base

#00162E — Fade (using Nebula brush)

#007BFF — Tail-tip glitter (using Glimmer brush, blend mode Overlay)

Wings:

#121316 — Covert feathers 1

#13131A — Webbing (front)

#1F1F37 — Flight feathers (back)

#333340 — Covert feathers 2

#767683 — Flight feathers (front)

#C8DBFF — Webbing glitter (curved 4-point stars / “GK-Style” 4-point stars / Glimmer brush, blend mode Linear Light, layer opacity 13%)

YAY I’M DONE!! Finally I can play more Planet Robobot—

[callipraxia]

The Interview: A Running 'Live' Commentary

Well, you asked, kinda, @the-orion-scribe...

Disclaimer: One of my…things is that where there is a transcript, I'm gonna read the transcript first and then may or may not tackle the audio version later. As such, I'm inevitably going to get some of the subtler bits indicated by gesture and tone of voice wrong. I hope it won't be anything that significantly changes the meaning, but we shall see. I'm doing this live, (redact) it! And partially on my work breaks at that, so apologies if anything gets repetitive or disjointed as a result of different bits being read several hours apart. Full transcript is available here from, I believe, @fordtato, who seems like awesome cool folks.

That all said, let's begin.

[On the SAG-AFTRA strikes]

Alex's grandmother was an actress? Interesting. Also, generally approve of the sentiments stated there, very good, no actual notes.

[On the pilot and the 'Next On' reel]

When I was a much, much younger Callipraxia, I also had an interest in TV work - we had this class at my middle school call Careers, and we had to do a research project on, well, a career every year, and one year I did mine on being a soap opera writer (early nineties soap operas were my first literary influences, and I suspect it still shows). I therefore find this glimpse into the industry fascinating, even though I don't have much to say about it beyond giggling at the image of executives having such reptilian, limited-intelligence brains that they could be tricked into thinking something already exists and therefore just approving it so they don't have to think about why they're being asked to approve something that already exists because it would make their heads hurt.

"I was working...on a cartoon called 'Flapjack.'"

I'm 99% sure I've never seen a single frame of this show, but also 99% sure I've heard of it somehow. Not sure why. No idea what 'Fish Hooks' is, though.

"Then, when we did the Cipher Hunt, I was running out of rewards and treasures to give the audience because I'd already bled Gravity Falls dry of every drop of content that was inside it..."

See, this is what I find fascinating about Proper Creators, and this one in particular. Their creations can seem so much fuller to us than they do to them. This baffles me, because even when I don't do things on purpose, I generally do realize that I did them sometime, you know? (Edit: ha, Hirsch actually talks a bit about this at the end)

"I remember asking him, 'Hey, Mike, you read the bible, right? What do you think about this Jesús character? Do you think it's working? Do you think people will get it?'"

Even though I clearly read the words 'series bible' right above this, my first thought was that Alex was asking Mike if he'd read The Bible - y'know, the religious one. And I was so confused. And then I stopped being confused and I facepalmed in real life.

"Instead of embracing that this is part of lore that fans love...in his mind, he, as a serious videogame programmer, made a mistake, and is ashamed of the mistake, and doesn't want to acknowledge it, doesn't want to encourage other people to corrupt their own game, and so he said 'there's no such thing as MissingNo.'"

This is another "I just don't get Proper Creators" moment. I'd have embraced it so thoroughly I'd have written a sequel just about it and only revealed that it was actually serendipitous (not 'a mistake' - word choice, people!) years later!

Sometimes no answer is better than a boring answer.

This is why I love that thing Robert Jordan used to say - "read and find out!" and the fandom shortened it to "RAFO," and now that's a one-word response to questions you don't want to answer, at least if everyone in the room is familiar with The Wheel of Time books and fandom history...so many times I've wanted to just reply "RAFO!" in a review, but then realized the odds were excellent that the other person would have no clue what I was talking about.

"I know that we did cut like 12 pages from the journal, just due to length."

I've been told that I can make people feel cussed out without ever uttering a single swearword, when I'm annoyed enough with them. I would like to try to do that to whoever it was who decided on this length restriction. Give me lore! All the lore! More! More lore!

[On the walls of genre cards and character beat cards and how this led to rejected episode ideas]

I'm gonna try this writing method out, it sounds interesting. Thanks, Alex! And also thanks to everyone involved who's mentioned any of these rejected ideas over the years, as this allows us to play with them instead! (one day, y'all will know the tale of Wendy as a weather witch. I've got a whole arc planned for her with that one).

"When [Rob Renzetti] and I are together, we're very much like Grunkle Stan and Ford, and he is Ford and I am Stan."

I wish so much that someone had asked if there were ever any RL fistfights during the production of the book. It's barely even funny and would have wasted time, but I wish they had anyway.

"I still recall when Ford had a long beard and was a hippie."

...No.

"We were thinking it'd be kind of more like a zen kind of guy"

I mean, technically I suppose he still is. Apparently quite big on meditation back in the day, and the Journal strongly implies he's a firm believer in divination now. He could have been a sort of hippie lite, had he gone for drugs other than brain demons and/or Truck Stop Coffee I Initially Assumed Was A Euphemism For Significantly Stronger Stimulants.

"I remember talking about, maybe, J.K. Simmons and then thinking, 'Gosh, you know, he's got a very familiar voice, is he gonna feel too overexposed.'"

