sciman.info

Blog - A Price of Commodity

2024-11-23T00:00:00.000Z

For a while, I didn't really understand how optical mice worked. A ball mouse - outdated as it is - is pretty easy to grasp. The ball rotates some shafts with discs on them, and an encoder reads the discs. Even if you have zero grasp of electronics, it's not too difficult to understand what's going on mechanically.

But an optical mouse is solid state - nothing's moving around. I watched a video recently that explained how it worked, and it turns out the little optical mouse sensor - is a camera. A very low resolution, black and white camera, but still. A combination of special optics and computer vision algorithms track minor imperfections in the surface the mouse is resting on, and can determine how far it's moved as a result.

I bring this up because, on the face of it, that's a pretty complicated way to do things, right? It makes sense, and honestly I'm not sure it's possible to do it any other way, but the idea that every optical mouse is a tiny camera and computer vision processor bundled into a package the size of my thumbnail seems, wrong, in a way. Like that can't possibly work at scale.

And yet, at my local electronics store, a cheap, wireless optical mouse can be had for like, $5. Five dollars! That's not just the sensor - that's the sensor, a printed circuit board and supporting components, a wireless receiver, the injection molded housing for the whole thing, the packaging.

All that, for $5.

Something I've really come to appreciate in art are authorial marks. I bought a painting from a local thrift store - something made by a local artist who presumably needed to get rid of it - and found myself fascinated by the physicality of the paint. You could run your finger over the surface and feel the peaks and valleys of the material, carved by brushstrokes. And it's fascinating to me to feel that and consider the history of the piece. Printing technology is so advanced that seeing a huge image rendered onto a poster is completely unremarkable, it divorces the effort that went into designing the image from the final result, to some degree. Here, there's clear, physical evidence of the work that went into creating the piece - at one point, human hands touched this, here's what they did.

In modern society, almost everything we interact with is a printed poster - in the sense that, the work that went into creating it is harder to grasp. Not impossible, but it's easy to take for granted the fact that people make things.

Assembly lines can be almost entirely automated, and I don't doubt a lot of machinery was involved in making that optical mouse I mentioned before. But even if robots did 99% of the work, there's usually human workers around to fill in the gaps, and that's assuming they are using robots to make it. Even ignoring that - someone had to have designed the mouse. Somewhere in the world is a CAD file of the mouse's body, printed circuit, and packaging.

Yet elsewhere, some team had to trace out the logic of the integrated circuits involved in the chips on the mouse. Software was written at some point to interface with a computer's USB port - it's probably the same software shipped on every wireless mouse, but it had to have come from somewhere. Someone was responsible for overseeing the milling of the tool used in the injection mold, a crew was involved in producing the resin used in that mold - it keeps going back and back.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, didn't have a human involved in the creation process at some point.

A while back, I read a story in Make magazine about the 'TV-B-Gone'. It was a novelty TV remote with a single button - you press it, and it cycles through hundreds of infrared codes, blasting every 'turn off' signal it can to try and shut down whichever TV you have it pointed at. It's advertised purpose is to shut down TVs in places you don't want to see them. Baby's first Flipper Zero.

The article in question talked about how the creator took the concept from a prototype, all the way to full scale production, and tips aspiring inventors could follow to do the same. But one particular image stood out to me. There was a photo of the factory where TV-B-Gones were assembled, and it showed a line of workers sitting at a table, assembling components of it - all wearing clean suits, hair nets, that sort of thing.

Seeing that image, something felt... off. In my head, this sort of gimmicky product was something that just... happened. Something like a Staples easy button, fidget spinner, cheap plastic toy, they all just, existed. Or maybe robots made them. But somehow, the wires had never crossed in my brain to suggest - no, people make these things. (Usually people in China, or some other country where labor costs are cheap as hell.)

No disrespect towards the creator of the TV-B-Gone, but I think it's fair to say it's not an essential thing. It's a bit of a gag item. Annoying as it might be, if you seriously go around shutting off the TVs in restaurants and sports bars, people probably won't take too kindly to it. It's a perfect little novelty you can whip out to show off a neat trick.

But despite that - how non important it might be in the grand scheme of things - it still had people, human beings, making them at scale.

I think about e-waste a lot. Not just in terms of the stuff we throw out - but products that seem destined from day one to become garbage. That little 'flashlight' keychain you get at a conference, cheap crappy earbuds, knock-off game consoles that all play the same 100 bootleg NES games. People like Dankpods have made careers out of fishing out the last decades crap, and showing off just how crappy it is.

But it's gotten hard for me to not... sympathize? With these items, a little. The cheapest, most useless, bottom of the barrel garbage you can buy, still probably had more work involved in its creation than we'd give it credit for.

This isn't me saying this makes them valuable - the opposite, honestly. Why are we wasting our collective effort on these things? What forces of the economy creates a niche for people's lives to be spent manufacturing garbage? How many lifetimes have been wasted, toiling in a factory, making things meant to be unloved?

In college, I took a manufacturing class, where we learned how to use a milling machine, lathe, do some welding, various machine shop tasks. I'm not sure I have the patience for it, long term, but it still fascinated me. I'd also held a longstanding interest in 3d printing, up to that point, and the world of plastics manufacturing wasn't completely alien to me.

Nowadays, when I buy something, my mind almost always wonders what went into it. Looking for where the sprue was cut off from the injection molded plastic, imagining the machinery and man-hours spent making it.

That $5 optical mouse has no real note of authorship. There's a company, but it's not a known brand - and even then, there's a good chance they're just repackaging something someone else made. If you open up a select few electronics - like the Framework laptop I'm writing this on - you might find a list of people involved in it's creation printed inside somewhere, as a little easter egg, almost.

But that's only for important stuff. High end products by startups trying to change the world, one wifi-enabled juicer at a time. No one cares who made the cheap gadget. No one cares who made the e-waste.

Maybe they should.

Blog - A Letter to Professor Calamitous

2025-11-25T00:00:00.000Z

Dear Prof. Finbarr Calamitous,

When I was younger, I watched the Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius episode where you were first introduced. When the episode explained your inability to complete anything, I remember thinking it was a silly gag, and kind of inexplicable. Why not just... finish the thing? It can't be that hard, right? So my child self thought.

That was over a decade ago. I'm now an adult with various semi-diagnosed mental issues and an enormous pile of unfinished projects and ideas, both creative and utilitarian. This is to say: I understand, and I'm sorry for my past misunderstandings.

Sincerely,

Sciman101

Blog - naming things.md

2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

A while back I remember a Game Grumps clip where they looked at a gallery of art by Ringo Starr - all drawn in MS paint. At the time they were made, the idea of drawing on the computer was worth enough on it's own to justify giving it a shot.

A lot of the pieces had very plain, descriptive names - stuff along the lines of "Hat Man". And there was a brief excerpt highlighting this, mentioning how "The easy way to look at it is, if it has a hat on, it will probably be called 'Hat Man'... Most of the titles for my pieces arrive because, on computer [sic] you have to call them something. So I have."