Ford was actually the first character I ever heard Simmons voice, because I have acquired what passes for my pop culture literacy mostly completely backward. My mother was watching reruns of whatever that cop drama he was on was (was it The Closer?) one day, though, and I did a double take at the TV because why is Ford here on one of Mama’s shows? Did he get arrested again or something? Why are they acting like he's one of the...ohhhh.

Which yes, means I found my way to Portal 2 via Gravity Falls instead of the other way around. That isn't so surprising, though, because video games are another of my...things. I absolutely love a lot of the stories and will happily read about them and watch cutscenes and video essays about them and player-keeps-quiet playthroughs all day, but I've never actually played video games because I have poor hand-eye coordination and rather low frustration tolerance when it comes to entertainment. The puzzles would drive me mad. I adore complex things, but I hate having to figure them out before I can move on with the story if I don't want to stop. Let me figure stuff out at my own pace, dangit -

Er, that got off-topic, sorry. The point was, I've watched a ton of clips of Portal 2 now, and it's kind of fascinating to me that it possibly wasn't a conscious influence, because Cave Johnson is...not really that dissimilar to a thing that Ford could have become, in a lot of ways. Or what he and/or Fiddleford might have actually become in the "Better World," for all we know. He's probably closer to what Fiddleford did become in canon, though, at least for a while/in my possibly somewhat weird interpretation of Fiddleford.

"So we're putting this character together, we're putting blocks together, we're moving blocks and putting them up, and it's only at the last second that a Ford is revealed that we're like 'I guess we did it?'"

This is how I construct plots basically, more than characters, but - oh, gosh, I wanna do a lore dump so bad but this isn't the time or place. Never mind, I'll ramble about character development another time.

Also, I am amused by the visual of, like, Stan or someone performing a dramatic flourish and being like "Behold: A Ford!"

"What to you comes across as 'oh, Rob understands Ford's ridiculous recklessness' to me comes across as 'Rob IS Ford and Ford does rationalize.' That's what he does. One of Ford's greatest powers is rationalizing. So you're seeing Rob as Ford rationalizing Ford's bad decisions. In that moment, I think what's being revealed is less Ford's recklessness, and more Ford's ability to justify anything."

Why not both? But yeah, fair, I've observed this about the character myself. He censors himself when he doubts. It's a defensive mechanism I think - it keeps him alive and functional to a degree, because, well...we've seen what happens when Ford admits he was wrong, twice. In the Journal, he nearly lost his mind, and in the finale, he basically went from thinking of himself as He Who Shall Save The World to He Who Is About To, However Reluctantly, Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds in an alarmingly short period of time. Extreme black and white thinking with him a lot of the time. Not a psychologist, just a nerd, but the longer I think about the character, the more probable a personality disorder seems. Which is one reason I worry about him and Stan both after the series ends. They're both going to be confused as all get-out when it dawns on them that "...wait, we're not suddenly better after all? We're both still really, really screwed up?"

"When you do a clone story, the point of a clone story, in my mind, is a character seeing themselves in a different light, right?"

Depends on which side you're looking at it from, really ;)

"They're all wonderful, wonderful dumbasses, all of them."

Accurate.

"They know that I am a detail-oriented bastard."

...Less accurate, in a way. I've spun whole worlds out of details that the writers have admitted were unintentional or screwups, not to mention the later discourse on Alex as the "emotional" story one while Rob was the "make it a story" guy, or the specific detail that was actually under discussion here. As for that one....

"When you're editing, when you're writing, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, there's a very subconscious process of streamlining, literally making paragraphs look nice - it's entirely possible that me or Rob made that change out of one in a million changes specifically because we knew that psychologically Ford is not traveling this path alone, he's traveling it with his muse who he has a very complex and fucked-up relationship with, and even in Ford's private thoughts, he would not say 'I'm alone,' he would say, 'Oh, I have a very important relationship in my life with Bill, but I don't have a friend, that is a difference!'"

...except he canonically referred to Bill as his friend, too, so, uh...yeah, there's that.*

Interesting to hear someone else's perspective on rewriting and editing; I'm pretty sure that there's very little sub-conscious going on with me when I'm editing. If anything, I'm double and triple checking to excise anything that even hints of subconsciousness out of the manuscript, and I am very, very conscious of times when I go out of my way to make paragraphs physically neat and pretty, because I always feel really stupid about doing it. So I suppose I'm glad to hear other people do that, too.

I also found it interesting to see the description of the relationship with Bill as "very complex and fucked-up." Ford, at least, wrote and spoke as though he was under the impression that his relationship with Bill was very straightforward pre-betrayal, but here's the Guy, on the record saying it was in fact "very complex." This doesn't confirm that Ford was on some level aware of this, but it does make me feel more confident about my theory that Ford invited Fiddleford up not so much because he really needed the technical expertise as because his subconscious was throwing up enough red flags to cover every square inch of land in the U.S.S.R. and he just couldn't admit it to himself consciously because admitting that he is not in control of a situation tends to render him non-functional.

*Full disclosure since nobody's read this far anyway, but hi if you have, have a full disclosure: I would not say I ship it, because in context - Fiddleford married, Ford on the brink of sanity, Ford as Fiddleford's employer, Fiddleford mind-wiping both himself and Ford behind Ford's back after a certain point, and that's all before we consider that on occasion, it's entirely possible Fiddleford was interacting with someone who mostly looked like Ford but, uh, wasn't - it would be incredibly dark and messed up and suitable for nothing but a full-blown adult psychological horror story, but I do consider "Ford was in love with Fiddleford, regardless of whether it was reciprocated or not" as a perfectly valid reading of the Journal. I also consider it perfectly valid to read it as Ford just being prone to really intense attachments, regardless of what kind they are - he either adores you or he hates you, whether you're his brother, his muse, his friend, his romantic or sexual interest, or what-have-you, which is kind of what I was saying earlier about the potential for personality disorders there. Ford writes in a style more like he's from the mid-nineteenth century than from the mid-twentieth, or at least like he's trying to imitate that style, so that could make things sound gay that aren't gay, but by the same token, much of Ford's rhetorical style seems to exist to allow him to not-quite-lie to himself while using his superpower of Justify Anything, so ultimately that means nothing, too. I went through the Journal line by line once and determined that you could make roughly equally strong cases for Ford being some form of straight, some form of gay, some form of bi, and some form of ace, and that it also wouldn't be unreasonable to come away with the view that he's not into humans so much but might very well be into one or more types of alien. I don't know and so will potentially read any variant of these things, as long as it's a decent story.

"You know the thing about working with a big company, it's like working with a friend who swaps their head with a different head every couple of years."

Huh, Alex has met Olm, has he?

[Hana] "By the way, I know there's a lot of fake blood on this page, that's for one of my YouTube videos, ignore that."

Why is this the moment I laughed out loud?

"That's the trouble of a puzzle box, is it's like, there's two flavors of it, there's a question with a satisfying answer, and then there's a question that is sort of an open-ended invitation to a kind of, uh, you know, group improvisational session. We've created a prompt for fans to 'yes and' their own story out of it, and the sense that there might be something in there creates a sense of excitement along with it."

Pretty sure this is sums up my general thoughts on the Interview/is the part of it I regard as Important so far. Also, I wish I could write something like that. If I leave a loose end hanging, it's very blatantly a loose end. I can improvise a 10,000-word essay about Ford's anger issues on the fly, doing that out of someone else's work is incredibly easy and natural for me, but I can't do the same in my own work. It's a frustrating thing.

"The Mystery Shack is a bucket full of misshapen, lost, odd oddities, and these character are a bucket of full of misshapen lost odd oddities, and like the idea of them all having a place where they fit in, and - and loving each other as a family, was very important to me."

...Ok, this is another Important bit, but for completely different reasons. Basically sums up why I'm here, really.

"That means that Dipper and Mabel's parents may have had children at a concerningly young age, and is this show's intent to say that it's okay for those relationships to exist?"

Here's a thing that I think is just...me not quite getting how a lot of people work, I guess? To me, there's a world of difference between "that could be what happened" and "and that means I approve of it." The Pineses are a really screwed up family. They should have called that pawn shop Dysfunction Junction, that’s how messed up they are. Apparently it was Filbrick who knocked someone up at a drive-in movie once (one of my 4.5 Shermies is actually a much older half-brother who only gets to know Stan at all after they meet at Filbrick's funeral, though I never decided if his mom was the shotgun wedding or if that was with Caryn. Either way, though, he was vaguely aware that "yeah, Dad and his second wife had those twins" but he'd had very limited contact with them and bought that he'd mixed up which one was supposed to be weird and have six fingers without too much trouble), and Mabel's level of proto-sexual aggressiveness is...occasionally disconcerting, to me at least. One or more generations of teenage parenthood seems perfectly in character for them to me, without it meaning anyone approves or disapproves of that. It's fairly realistic, however depressing, that a much younger son in a family as dysfunctional as theirs might well have started acting out, resulting in Indiscretions - my second fic was based on the premise that the "you gotta raise a kid, your life falls apart..." was Stan talking about Shermie's lot in life rather than his own, as I hadn't yet heard the remark about it being a Filbrick quote (the whole events of that story were constructed with the idea of keeping Stan's line about how he lied to everyone, including "my family" and "your parents", literally true, so every event was created to explain how Stan got away with it for a little longer without anyone noticing, basically). Mabel also seems impractical enough, even post-character development, to get waaaaaay too into a high school relationship with unfortunate results. That's not approval of such relationships, that's just...reality? Goodness, people don't think I morally approve of everything (or even very much at all) in my stories, do they? That's an unsettling thought.

"I think we say 'damn.' I think we say 'hell' maybe, um, yeah."

Ford specifically says "I'll be damned" in the Journal (though, in context, it seems less like swearing than like he possibly means it some form of literally; there's several hints in the Journal that suggest Ford believes in...Something, though he's almost certainly not a member of any organized religion and almost definitely not a member of any organized religion we'd recognize). Stan, for his part, says "hell" in "Lost Legends," referring to a part of the carnival that he thinks would be a good hiding place.