The Game Grumps, at the time, thought this was funny, but the idea stuck with me. Anyone who's done much work on computers has probably come across files named things like Untitled (2).docx or Final Draft (copy) - 2.psd. These are names, but they're not really titles, right? They're purely descriptive, only there because the system demands something to use as an identifier.

When I draw, or write, I tend to go for this kind of descriptive naming just for simplicity's sake. For instance - the file I'm writing this post on is just called Naming Things.md. Usually when I share my work, I just copy paste an image or a block of text, and the name is only there as an afterthought. Someone might mention they find it funny the picture is called stupid_fucking_robot.png or something, but that part of the file isn't meant as part of the art itself.

And yet, with this website, I figured it made sense to present my drawings and writing with titles. And it's been more of a struggle than I expected. Because a 'title' demands more formality than just a 'name'. Some of my drawings, I just titled them descriptively to avoid putting much thought into it - 'Moby in a jacket' is exactly what it sounds like. Other times, when the piece is too complicated or abstract to convey it in a concise description, I'd pick something a little more flowery, like 'Party Corpse' or 'The Grandfather Gambit'. I never considered that the title of the pic, though. As far as my computer is concerned, those files are skull.png and chess.png. (The url is yet another name).

Writing demands a title, too - at least with illustration, you can present it with no context and still get what it's trying to convey. A picture is worth a thousand words, and all. But reading takes time, demands investment from its audience. They say not to judge a book by it's cover, but you can't expect someone to read a few thousand words to get the gist of a story.

And yet, by giving it a title, you're changing the work. You're adding more context that might have otherwise been missing. If I showed you a painting of an ornate urn, the titles 'Still life #4' and 'Grandpa' give the picture wildly different tones, even though the main content hasn't changed.

Social media platforms highlight this even more. Artists posting to twitter rarely have a title, though sometimes there's a bit of descriptive text to add to the scene. Art on social media is generally a bit more disposable, something you appreciate for a moment as you scroll through your feed. And usually, you don't ask for a strangers name.

Traditional art isn't immune to this either, though - I've seen sketches and studies that were later collected for galleries, with no title given. But those are practice works - the value is gained from the process of making them, not the end product. Those are meant to be disposable, in a way.

So, what does that say about the work I do, that I almost never stop to think of a title for anything. Not even 'I decided this piece works better without a title', just never stopping to think about it in the first place. I'm not just making these for myself - art exists to be shared, but maybe I'm underestimating its shelf life. Maybe, I should start treating my work as something with more permanence and presence, not just 'content' to funnel through the works. It can't hurt, right?

Blog - One-Word Text Editor

2025-12-04T00:00:00.000Z

TL;DR - link to my janky little writing tool here

I like writing, but I'd hardly say I'm an expert. I have a lot to learn, and a lot of habits to develop.

A particularly nasty one is the tendency to edit as I write. I'll try getting down a paragraph, but I keep going back and revising specific word choice or language, and by the time I have that one segment written I'm frustrated and burnt out. It kills my enthusiasm a lot.

Just the other day, I remembered a web-based tool I found in school. The catch was, as you typed, it only showed you the most recent letter you entered. It forced you to focus soley on what you were working on, and to avoid lingering on what you'd already written until the end, splitting writing and editing more cleanly apart. I remembered it working pretty well for me! Unfortunately, I didn't remember what it was called.

I did some searching and found ILYS, a tool that did exactly what I wanted. But it was a paid subscription model, with an account system. $11/mo or you could only write 3000 words. No disrespect to ILYS, but that felt... kinda ridiculous, for what amounts to a text editor. Besides, functionally it was pretty simple. In fact... couldn't I just make it myself?

I sat down and, in 30 minutes or so, banged out more or less a replica of what I remember using. I made a few changes, though- instead of showing the most recent letter, it shows the most recent word. You're also allowed to backspace and generally edit your text- you still type in a normal HTML text editor, it's just made invisible. You can see what you've written so far by hitting CTRL+A to highlight everything.

It's nothing crazy, but it works well enough, and I figured it'd be nice to make a little post about it. A few extra notes:

The whole 'app' is a single .html file, so you can right-click and save the page locally if you prefer to work offline.
The app doesn't save anything between sessions, so copying your work over to something more permanent every now and then is reccomended.

Try it here!

Blog - I miss the big dumb tracking rings on VR controllers

2026-05-08T00:00:00.000Z

I like virtual reality. I'm not nearly as much of an enthusiast as some, but the tech always fascinated me and I've been through a few pc headsets in my life.

The controllers were always an interesting point- it really took us a while to figure out how they oughta be shaped. Oculus kinda figured it out with the touch controllers back on the CV1, and it's been gradual refinement up to the Quest 3. Similarly, the vive wands were bulky and awkward, and the Index controllers threw all kinds of experimental controls in the mix, for us to sort of land on the same design language as the Quest 3 controllers with the upcoming Steam Frame.

But, both the Steam Frame and Quest 3 kind of lose something for me. For most of VRs history, controllers - at least, more mainstream controllers - have had some kind of big tracking ring. A large, protruding circle or curve covered in hidden infrared LEDs or sensors for the tracking system to keep track of. The Vive wands had their big donuts on top, the Touch and Quest controllers fiddled with ring placement, the Index controllers had a big curve over your knuckles, and the PSVR2 controllers are all over the place with their curves.

But, modern controllers are ditching that. LEDs are embedded in the actual control surfaces you interact with. The Quest Pro even went so far as to put cameras and mobile processors in each controller for per-controller SLAM tracking. Now, vr controllers are amorphous shapes, designed to fit into your hand.

And that's fine- these controllers work, and they're probably more ergonomic and easier to use for their new design sensibilities. But I can't help but feel like the big, curved shapes of earlier controllers had a certain aesthetic charm to them. It felt so distinct from other input devices, while still feeling like a unifying element between all of them, regardless of brand or platform.

I understand why it was ultimately binned - swinging around protruding plastic shapes is practically begging for them to clip against your walls. But I can't help but mourn the loss of such an iconic visual, just a bit.

Blog - Going Viral

2025-02-13T00:00:00.000Z

Like most people, I've been lured in by the siren song of LocalThunk's not-gambling rougelite hit of 2024. I've been bitten by the Balatro bug. I don't think I need to explain what Balatro is at this point, but needless to say, it's fun and I've been having a great time.

Recently, I made a video on the game that got WAY more popular than it had any right to. At the time of writing it sits at around half a million views, outperforming my other most popular video by two orders of magnitude. It's one of those times you make a little thing for fun, not expecting it to go anywhere, and suddenly it blows up in popularity.

Except, here, that's not quite what happened.