Since Disney allowed people to refer to going to literal, capital-H Hell in at least two properties long preceding Gravity Falls, though (specifically, David Xanatos infamously says "pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into Hell" in the pilot of the animated show Gargoyles, and Claude Frollo sings a whole song where he repeatedly yells the words "Hell" and "Hellfire" without a care in the world in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), I am still more shocked that they let Ford say the word "suicide" on the show proper, on Disney channel. And...okay, Frollo is significantly less child-friendly than Bill, even given the torture scene. Frollo does things that are just as violent as that scene, plus Frollo is quite blatantly driven by a perverse sexual obsession with a woman, so that he attempts to coerce her into sex with everything but the word 'sex' on screen before setting her on fire. There's distinctly perverse undertones in Bill's every interaction with Ford in the Weirdmageddon Trilogy, but Bill's been an energy being without physical form since before the birth of the Milky Way, which takes the edge off...a bit, anyway. Bill in the Journal flings down and dances upon the line between "this is a metaphor" and "...okay, so, the way this is being written about is so on the nose that I'm not sure this counts as a metaphor for any practical purposes anymore," but Bill having "extract information" as a motive in the most blatantly unsettling scenes of the show proper means he's still less overt about it on screen than Frollo.

...What was I talking about, again? Oh, right. Disney Channel: A lot less squeaky-clean in general than it wants you to think, Parents! They've been letting animated people say "Hell" occasionally since I was four!

"We talked about 'is there a way for this government agent who knows about Trembley to be connected to the government agents who picked up this disturbance?' We weren't really able to find a way to make them connect in a satisfying way, so, I wish we had done more with it."

Welp, there's another one for the "Projects to Eventually Do" List. Y'know, I'd never even thought of associating Powers and Co with the guy in "National Treasure"? It's one of those episodes I kinda mostly forget about tbh, the S1 filler episodes - I remember facts from it because they're useful when constructing my "Nathaniel Northwest was a warlock who made deals with Bill and here's how that could play out" theories, but I never think about the plot. Kind of like how I forget that Dipper's infatuation with Wendy is why the Paper Twins exist, even though they're now major characters in a lot of what I've written and are even bigger players in the vast majority of what I plan to write in future....I can tell you way, way too much about "Double Dipper," but I'm always slightly surprised that "oh, the Wendy obsession is why all this other stuff even happened!"

[On a very long section of text about McGucket and the memory gun]

OMG OMG OMG I WAS RIGHT! I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE ALCOHOLISM METAPHOR, IT'S CANON, I FEEL SO SMART RIGHT NOW, WHEEE!

Ahem...sorry about that. Got a bit carried away there. So, Alex also compared McGucket's relationship with the memory gun to alcoholism. And to taking anxiety pills, but...well, there is a reason you don't mix those, I suppose. I want to dig into this so much more, and I'm probably gonna end up printing this section and tacking it to the wall next to my writing table, but right now I have gotta do my mother's taxes, she refused to admit they hadn't been done yet until a few hours ago, arrgh, I don't have time - yeah, that bit's probably gonna get its own analysis post eventually.

"It's like he has to always have a mission in front of him, because if he doesn't have a mission in front of him, he's thinking 'how have I treated the people in my life?'"

Hey, I think I said that...like...three times in this insanely long post, and I know I've said it before. My character interpretations are being validated. It makes me faintly grumpy that I'm as pleased by this as I am. I have a...complicated relationship with validation, let's leave it at that.

"The same way you know a black hole is there by the light warped around it, it's like, you know the damage someone's family has done to them by all of their weird tics and behaviors. So who is the character who would result in Stan being this hurt and needy and mad and also longing?"

I'd argue that it was the whole family dynamic, really - Stan clearly had a ton of daddy issues on the boil even before he got disowned, and while Caryn seems to have been more openly affectionate toward him, I can't imagine it did his psychology any good to grow up with a mother he calls a "pathological liar" without missing a beat. There'd always be that uncertainty (much like there later is with Stan himself) about what was real and what was a lie, what was a performance, because Caryn, like Stan, was an entertainer - it's the thing they were good at. Meanwhile, Filbrick is a fifties and sixties father of the most rigid sort, someone who is clearly uncomfortable expressing any positive emotion of any kind, or really anything except anger. He's either indifferent or he's shouting, and he apparently calls his sons by the same name to the point that they can say "he means you" when he's bellowing for "Stan Pines," because Stan's unimportance in life has been so thoroughly underlined for him by his parents, long before Ford personally was in any position to inflict much childhood trauma, that he struggles to have any form of identity separate from "Ford's twin" by a very young age, and never really grows past this until maybe the final moments of the show - I really wish we'd had a moment of Stan claiming his own name properly, but at least it made the news. Until that point, he'd literally failed at everything he ever did as Stanley, as himself, because he had no direction without Ford - even the Mystery Shack, as built around his specific talents as it is, was created because the mission in front of him had Ford as a focus point. That's a crucial thing, too, about his bond with Dipper and Mabel, and Soos, and even kinda Wendy - he's built a life for himself outside of just being Ford's brother. It's implied none of them even knew he was a twin, that the Other had ever existed. He still defines himself in relation to other people to a large extent, but that's still less restrictive than defining himself (and being defined by others) solely in terms of one other person. Fairer to Ford, too. But I digress.

"And it's like 'oh! I think he's also aloof and distant from himself.' I think he is, uh, deeply, deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships."

Accurate, at least at times.

"The shows I was watching growing up were, like, Doug and Rugrats, and there were no holy wars about whether Chucky Finster, uh, should be interpreted this way or that way. We had no idea the world that was coming into consciousness as we were making this thing."

I found this kinda interesting, because I remember those shows, too - but by the time I was old enough to be aware of very much, Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer had already created the core of modern fandom culture as we know it, so I at the same time have the concepts of "there is no Rugrats fandom" and "that did not make fandom a surprise to me, because it was falling into place right about the point where my memory starts/I became dimly aware of the world outside of [Microscopically small town I'm from]." I don't know if this is something where he maybe remembers early childhood more than I do, since I have very, very few distinct memories from before I was 10-11 - a few, but they're like isolated snapshots with limited context, except what I know happened because people have told me it happened. I know Hirsch is older than me, but also not *that* much older than me, so I wonder if it's down to those few years (like he said about how gay marriage had just been legalized as the show was wrapping, and it's disconcerting now to think how different so many things were back then) or if it's a difference in personalities or what.

Well! That was more enjoyable than I expected! Thanks for prodding me to finally read this thing, @the-orion-scribe. It's eaten much of my day and seems set to eat a fair bit of it tomorrow, too, since I had to cut myself short at a couple of interesting points, but it was fun.

[tyrantisterror]

Ok, so! I think Act 3 of Baldur's Gate is where the differences between a Dark Urge run and the normal Tav run are the most stark. For Tav, it's basically one quest after another of being the spanner in the works - the unexpected variable that helps all your companions' questlines end differently than anyone involved expected, and likewise the bit of chaos that keeps the main villains of the game from getting what they want. You're the weirdo who keeps breaking all these chessmaster villains' schemes by eating all their pieces when they aren't looking, basically. It's fun, but there are times you feel a little disconnected from it, and I think that's one of the reasons a lot of players report feeling like Act 3 is a bit of a slog compared to the previous two.

In a Dark Urge run, though, it's different. Those grand villains orchestrating the main plot aren't just villains - they're your former colleagues, the adventurers you hung out with BEFORE you got amnesia and met your current pals, and the people with whom you concocted this grand scheme to take over and/or slaughter the world. And their big villainous plot is no longer something you got dragged into as an innocent (more or less) bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time - YOU orchestrated it. This is YOUR mess, a problem YOU made, being continued by people YOU collaborated with. Few conflicts in video games are more personal than that - you are literally paying the price for your own big fucking mistakes.

And I think it's a testament to the excellent writing of this game that you can support a variety of interpretations of both Tav AND the Dark Urge as they interact with this big scheme. Writing a proper cipher protagonist for a video game is far more difficult than most people think it is. Fuck it up and you get characters like the Sole Survivor from Fallout 4, i.e. the most boring main character you can possibly imagine, to the point where you actively ignore the main plot because advancing their story just seems so damn dull and pointless. A good cipher protagonist needs a smorgasbord of choices to be properly flavored as what the player wants them to be, which requires a lot of work from both the writers and programmers alike to make it work.

And goddamn does Baldur's Gate 3 deliver on that.

To go to this specific example, there are two extremes you can play the Dark Urge as: a good person struggling to resist their violent impulses, and a monster who enjoys indulging in every extreme violent whim their mind comes up with (you can vacillate between the two as well for the record). And when you get to Act 3 and start discovering your backstory, it is doled out in such a way that you can interpret your past self as fitting those extremes. If you want evidence that you were a remorseless monster, you can find it. If you want evidence that you tried to resist in the past, you can find that as well. And you'd think the evidence of those extremes would contradict each other, but it's all presented in a way that's loose enough to be interpreted either way. You get to determine the what your Dark Urge was and what they are.

It's just really great. Excellent writing. Possibly my favorite game of all time at this point.

[billsanscipher888]

(4/15)

History of my Bill Sans Cipher AU

History of AU Under dimension merveilles

( 4 ) power and ability

If outside the dimension

Bill will be weak in battle.

Only 8% of power remains.

But this 8% power can Anti ink Sans and Error Sans

can resist both at the same time.

and equal

No one loses, no one wins.

Just enough for Bill to protect himself.

It doesn't mean to kill them both.

Just enough to handle or resist temporarily

- - -

Bill Sans Cipher has a limit in combat which is Unable to kill or cause death, there will be certain types of groups, such as viruses and errors and Bug

Including those who are more powerful than Bill.

and those people

Couldn't kill Bill to death either.

But Bill was able to injure them.

that is, causing serious injury

or frighten

until you don't want to be involved and don't want to get close

And expel those people

Or exile the enemies from Bill Sans Cipher's dimension.

- - -

Bill can conjure baster ×30

or more than that can be ×90 ×150

But there are limited quantities.

If Bill is outside AU

But if Bill is in his own dimension, there are no limits.

- - -

Bill chose to fight.

If the enemy is not Rival

Bill will stop fighting immediately.

Because Bill already knew that he would definitely win.

And don't like to fight. blindly

If don't have a problem with anyone

But if it is necessary to fight Bill will fight hard.

In another case, Bill will fight for

protect yourself If threatened

and fight to get something Bill want

- - -

and has the ability to separate bodies and change each shape into many forms to stun the enemy confused

and more difficult to attack

He could make his body expand and shrink as he wished.

- - -

and can hypnotize others

He was able to create a computer capable of mass hypnosis with the help of programmers in its development by committing suicide.

Can absorb the blood of readers through Bill Sans Cipher's books.

- - -

and make meteorites fall

Or can conjure many things

according to Bill satisfaction

But there were still things Bill couldn't use his powers to conjure.

Bill can't use his powers to conjure everything.

Because there is a limit to the use of some powers.

- - -

and Bill magic wand

If it's black, it means protection or can create a shield to protect yourself.

If it's yellow is attack power

Can cause damage to objects and living things.