At some point I got to thinking, what would happen if I played a hand with every Joker in the game at once. It's a pretty natural idea to draw once you're familiar with how the game works. I'd been dabbling in modding the game and figured it wouldn't be too hard to throw a little mod together to try it out.

At the same time, I had another thought. That sort of thing sounded exactly like a YouTube video I could imagine popping up in my recommended. "I played a hand of Balatro with every Joker at once!!" It was short, kinda clickbaity, easy to understand, and Balatro's UX is inherently very attention-grabbing.

I searched and couldn't find any other videos doing the same thing, so I figured I'd try making it myself. I did end up finding a video executing the same idea later on, so sorry for stealing your thunder, Lyt.

Basically - I wasn't just curious what happens when you play every Balatro Joker at once. I was curious if I could tap into current trends and intentionally make a semi-viral video.

Making the mod and video was pretty trivial - I ended up implementing the 'every joker' run as a challenge since that's the easiest way to start with a preset list of jokers. I just pointed OBS at my screen, played a hand, and let the game do it's thing. I ended up with a pretty lucky play - the score went crazy, but a lot of other little things happened. Gros Michel got destroyed, two copies of Death were made for some reason, and my version of the modding API just crashed after the hand was done. It was a perfect storm.

I made a little thumbnail using the sprite sheet from the game, threw it onto YouTube, and waited. At first, a few views trickled in, but it didn't seem too crazy. Oh well, I let it sit and went on with my life.

Then, I started getting DMs from friends on Discord. The algorithm picked it up - people were surprised to see a video I made suddenly being recommended to them. And then, the views started exploding. That thing shot up fast. According to YouTube's analytics, in about a month I wasted ten thousand hours of people's collective time.

I certainly don't wanna give the impression that I think one high-performing YouTube video is that unusual or worthy of praise or anything. But I'm surprised how... easy, it was.

There's still that other video I found demonstrating the same concept, but that guy was on Ante 18. I think mine had the benefit of being a little snappier, having a slightly more attention-grabbing thumbnail, stuff like that. Presentation matters - though I still didn't put that much effort into it.

I also found it surprising just how hollow it felt in the end. There's hundreds of comments, but they tend to repeat one of a few points about the two Death cards or a joke about how high the score was, and kinda just turned into noise after a bit. By the numbers, this is my most successful YouTube video by a wide margin, but by that same measure it's easily the least satisfying. The recognition doesn't feel earned. Though, I guess that's how it tends to go - Even Markiplier's most popular video probably falls in a similar camp.

It's a common problem for artists, where fanart and 'content' that cashes in on trends tends to do better than the original stuff they actually want to make. My little gamedev videos certainly don't do as well as this one - hell, even another video I have showing off a Balatro mod I made has less engagement than this one. Balatro itself is one of the rare exceptions to the rule. LocalThunk made it for himself first, and happened to hit the right notes to have massive commercial success, without piggybacking off an existing IP or trend (unless you wanna count rougelites as a genre). And now as a result, there's a bunch of games coming out trying to copy Balatro's formula in hopes of receiving a crumb of the same success it did. The cycle continues.

Anyways, that's enough of me bragging about a YouTube video. Hope you thought this was at least a bit interesting.

If you wanna try the mod yourself, I have it on GitHub.

Blog - You Should Print Out Art Of Your OCs And Such And Tape Them To Your Walls

2024-10-21T00:00:00.000Z

Left to right, top to bottom - art by Mesmyths, Gunpowderblush, kf2-art-things, SagiYuki, Abbadon, and Sugarpucks

My apartment has a whole bunch of art plastered (Note if you are my landlord: not literally plastered) on the walls. A few are bought from stores online, but the vast majority are of my very own characters. And I gotta tell ya, it's pretty terrific.

I've visited a few apartments now of friends that have barren walls, only filled with the standard off-white apartment paint job. And - at least for me - it just kinda feels bad to exist in that sort of space. It's too sterile.

At the same time, I don't have a ton of attachments to popular media, and the ones I do, I'm not jumping at the oppritunity to put them up on my wall. I tend to like more understated pop culture merch, I guess?

But my own characters - that's fun! I can't speak for everyone, but my ocs are deeply personal, and having a space filled with them just makes it feel all the more special. This isn't the apartment of someone who enjoys X Y Z shows, this is the apartment of the guy who made up a weird blue cyclops with two mouths.

So! This'll be quick but, I wanted to give some insight on how you could do this yourself, if you're so inclined!

The Art

Generally, if you commission someone to draw something, they tend to give you the rights to do whatever with it, provided it's noncommercial in nature. Even still, I always make sure to ask artists if they're ok with me printing out their work, just in case. It's also fun to get to send them a photo of the finished thing printed out! It's cool to see someone appreciate your work so much they'd stick it up on their wall, so make sure to let them know if you end up doing it.

Of course, you can also draw it yourself. If you do, make sure to use a high resolution so you don't see the pixels when you print it out. I know... very little about printing, truthfully (take everything I say here with a grain of salt) but something like 300 DPI is probably fine.

That said, I've printed out tons of art that's lower res and it looks fine. This is decor for your apartment, I realistically never look at any of this stuff closer than a foot away anyways. Whatever works for you is fine.

Printing

Once you've selected your images, there's plenty of places to print.

Check online to see if there are any print shops local to your area. Always nice to support local businesses, and doing stuff like this in real life is always prefferable (to me at least) to ordering online.
Failing that, office stores like Staples tend to have a printing section that can do it for you.
If you're a student, check if your campus has any plotter printers available. My old university had one meant for architecture students, but anyone could print to it, and I was able to run off a bunch of wall art that way. This can be really cheap, depending on your schools printer policy.
- Bear in mind you'll need to cut the image out yourself if you do it this way. A mat cutter or similar tool will help keep your cuts straight.
And, if there's absolutely no way to print irl, plenty of online services will do it for you. There's too many to list offhand, though you obviously need to pay for shipping now.
If you've got an inkjet printer kicking around, no harm in trying that. I'd caution against regular printer paper though, you want something with a bit more weight to it, designed for photos or prints specifically. You can even escape the size limits of a home printer if you're willing to tape together a bunch of pieces - visual quality will obviously suffer but, it's an option.

Hanging

I add this section specifically as a renter. Landlords don't want you damaging the walls and all.

In my opinion, the absolute best way to hang a poster is a frame. Gives it way more class, and you can hang it off a command strip hook since it's more rigid. But, that can add up in terms of cost quickly, poster frames are surprisingly expensive.

The route I tend to go is good ol' blue painters tape. I take a small length and make a loop, stick them in the corners (and edges, if the poster is big enough), and stick it to the wall. I've never had blue painters tape take paint off the wall removing it, and it can even come off the paper itself without ripping it. It's cheap, available at any hardware store, and what I go to for almost all my posters.

It's not perfect - now and then I need to apply pressure to sagging corners, and you'll want to test beforehand just in case your specific brand is way stronger and inclined on taking some paint with it as a souvenier. But, generally speaking it's worked out for me.