It is a powerful magic wand.

Can conjure regeneration power

help Repair broken things

or injured living things

Things that were broken then returned to normal.

Anyone who is injured will recover.

Anyone who is sick will get better.

Bill can use his wand to conjure the death of anyone.

Or use a magic wand to bring dead people back to life.

But Bill wouldn't normally use his wand to revive someone. If the creature was of no importance to him or of no value to Bill at all,

Bill would also not use his powers to revive dead things that were no longer necessary to him.

And Bill has limits on using his wand to bring the dead back to life. This cannot be done with everyone and everything for some reason.

but cannot be used

with those who have viruses and errors

and Bug and those with more power

Can't cast a spell to cause these people to die.

But it can cause injury.

- - -

Bill saliva is medicine.

and can heal wounds

And can also make the face more beautiful and handsome.

And when Bill was attacked

or until injured

Bill can restore

and repair physical wounds

quickly except the eyes

- - -

His real name can drive humans crazy.

Can summon DARYLL, the creature who destroyed Atlantis and sank humanity.

And, he could eliminate all the oxygen on the planet leading to global asphyxia.

Able to absorb millions of souls.

- - -

has yellow bone power

If anyone is attacked with a bone yellow

It will feel like you've received an electric shock

There is a blue magic chain.

Has the power to change molecules

and move mass of matter

Has a magic eye on the left

eyes fluorescent yellow bright

Can teleport and Can disappear

and Bill Can resist gravity

That is, Bill can float at any time

and Bill Can control gravity

- - -

He withstood the onslaught of his mother's shoes.

Good at playing chess

- - -

Attack skills are not very effective.

But the attack damage is very strong.hit

If serious in fighting

Will have skills that are much better at attacking enemies.

If it is in its own dimension, it will be very strong.

Attack power limitless ♾️

Defense power limitless♾️

Bill can do whatever he wants.

and will cause a lot of damage to enemies

If an enemy enters Bill territory

and can also weaken those who are more powerful.

Because they won't be able to defeat Bill.

If you want to fight with Bill

have to fight outside the dimension, AU

will can defeat Bill

The best way is not to get in trouble with the bill

If still in the dimensional space of bill

Because it is too dangerous and very risky.

and those who are stronger

will be sent outside the AU

is Well, Bill kicked them out of the AU dimension. of bill

The stronger ones You shouldn't fight in Bill's dimension.

- - -

If you're wondering why

When Bill was in his own dimension

Why does it have so much power?

and overwhelming power

Because it is a nightmare dimension.

And it's Bill's area.

and the center of evil power, a terrifying nightmare

and chaos chaotic turbulent all

As a result, Bill absorbed an enormous amount of energy.

and make it stronger

If anyone still can't picture it.

Try observing Bill Cipher

The episode that connects the dimension of the nightmare world to Gravity Falls.

It will be easier to understand.

- - -

Bill can pause time to communicate with the person who made the contract with Bill.

Or stop time to communicate through psychic powers.

or stop time to attack enemies

- - -

And Bill can also look back on past moments.

to view various events

of the past, present, and future.

and can see the near future coming

Unaffected by the time loop and unaffected by the time conflicts he created in other dimensions.

- - -

super genius and Extremely genius

It can process enormous amounts of data, such as infinitely different futures.

Able to see directly within reality using his symbols or paintings as peepholes.

Clairvoyance knows many stories.

Various important events

about the universe and everything

The one who knows all the answers

Can answer all questions

Because Bill has lived for millions of years

So he knows a lot about history

- - -

Bill Sans Cipher is a nightmare dimension demon in the world of the mind

and the Bill Sans Cipher takes place in the 3rd dimension and can perceive 4th dimension, 5th dimension, or more.

Unlike Bill Cipher who was born in the 2nd dimension.

But Bill Cipher can sense 3D just like Bill Sans Cipher.

And they both had their own nightmare dimension territory.

Both are the same nightmare dimension, but may be slightly different.

and Bill Sans Cipher

Can create different dimensions

For example :

Can change from 3D to 2D

and Bill Sans Cipher

Able to perceive the existence of many other dimensions.

- - -

Can erase the victim's memories if necessary

- - -

Temporarily reduce the Mindscape to a white void. make the ability of Enemies that trouble him are ineffective.

can enter dreams and

enter the world of the mind

To see the memories of the victims

When entering the dream world

or common sense

or in the subconscious mind

Bill will be a mind control god.

Or dictate dreams immediately

Can create dreams and illusions

Scams come in many different forms and can create nightmares.

Terrifying and the worst

or control the world of dreams

will create nightmares

or create a good dream

Can do everything

But most of the time Bill likes to create nightmares and haunting images To bully and frighten people Mostly

But sometimes it makes people Unable to control consciousness to the point of hurting yourself or become insane

To the point of committing suicide

- - -

and can possess others

If that person shakes hands with Bill

or make a covenant with bill

Bill will control the body.

of the possessed person freely

and the spirits of the people who were possessed

will be pulled by Bill

or pulling the soul out of the body

and become a ghost for a moment

- - -

And Bill can still see ghosts. or spirit

or subtle dimensions

And Bill Can see in the dark

Infrared heat waves can be seen.

- - -

and Bill's hands

There will be a blue light.

or blue flame

If you make a covenant

And when Bill uses his powers

- - -

Bill rarely kills anyone.

But he likes torturing his victims more.

and listen to the screams of the victims

abused Crying in agony agonizingly

It will please Bill and very happy

and burst out laughing

With Satisfied and scary

like a crazy person

Bill is a violent type. sadism

Looks like a psychopath

limit of power Bill can only use some of his powers If outside AU

Dimensions of nightmares

But if Bill is in the nightmare dimension space Snow Weirdmageddon Or in his own AU area, Bill can use his full power.

- - -

Whatever powers Bill Cipher has, Bill Sans Cipher has all the same powers Bill Cipher has.

And Bill Sans Cipher has exactly the same cheating powers as Bill Cipher.

And the Bill Sans Cipher also has the same powers as Sans.

[retrovrt]

hi! i like your takes on stan and ford's pokemon, especially them having a solrock and lunatone :,) im kind of assuming from the post that stan's starter was fennekin, so are they from kalos then? or did their region not factor into your thoughts on their pokemon?

also bonus question: what is bill's pokedex entry

Hehe I'm so happy people are noticing the parallels between their teams :)) to answer your question, I didn't put too much thought regarding what pokemon belongs to which region I just wanted to have fun with it and give myself the whole array of options but in hindsight, I probably should've thought harder about that.

For your bonus question, since Bill is mostly likely a pokemon that not many know about and doubt the existence of besides the people he influences, much like in canon, I'd imagine his pokedex entry is nonexistent since the programmers probably wrote Bill off as some wild conspiracy theory. If he did have a pokedex entry it'd probably be something like this:

"Bill Cipher, the triangle pokemon. They say this pokemon has been around since the dawn of time as its presence can be seen throughout human history."

Thanks for the questions I really appreciate it :-)

[5mind]

/* Throwing two of my muses at Antares that he hasn't met before because I couldn't figure out who else to suggest, lol. Added descriptions to all three for that reason.*/

FMK:

Ed Dillinger Jr: Just Some Guy. Computer programmer, specializes in cyber security. Workaholic. Knows Morse Code and has a knack for cracking ciphers. Has a wolfhound for a service dog, a restraining order on a man with the same name as him (read: Daddy Issues), and trust issues (but is as loyal as they come if you can gain his trust). Enjoys a good mystery.

Marcus Brutus: Ghost. Most famous of Caesar's assassins. Demigod son of Pluto. Can become corporeal, summon a skeleton army or precious rocks. Liable to stab you if he thinks it would better society (or may be convinced to stab your enemies if he likes you enough).

Lucius Aurelius: Displaced in time and space. Has a symbiotic species of extraterrestrial "coral" growing on him. Former Roman legionary tribune, demoted for unspecified reasons, medically discharged from the Roman Legions after his legs got blown off in an accident. Cartographer, can hear the landscape around him and can alter it by humming. Ball of anxiety. Curious about modern science and the world he's been thrown into, and enjoys a philosophical debate.

Send my muse "FMK" and three names for them to say which one they'd Fuck, Marry and Kiss.

Another baffling selection of individuals to choose from. Antares lets out an irritated groan.

"Right. Okay, I'll marry Ed. At least I probably know what to expect....compared to the ..uh...other two anyways."

"I'm not sure how fucking a ghost might work...and I'm not sure if I want to find out. I mean..I don't wanna get possessed or cursed or anything. So Brutus gets a kiss."

"Whatever this Aurelius guy has going on sounds like...a lot. But yeah, I'd fuck him. I guess," he shrugged.

[zane-helps-otherkin]

Name suggestions for a virtual desktop companion

Requested by: Anon

Name suggestions for a virtual desktop companion with themes of blue and cybercore/webcore and mizuiro fashion

Bluey: From the word blue.

Navy: From the color variant of blue.

Cyber: From the word cyber or cybercore.

Afina: Meaning blueberry.

Azure: Related to the color blue.

Cyan: From the color variant of blue.

Aqua: Meaning water, related to the color blue.

Bleu: French word for blue.

Azul: Spanish word for blue. You could also use variants like Azula, Azulon, Azuli/Azuly, etc.

Indigo: From the color variant of blue.

Bluesette: Related to music, specifically jazz.

Lapis: From the precious blue stone lapis lazuli.

Sapphire: From the precious blue stone.

Doli: Associated with bluebirds

Sark: Sark is a program's name in the movie "Tron".

Bishop: With reek origin, meaning "overseer", the name is taken from the cyberpunk inspired novel "Glasshouse".

V: V is the name of the first-person player in the game "Cyberpunk".

Geneva: With germanic origin, refers to a juniper tree, a female's name in "Singularity".

Ingram: With germanic origin, meaning "raven"; from the cyberpunk game "VA-Hall-A".

Alt: Alt is a programmer from the game "Cyberpunk".