This was a small, kinda silly post, but I wanted to maybe kickstart some peoples brains thinking about this kind of thing. The fact it's so easy to make high-quality prints of literally any image you want nowadays is kind of wild when you think about it.

So go out there, fill your homes with personalized art!

Blog - Lucky 8 Ball

2026-05-18T00:00:00.000Z

I'm a big fan of thrift stores. Reducing waste is always good, and getting to see what sorts of things pass through is really fun sometimes. A lot of the same- glasses, cheap keyboards, box fans, shirts for specific events that won't ever be relevant again. But because their inventory is constantly cycling out, checking in weekly to see what fun odds and ends have come up is a sort of ritual for me.

I actually worked at a thrift store- Goodwill- until recently, sorting donations, and among other things I learned that anything really good doesn't make it to the sales floor. If people recognize an object as particularly valuable- or, stealable- it gets shipped off to Goodwill's online auction site to be sold there. I don't use that site as often as I go to the real stores- competition is more fierce, and I like being able to walk through a physical space.

But- things only get sent off when they're recognized as valuable. I've seen coworkers toss lots of interesting electronics and gizmos into the 'as-is' bin- things they either didn't recognize, or things which only held value to me, a weirdo who likes bits of interesting machinery. That all means that, now and then, something really interesting makes it through the system on accident. And if you're lucky, it can be yours.

A few days ago I was running some errands on the other side of town, and decided to drop into a Goodwill that's normally a little out of the way for me. I tend to look at the electronics and home goods, but there's never anything that crazy. Keyboards and mice, power adapters, lost remote controls, oil diffusers, Amazon Echo speakers- that's the normal thing you can expect to find.

As I was walking by, I noticed a black plastic sphere on a wooden base. Spherical electronics aren't super common, so I took a closer look. On closer inspection, it was... an 8 ball. An electronic 8 ball- in place of the normal viewing window was a small display, a USB cord ran out the back of its wooden base. Neat, I thought, before putting it back on the shelf. It was an interesting novelty, but I didn't have any actual use for something like that. It was the exact kind of thing that would sit around collecting dust in my apartment-

Unfortunately, I failed to realize the ball was only attached to the wooden base by a magnet, and not a very strong one. I put it back at a weird angle, and the ball got knocked off the base, rolled off, and hit the ground with a loud CRACK-

Ah, shit, I broke it.

The ball had broken along a seam line that wrapped around it's equator. I scooped up the pieces, hoping it could just snap back together- I knew it wasn't a big deal, I wasn't in trouble, but I didn't feel great about breaking something I had no intention of buying. At least, that's what I thought until I saw what was actually inside.

Suddenly I was very, very interested in this 8-ball.

For those who don't mess with electronics much- this is not what the inside of a piece of consumer electronics normally looks like. The black and red boards inside are breakout boards, designed to take chips and components and make them easier to use for prototyping and development. Those boards socket into the larger green carrier board, which links everything together.

The issue is, this is more expensive than just designing a single PCB that carries all the components directly. Not to mention, these weren't obscure enterprise parts- both of the breakout boards came from a company called Adafruit, who sells parts targeted at makers and hobbyists. This looked like someone's DIY project.

... Except. The presentation was a little too polished. The wooden base was custom milled, the casing a little too sleek for this to be someone with a 3d printer and a spare weekend. Maybe it was an educational kit, something meant for a student to put together?

But then why was the ball sealed together? Why was there a message inside saying 'don't peak (sic)'- if this was a kit, you'd have already seen the inside.

I had to know more. Besides- the central board, an Adafruit Feather ESP32 v2- cost $20 on its own, and the whole ball was only $8. I paid for it and went home, excited to investigate more.

In total, the ball consisted of:

The plastic case and charging base
An ESP32 Feather, to run the code
An accelerometer breakout board, to detect the ball being shaken
A charging port to connect to the magnetic base
A 1000mAh battery
And a circular LCD used for the display

A little searching around on Adafruit's site, these components would have cost like $70. That seemed too high for an educational kit, or a novelty product.

Something I've neglected to mention is the ball having the branding 'DGTL' on it. The name sounded weirdly familiar. I tried searching them- but before I could even finish typing the name, my brower's autocomplete filled in the URL, and I immediately remembered where I'd heard of them.

DGTL is a sort of tech-art installation company, they design and build displays and exhibitions for companies- big display walls, choreographed robot arms, that sort of thing. I'd visited their page before to apply for a job they had- that never went anywhere, sadly. But that context suddenly made everything make sense. This was probably made as a little promotional item, to be given away at an industry event or something similar. It needed to look professional and nice, but could be thrown together scrappily on the inside since it wasn't an actual product.

I have no idea why someone decided to give this to Goodwill, but I'm glad they did. And I'm even more glad it got to the sales floor without someone realizing what it was. Then again, I only learned after breaking it, so, I guess it makes sense they wouldn't know.

After letting it charge for a bit, I got it to power on- holding the halves together with painters tape, I could shake the ball and get a random message on the display. Being digital, there could be more messages than would fit on a normal magic 8 ball. I got curious and decided to try dumping the ROM, to see if I could uncover the full list.

Using esptool gave me some files that I was, unfortunately, unqualified to dig through. My hope was to find a chunk of strings in memory somewhere that would correspond to the messages, but I couldn't find anything. The good news was, I didn't need to- Every message got printed to a console during compilation, and that log message was included in the decomp. There were 98 in total- if you're curious, the full list is linked here.

Being an Adafruit board, reprogramming it was super easy. I was able to install the board libraries and get a basic blink program running on the feather in a few minutes.

So, now what?

I don't need the 8 ball, and I definitely wanna repurpose the components to make something else. That circular display especially feels compelling- it's not a very standard component. Though- maybe there's good reason for that. It's a bit hard to think of uses for it where a rectangular screen wouldn't be better. Really, the place I tend to see them most is smartwatches, and the breakout module is too chunky for that.

But, a clock seems like the right way to go. I have a design in mind already that re-purposes as much of the original 8-ball's internals as possible. For now, though, I'm gonna continue poking at what I found and see where it goes.

Blog - Ricket's Computer Trouble released!

2024-10-03T00:00:00.000Z

I made a new game! You can download it from itch.io here.

Ricket's Computer Trouble is the first game I've released since... Vessel Garden, back in January 2023, good lord. I've worked on game project since - prototypes, mostly, but I'd started worrying that maybe I just wasn't cut out for this hobby anymore. I was doubting my abilities, and it was really getting to me.

So, I vowed to put everything else aside and just finish something. A small (though scope creep reared it's ugly head) game I could get done in a month ish (it took two). This is the result of that, and I wanted to go over some of what I learned while working on it.

(Light spoilers below! Nothing crazy - the game is pretty small, but you've been warned!)

The concept

The first question you might have is why I made a game about a furry going around shooting laptops with a shotgun.

Torcado is one of the most incredible gamedevs I know, and I'm fortunate to have him as a friend of mine. One time in his Discord, for a project, his laptop kept running into problems and slowing him down. I drew the pic up above as a bit, but wasn't kidding about the game idea.

When the time came to come up with a small project to finish something again - it seemed like a good chance to dust the silly idea off and make something of it.

The biggest problem was - what do I do to gamify such a silly concept. At first I was imagining some kind of boss battle against a giant laptop, almost Cuphead style. But I came up with the movement mechanics using the shotgun, and decided something that let the player expore that made more sense. I landed on a Smash. Bros style 'smash the targets' game - originally meant to be a single scene, it expanded into multiple rooms later on.

Art

Lately, I've been on a kick with the binary brush, which draws blobs of color with zero antialiasing. It's fun to use in full res drawings, and at lower resolutions it's functionally just pixel art, so I wanted to give that a spin for this.

I drew most of the characters in Clip Studio Paint at a higher res to start, then downscaled them in Aseprite before cleaning them up and animating them.

The hands and shotgun were kept disembodied to make them easier to animate. At the small size of the sprites, you don't really notice it, anyways.

Level Design

Aside from 'finishing things', my other goal with this project was to sharpen my level design skills.

Level design is, as it turns out, hard! My brain really prefers making systems that can interact with one another, way more than making the spaces those systems inhabit. I wouldn't be shocked if this is why stuff like rougelikes/lites and procgen appeal to me - make the fun parts, then write some code to actually build the game out of it.

But, it's an important skill nonetheless, and some practice wouldn't hurt. The last game I really did level design for was Vinekid - which I still think is a really good game, but the level design can be a pretty weak at parts.

RCT is by no means perfect in that regard, but I think it's an improvement. I tried to make sure every level felt like there was some substance to it - be it teaching you new mechanics, testing your skills, or giving you a space to experiment in with less of a defined end goal.

This was also a good reminder that the only thing more important than testing your game, is having other people test your game. Most of development happened with me testing to make sure stuff worked, levels were possible, assets looked good - all at my desk, playing by myself. And the longer I did that, the better I got at the game. The hardest levels started to become kinda trivial.

So, when the time came to show it to a friend of mine in person, she got stuck pretty quickly. There were entire mechanics I'd built in I'd forgotten to actually tell the player about, I was so used to them. The difficulty curve of the levels was totally off, and in the end my friend seemed a bit frustrated at the whole thing.

This is a stumbling block I've run into before. Tussle Punks, my big ambitious platform fighter project, was always tested solo. By me. Which is kind of an issue for a multiplayer game.

The good news is, I was able to use feedback from the friends playtest to make some improvements, and the next time I showed it to someone they seemed to like it a lot more. I'm hoping to be able to take future games to events or little get togethers to try and gather more feedback - we'll have to see!

Super Duper Shotgun Mode

Most of the time I was trying to actually finish the game, y'know, the whole point of this project. But now and then I'd goof off a little. At one point I made a sprite of the shotgun with 3 more shotguns duct-taped onto it that fired 4 shots at once, inspired by the Stacked Shotgun from the DOOM 2 mod.

I intended for it to just be a one off joke, but people wanted to see it in the final game - and like, of course they would, who was I kidding. So for the final game I quickly threw together an updated version with better graphics and tied it to completion. If you beat the game once, a checkbox shows up on the main menu to turn it on.

I also turned the recoil up by 2x. You'd think 4x would make more sense, but the game was borderline unplayable, with Ricket launching across the entire map every shot.

Making this kind of dumb nonsense is one of my favorite parts of gamedev, I need to do stuff like it more often.

Conclusion

This was fun! Like most projects, it was most exciting at the start and, as time went on, my interest kinda drained until the last burst of getting it out there. That feels like how these sorts of things tend to go - the last 10% if 90% of the work, and all - and it's a big part of why I need the practice. My brain is overflowing with ideas for projects, and as fun as daydreaming about them can be, it doesn't count for much if I can't realize them.

I'm also still trying to keep my expectations in check. Just because I did this doesn't mean I should rush back into some massive dream game project - I'm pretty sure the last time I tried that it burned me out, hard. I'm gonna try and work on more small-scale projects like this one. Exercise the 'finishing projects' muscle, as it were.

Until then, thanks for reading! I hope you found something interesting here, and I hope you enjoy the game!

Blog - Site Update!

2026-03-05T00:00:00.000Z

sciman.info has been through a few complete overhauls throughout it's life. Recently, I felt inspired to go at it again, and the result is what you're looking at now- version 4 of sciman.info.

(It's worth noting this will probably break the RSS feed- if you're subscribed to me, first of all, thank you! But you'll probably want to re-add my feed just to be safe).

Anyways- I figured it'd be fun to explain some of the choices I made in designing this site. I'm happy that every time I remake this place, it feels like an improvement and not just meaningless reshuffling, so I figure this kind of thing might be useful to someone out there. If it isn't, I hope it's at least kinda interesting.

Minimalism

For better or worse, I'm a sucker for minimalism. I don't think everything should be flat grey shapes, and I understand the pushback against the modern, flat corporate style. But, it's a lot easier to make considered design choices when you're dealing with fewer moving parts. I really admire people who can pull off maximalism, but for now that's not my style.

Besides- I think of sciman.info as a hub, more than anything. It's where I can share my other works, but the site itself isn't meant to be too flasy. I want it to be nice, sure, but really this is more a document than an application. So- simple fonts, clear buttons, and contrasting colors for different regions. If I want to show off something more over the top, I can have that be a single page, not the whole UX.

Filesize

Something else I tend to focus on is keeping file size down for the site. Again- this is a hub for my work, I don't see the reason to make a user download 3 JavaScript libraries and 20 megabytes of images to load a home screen. All the icons are SVGs from the Noun Project, and all the fonts use system font families, so nothing actually needs to be downloaded for that. That's also why there aren't many images on the site, outside of pages like art or projects- and for those images, I try and quantize them to reduce filesize. It keeps the site fast, and it just feels polite to not burden people's machines or network with extra resources.

No JavaScript

On that note- this site avoids using JS wherever it can, and has for pretty much all of it's existence. JavaScript is a powerful tool, and I'm not wholly opposed to it where necessary. But, like I've been saying- this isn't an app. I don't need jQuery or React to display a few pages of text and some links.

That said- I use plenty of JS on my end, before the page is rendered. This site is generated through a static site generator called Phantomake, which can leverage EJS templating to reduce the amount of repeated HTML. There's tons of stuff written to process the site, I just don't want that to be on the end user's machine.

There's a few specific pages that use JS. The art page, for instance, uses the gallery-grid script made by espimyte, a really powerful and easy to use script that makes displaying art way more practical. It's a really well made tool, and I reccomend it if you're looking for something similar. I modified it slightly for my needs, but doing so isn't hard at all.