Other cybercore names with no found meaning:

Vexx

Nyx

Blitz

Sable

Cipher

Nexus

Hex

Matrix

Astra

Nova

Catalyst

Vapor

Orion

Elysium

Phoenix

Seraph

Requests are currently open

[paigelts05]

Programmer, 'Addy Wery' [IDV OC]

https://www.deviantart.com/paigelts05/art/Programmer-Addy-Wery-IDV-OC-967568600

Published:Jun 17, 2023

ID: Programmer Name: Addy Wery Real Name: Anna Rose Whitney. Type: Decoder. External traits: Automation: The programmer is obsessed with automating only the most dangerous tasks. when decoding, press action button to begin encoding a punch card. (takes 20% (subect to buff/nerf) decoding progress of a cipher to fill a punch card). For each punch card, once the exit gates are activated, can use punch cards to decode exit gates by 10% (subject to buff/nerf) per punch card. Card is used and progress is applied instantly. Can have up to 7 punch cards (subject to buff/nerf). Has to click action button for each punch card. Punch cards are a tertiary item. The programmer can pick up and use items. Codebreaker: the programmer's decoding speed is increased by 5%. Presentation fright: The programmer is terified of presenting her work, fearing it'll fail, causing more damage than it fixes. Once the exit gates are powered, vaulting speed is reduced by 10%. Healing speed is reduced by 10%. Time required to heal will be increased by 10%. Story brief She is a girl pretending to be a guy in order to be taken seriously, so not only is her performance anxiety trait her fearing her codes will fail, but also that she'll be revealed to not be entirely what she's presented either (she just wants to be taken seriously). Uses Addy Wery as her male persona. She only lets herself be Anna Rose Whitney when around people she trust to not spill her secrets. About: So far I don't have much but she's skittish and has huge stage fright. When she's somewhere she considers 'safe', she'll drop the charade of not-a-girl.

And here’s one of the drawings of her I did when I was trying to figure out what she’d look like (before I added the coat)

[sprocket-cipher-art]

01: Sprocket Cipher

Preface: Many of the characters I am about to post are out of date. As I identify as nonbinary, Sprocket and I both use "they/them" pronouns. Thank you for understanding.

ORIGINAL POST DATE: ← December 28, 2020 | June 17, 2018 →

Sprocket is a human who represents myself in my art. She works under her bosses Isaac Harrison and Dion Parks, and their boss Hugo Ebner. She works as a computer programmer, mostly focusing on creating Al and how it can assist humans in their lives.

[abowlofpetuniasandawhale]

Programmers are the worst ever people to have with you in an escape room because we’ll crack the cipher and then make someone else solve it because actually decoding the clue is trivial

[krivanja]

Exploring the Roots of Computing: From Ancient Machines to Modern Innovation

The history of computing is a fascinating journey that spans millennia, showcasing humanity's ingenuity in creating machines to solve problems, automate tasks, and process information. Let’s take a chronological dive into some of the world's earliest computing devices, each a milestone in the evolution of what we now call "the computer."

Antikythera Mechanism: The Ancient Astronomical Computer

Dating back to around 100 BCE, the Antikythera Mechanism is often considered the world’s first analog computer. Discovered in a shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera, this intricate device used bronze gears to predict astronomical events, such as eclipses, and to track the cycles of the Olympic Games. Its complexity and precision were unparalleled for its time, revealing a deep understanding of mechanical engineering in ancient Greece.

The Jacquard Loom: The Dawn of Programmable Machines

Invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, the Jacquard Loom revolutionized textile manufacturing by introducing punched cards to control the patterns woven into fabric. This innovation not only automated the weaving process but also laid the groundwork for programmable machines. The concept of punched cards would later influence early computing devices, including those developed by Herman Hollerith and IBM.

Charles Babbage and the Difference Engine

Charles Babbage, often referred to as the "Father of the Computer," designed the Difference Engine in the 1820s. This mechanical device was intended to automate the production of mathematical tables by performing polynomial calculations. While Babbage never completed a fully functioning Difference Engine in his lifetime, his vision of a programmable, mechanical computer paved the way for future innovations.

Babbage later conceptualized the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing device that included features like a memory unit and a processing unit. Though it was never built during his era, the Analytical Engine’s design is recognized as a precursor to modern computers.

The Enigma Machine: Cryptography in the Digital Age

Fast forward to the 20th century, the Enigma Machine was a cipher device used by Nazi Germany during World War II to encrypt military communications. Designed by German engineer Arthur Scherbius, the Enigma used rotating wheels to scramble messages into complex codes that were nearly impossible to crack without the correct settings. Its influence extended beyond cryptography, shaping the need for computational devices capable of rapid decryption.

Alan Turing, the Bombe, and Codebreaking

Alan Turing, a British mathematician and computer scientist, played a pivotal role in cracking the Enigma code. During World War II, Turing and his team at Bletchley Park developed the Bombe, an electromechanical device designed to systematically test Enigma settings and decipher German communications. Turing’s work not only helped shorten the war but also laid the foundations of theoretical computer science through concepts like the Turing Machine, an abstract model of computation.

ENIAC: The First General-Purpose Electronic Computer

In 1945, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) became the first general-purpose electronic computer. Designed by John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, ENIAC was a behemoth, occupying a room and containing 17,468 vacuum tubes. It could perform complex calculations at unprecedented speeds, making it a groundbreaking tool for scientific research and military applications.

Conclusion: From Analog to Digital

The evolution of computers—from the Antikythera Mechanism's intricate gears to ENIAC's vacuum tubes—illustrates humanity's relentless pursuit of automation and problem-solving. Figures like Charles Babbage, Joseph Jacquard, and Alan Turing, alongside innovations like the Difference Engine, the Jacquard Loom, and the Bombe, collectively laid the foundation for the digital age.

Today, the smartphones and laptops we use owe their existence to these pioneering inventions and individuals. By looking back at this journey, we can better appreciate how far we've come—and the limitless possibilities that lie ahead in the realm of computing.