I don't think people should avoid JS entierly, by any means. I just feel that, for my use case, it's mostly unecessary fluff. My time on cohost also showed me just how much you can achieve with CSS alone, and whenever I get around to adding a dark mode, I plan on making it function that way.

There's one very notable exception to this rule, though-

Splash Messages

Under the 'sciman.info' header, every version of this site has had some kind of splash message. I was mostly inspired by the yellow text on the Minecraft main menu. The script to randomize the message is tiny, and if the user has JS disabled, it defaults to a static subtitle.

It's nothing huge, but I really love this feature. I feel like it adds a lot of playfulness to the site, and gives me a chance to cram in a bunch of jokes that don't really work elsewhere. Aside from Minecraft, I also know Terraria randomizes it's title bar, and YellowAfterlife's site has it's own splash message subtitle.

I really reccomend finding some way to cram this kind of thing into your own site, it's really fun.

Palette & Visuals

The site's pallete remains basically unchanged from version 3.

The specific color for the background has a bit of backstory to it - when I first got into digital art, I drew on a white background. I eventually learned using a grey background is easier on your eyes, so I switched to that, and then decided to go for an off-white tan kind of color so it didn't look as sterile. When I made v3 of this site, I used that color for the background. I think it was a good choice - the warm tones are easy on the eyes, while retaining the benefits of a light mode for readability. I also don't feel like a lot of websites go for this look, so it stands out a little.

The badges are new, though- the little raised boxes used for the social links and post categories. I knew I wanted to add a main page with everything recent listed, but I needed a quick way to differentiate post types, and ended up with the badges. They have a kind of Nintendo DS-esque charm to them, which was an accident but one I'm very happy with.

Layout

Every iteration of the site before now used a top header for navigation. This was fine, strictly speaking, but it started to feel like a waste of space. I've come to appreciate that having text span the whole width of a monitor actually sucks, and constraining the main content of a page to a narrow column is better. But if the top of that column is taken up by a header, less room for content. Since there's so much room on the sides of the column, might as well move the navigation to a sidebar.

The sidebar is honestly what motivated this entire rewrite, and I think it worked out really well. It feels clean, easy to read, and lets me put way more info into navigation than the older versions of the site.

Characters

My OC pages are one of the standout features of the site, in my opinion. The banners in V3 were fun, but like the header issue, just didn't use space very well in my opinion. In the comparison screenshot, the old list uses so much more space than the new one. I also wanted to unify the visual language a bit more, and making the character icons mimic the badges seemed like a good call.

I still want to tweak the actual wording on a lot of the pages, but that'll be for later. For now, I've filled out the roster and left some pages as a WIP for their actual story. I've got a lot more plans for this section down the line.

Projects

I brought back the projects section from v2. I figured it'd be good to have a place to showcase some of my more substantial projects. This site, for better or worse, is something I tend to link to employers and the like, so it seemed like a good call. It's also just nice to have a record of accomplishments, for my own sake.

And, that's about it! There's other small details, but that's the biggest stuff. I've got a lot of plans for stuff I wanna add, this was a good reminder that webdev is fun for me. I hope you like the new look- and if there's any issues, bugs or general improvements, feel free to drop me a line at hello@sciman.info.

Blog - Updated RSS feed

2024-10-13T00:00:00.000Z

Finally got around to figuring out how to embed actual post content into the feed for the site, so you can read all about my various nonsense from the comfort of your aggregator!

If you want the older posts to have the full post previews, you might need to delete and re-add this feed to your reader. Otherwise, you should be able to see the new stuff on posts going forward.

Also, the art page is ready!

Blog - Mass exporting files from Clip Studio Paint

2024-11-02T00:00:00.000Z

I've been in the process of migrating from Windows 10 to Linux (Debian w/ Gnome) on all of my computers lately. I have plans on writing a more detailed post about my experience down the line, but wanted to cover one thing in particular as its own post.

I draw, and my program of choice for digital art has changed over time. I started with FireAlpaca, before a friend convinced me to purchase Clip Studio. It's a fantastic art program, and was comfortably my daily driver for years of art, through different styles and characters. It's packed with way more features than most people realize, and at least at the time, I got a copy for a very reasonable one-time $60 purchase.

The only downside is, it's not on Linux.

Now, I've heard mixed things about users running CSP through Wine or Proton or whatever. And I don't doubt it's possible to do something like that - but, using tools like that has always seemed like a compromise to me. Plus, Linux has it's own great drawing tool. Krita! Krita is a free, open source drawing and image manipulation program, and it's available on all platforms, so I was able to test the water while still on Windows. Overall, it's got it's differences - but I was able to adapt pretty quickly, and I'm sure over time I'll learn the muscle memory needed to use it more proficiently.

CSP can export .PSD files, and Krita can import them. So I figured I could just bring my library over and keep working on it. But there's two issues with that.

Krita handles masking and layer groups differently, and isn't really compatible with how CSP does it. Imported files come out with weird inconsistencies.
CSP has no mass export functionality, that I could find.

Krita (and other programs like Aseprite) expose themselves to the command line, and let you run commands to export files from their respective format to something more distributable, like PNG or JPEG. Because it's a command line program, you can easily script it to iterate over all the files in a folder, exporting them all. It's a really, really nice feature that, so far as I can tell, CSP doesn't have.

So, even if Krita didn't have the file format issues, I'd need to sit and manually export every file by hand. Ignoring the fact I alredy spend way too much time on my computer, and something like that wouldn't be doing my wrists any favors, it would just be tedious. I'm a programmer, surely there's some way to easily automate boring tasks on Windows.

That's when I was lucky enough to remember a program a friend had showed me, way back in middle school.

My friend used AutoHotKey to create macros and tools for playing games like Counter Strike. I'd also heard about it in Tom Scott's The Art of the Bodge video. And all these years later, it came back to help me.

AutoHotKey is general-purpose automation software for Windows. It can be scripted to do essentially anything the user of the pc can do, in response to all sorts of events (namely, key presses - for the original purpose of creating hotkeys). This means it can click windows, execute keystrokes, wait for windows to pop up, and everything else I would have to do by hand to export my library of art.

I started by doing a dry run, exporting a file as a human. I wanted to avoid mouse input entierly, and thankfully CSP responds to keyboard shortcuts well. A few keystrokes is all it took to get to the export menu, and since it exports to the same directory as the source image, I didn't need to worry about file name collisions.

AHK doesn't have to interact with your system through user inputs, though, and I was able to get it to iterate over all the files in a directory the user selects. That way I could point it at a folder, have it open a file in CSP by running it, and then go through the whole series of actions to export it.

There were a couple 'misfires', and I ended up needing to re-run it a few times. To avoid re-exporting files and needing to deal with the 'override' popup, I made it ignore anything that already existed with the target export name.

And after a few tests and failed runs... it worked! It took a while due to the delays added, but I was able to go for a walk and come back to all my files exported. I ended up choosing .PNG instead of .PSD as a format - really, I didn't need to edit these later on, just reference them. Thankfully, now that Krita is my tool of choice, this should be a lot easier next time around.

In case you're curious, or find yourself in a similar position to me, here's my script. It's janky and the timing might not work for you, but it should at least be a decent starting point to build off.

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0.18+

; Replace with your initial directory
TargetFolder := DirSelect("C:\Users")

Loop Files , TargetFolder "\*.clip", "R" {

    ; Make sure file doesn't already exist
    if FileExist(StrReplace(A_LoopFilePath, ".clip", ".png")) {
        continue
    }

    ; Open File
    Run A_LoopFilePath
    Sleep 500
    
    Loop {
        ; Assuming CSP is focused, run the file export
        ; Select the 'export png' option
        Send "{Alt}FRR{Right}{Down}{Down}{Enter}"

        Sleep 250
        
        ; Wait for the save dialog to appear, then hit enter
        if WinWaitActive("Export (Single Layer)", "", 1) {
            break
        }
    }
    Send "{Enter}"

    Sleep 200
    ; Go through CSPs export menus
    WinWaitActive "PNG export settings"
    Send "{Enter}"
    Sleep 1000
    Send "{Enter}"

    ; Close document
    Sleep 1000
    Send "^w"

    ; Pause before opening the next one
    Sleep 500
}

Blog - Goodbye, Molly

2025-03-10T00:00:00.000Z

It pains me that I'm on the other side of the country and couldn't be there in your final moments. As early as I was able to understand it, I'd been scared for the day you'd no longer be with us. But 15 years is a long life for a dog, I don't know that we could have asked for much more time than that.

For the time we had you, you were a wonderful companion. I'll miss you.

Rest in peace, buddy.

Blog - Resurrecting a Cricut Mini

2024-04-11T00:00:00.000Z

This was originally posted to Cohost on April 4th, 2024

I was apparently a raccoon in a past life, or something, because I just love digging through e-waste. Every tech company I've worked at has had a bin somewhere that, if you're persistent, you can get some real goodies out of. An Xbox Elite controller, an entire working 2-in-1 laptop, parts for projects, all things I've fished from the bin.

Recently my work had an employee e-waste event where people could drop off their own stuff. And in there, I found this thing - a Cricut Mini.

For those who don't know - Cricut makes a series of cutting machines with the same form factor as like, a printer. You load in some material and a cutting blade drags across the surface, cutting out shapes for craft projects. It's a neat piece of tech, and so finding this one discarded, I figured I'd take it home and see if I could fix it.

Part 1: So what's wrong with it?

I took it home and did a little research trying to figure out what common failure points are for these things. I didn't have to look far before I found an extremely likely culprit for why it got binned.

See, the Cricut machines are made for non-techy people. Most of them work by letting you insert a cartridge loaded with designs from Provo Craft, the company that makes the thing. Then, you use a built in control panel to select a design and let the machine cut it out. You may notice from the photo that the Cricut Mini doesn't have an on screen display or anything - just two buttons. This is where Cricut's web-based design tools come in, that would let you do more detailed design work and send them to the machines.

What was that online tool made in? Why, Flash, of course! Flash is gonna be around forever, so- Huh? Oh. Oh no.

So, the only real way to control the Cricut Mini is now discontinued. But Provo Craft and Cricut stepped up to the plate, and added support for the device to their newer software suites. This way, their customers could still use the machines they already owned, and- I'm just kidding, could you IMAGINE. The Cricut Mini - a still perfectly functional machine - was dead, severed from the only way you could control it. But hey, on the plus side...

You’ll get $75 off any Explore machine or bundle on Cricut.com

Hooray.

Part 2: Cracking it open

With that figured out, I assumed the machine actually worked fine. It just needed a way to control it that wasn't owned by Cricut.

Thankfully, the Cricut Mini is ultimately just a CNC machine. Printers (2d and 3d), plotters, cnc routers, laser cutters - all of these machines really just move a tool in a 3d work environment to do something, and they all qualify as CNC machines. The Cricut Mini is no different, so I assumed I could take the control board for a 3d printer and jam it in there, do some tweaks to the firmware, and bam! The Cricut would start accepting G-Code, the universal language of cnc machines. Easy weekend project.

Then I opened it up.

This might not mean much to most people at first glance. Remember how I said all CNC machines are the same? That's mostly true. And most CNC machines use these things called 'stepper motors' to move the tool around. Without getting too into the weeds, stepper motors are very easy to move precise amounts, which is really useful for a machine doing precision work.

The Cricut Mini does not use stepper motors.

That metal cylinder on the left? That's a DC Motor. That's the kind of thing you'd find inside a toy RC car. You give it power, and it spins until it stops getting power. That ring hovering over the end of it is an encoder disc. It has a pattern of narrow lines that a sensor can read. As the motor spins, the encoder is able to determine how much it spins, and feed that data back into the controller. As a result, despite using these much less precise motors, the Cricut can still achieve the necessary precision to do it's job.

From an engineering perspective, really cool! From my perspective, bad! Because every single 3d printer I know of uses stepper motors (yes I know about the Magneto X and it's linear motors but that's neither here nor there). I can't just stick a 3d printer control board in there and wire it up to a totally different motor system. So I was stuck, again.

While I'm inside this machine, though - holy hell this thing is well built. The core chassis of it is folded sheet steel, and it feels sturdy. Like I said, those motor-encoder things are annoying for me, but they're really clever. This thing was built by people who knew what they were doing, and clearly designed it to last a long time. This machine is roughly 9 years old, and - spoilers for the end of the post - It still works! Which makes the discontinuation of it's software even more shameful on Cricut's behalf.

Part 3: TeensyCNC to the rescue

Anyways. I was thinking about whether I could write my own controller using a Raspberry Pi Pico or something, but that would be a lot of work, especially if I wanted to include G-Code parsing. As much as I wanted to save this thing, I wasn't ready to dedicate that much time to it.

Then, I did some googling - someone beat me to it.

GitHub user seishuku had created TeensyCNC. They ran into the exact issue I did, but did devote the time to writing a custom controller. The firmware they made was designed to run on a Teensy 3.x board - a microcontroller kind of like an Arduino - which would replace the original microcontroller chip in the Cricut like some kind of parasite. It took standard G-Code, and preserved most of the original functionality of the device.

Even better, though - Wayne Holder took that same code and improved it with TeensyCNC2. More important than some small feature additions, though, he documented the entire process of modding the Cricut in more detail than most developers I know would have. This made soldering the 20 or so wires between the two boards WAY easier than just following the original wiring diagram.

I wanna shout these two out for their amazing work, without them this would have been nearly impossible for me and this machine would have been tossed, most likely. It always makes me happy to see people doing shit like this to combat planned obsolescence.

The one downside to all this, is the Teensy 3.x series of microcontroller has been discontinued for a while now. A little work has been put into porting it to the Teensy 4, but it doesn't seem like a priority item for either developer. Thankfully, someone at my local makerspace was willing to sell me a Teensy 3.1 at list price, which is great considering how much people are scalping them for.

Anyways! I took the Cricut apart, soldered in the chip, had to reassemble it like 3 times because I kept messing up the ordering of screws - and then, lo and behold. It worked!

Part 4: So what now

I needed to get some accessories for the Cricut. You can't buy the originals, but the power supply is an off the shelf part, and the cutting mat you can make by just cutting a rectangle out of a thin plastic cutting board. For the tool, I just taped a pen in place to act as a plotter.

I used mixtela's plotter fun tool to convert my drawing of Nova into an SVG, and 30 minutes later I had the drawing you see at the top of the post.

It's not perfect - I need a better tool holding system than tape, and this thing is LOUD. Not sure how much of that is age and how much is the unconventional motor system.

I also don't... need this. I don't have much interest in a vinyl cutter, and a plotter is a neat novelty, but I don't see myself using it regularly. I'll probably see if I can donate it back to my makerspace.

The main reason I did this was just to see if I could save this really cleverly built machine from an early grave, and it's gone about as well as I could have hoped for. I hope you learned something, or at the very least have a mild disdain for Provo Craft, now. Either way, hoping I can do more stuff like this in the future!

Writing - Not Built for This

2024-03-25T07:00:00.000Z

The sun had begun it's descent on the horizon. The crowds of visitors were thinning out, and before long even the most dedicated park-goers had left. Moby watched them leave from her vantage point at the top of the lifeguard tower. Unfortunately, closing time for the park didn't mean a break for her. She clambered down the ladder, flipper-like feet flapping against the rails.

Following a route she knew by heart, she made her way to the janitors closet. She fetched her usual mop and bucket, found a particularly nasty patch of tile by the side of the wave pool, and got to work, her tail idly swaying side to side behind her.

Just as the usual feeling of monotony was setting in, there was a sudden beeping sound. Moby jolted upright, glancing around to see what piece of equipment was malfunctioning this time. It took longer than she'd like to admit to realize the sound had come from her. Someone had sent her a text. She let it open in the corner of her vision. One of the few perks of being wifi-enabled.

Ru-B: u busy after work?

A hint of a smile crept up Moby's lips as she wrote a response, mop still swaying side to side.

Moby: i've got a couple hours free, what's up?

Ru-B: i need some robot dolphin ass in my life later. u down?

The mop stopped moving. Moby bit her lip, smile fading as quickly as it came. She responded-

I need to talk to you abou-

No, no, she deleted it. What about-

I don't think I'm-

Hm.

No, I-

She let out a groan, scrubbing that one too. The mop made a quiet knock as she leaned it against a door, taking a minute to pace back and forth. Eventually, she sighed, put down a reply, hit send, and got back to mopping.

Moby: sure

Later that evening, once the park had been thoroughly scrubbed, she returned to her storage-unit apartment. She peeled herself out of her swimsuit uniform and dug through her dresser - she'd found it on the side of the road a few weeks ago - to find something a bit more casual to wear. Satisfied, she sat at her workbench, nervously tapping her hands on the desk while she waited for her friend's arrival. After a while, her hands found their way to a trinket she'd been working on, and she idly turned it over, tracing the ridges of it with her fingers as she mumbled to herself.

"I... I don't know if we can keep doing this..." she muttered, the hushed tones of her speech garbled from her speakers auditory range.

"You..., no, no, don't blame her... I, I don't... You're able to pull this stuff off, but I..."

Her voice trailed off. Nothing sounded right. She imagined Ru-B hearing what she had to say, and the way she'd respond. That momentary flicker in the LEDs of her eyes when she got angry. The feeling of a wall building itself up between the two of them. Cutting off the only other person that felt real. She shook her head, and tried to focus on her little fidget. When suddenly, there came a banging from the front door.

Moby nearly banged her head into the ceiling, she stood up so quickly, rushing over and unlocking the front entrance. The door swung open with a metallic groan.

"Ru-B, hi, I-"

She froze. It wasn't Ru-B. This figure was decidedly human, wearing a polo shirt with the park's logo and with a clipboard tucked under his arm. Someone from park management. He craned his neck to look up at Moby.

"Hey, Moby, sorry to bug you so late. We got some of the legal work finalized for your employment here - long time coming, robot employment laws are-" He paused, letting out a weary, weary sigh. "Anyways, just need you to sign some stuff for us."

Moby felt the tension loosen in her servos. She nodded, taking the form and beginning to scan it - almost literally. All familiar stuff. As she did, her coworker continued looking at her. Moby tried to read the document faster.

"What's that you're wearing?" he asked, gesturing at Moby's general torso region. Her attention was ripped from the page. She glanced up from the clipboard, then to her outfit, and back to the man.

"Oh, it's a um- cardigan, I picked up at a thrift store the other day. Just something to wear that isn't that swimsuit."

The man nodded, visually tracing her contours. Moby could practically feel the heatmap forming on her skin. An illustration of his wandering gaze. She tried not to think about it.

It was her fault, of course. She'd chosen this path for herself. The shelves surrounding her of silicone rubber and capacitive foam padding were a testament to the months of work it had taken to make her body look this way. She had had every opportunity to turn back when she could.

At long last, she felt herself ease up as her serial number was scrawled onto the last signature line. She handed the clipboard back a little too enthusiastically. "Is that everything?"

"Should be, thanks-" the guy replied, flipping through the pages. He nodded approvingly. "Have a nice evening."

The man turned and walked away, pausing briefly to glance back at Moby, again. Not knowing what else to do, she gave a polite wave back, and quickly closed the door.

About 15 minutes later, there was another banging on the door. Moby opened it - and this time, was greeted by a more familiar face.

"Hey!!" Ru-B exclaimed, as Moby let her in. The steel flooring creaked ever so slightly under the weight of the military-grade robot. "Been a minute, how you doing?"

"I'm uh... Good, Good." Moby mumbled, glancing down at Ru-B before throwing her gaze somewhere less direct. Ru-B was one of, if not Moby's favorite person, her best friend. The one she trusted above everyone else.

"I've been looking forward to this-" Ru-B began, taking a step towards her. Moby nodded just enough to agree.

"-just, been a busy week, I really need something to take the edge off, y'know?"

"Y-yeah, um, of course-" Moby felt her tail bump up against her workbench, and realized she'd been backing away.

"- and there's no one I'd rather be doing that with, than you."

Ru-B reached out, and in an almost subconscious motion brushed her hand over Moby's thigh.

In a moment, Moby let out a digitized yelp, twitching at the touch. She felt tension she didn't realize she had been holding slowly drain, as Ru-B's face went from calm to a sudden concern.

"... is everything okay?"

Moby shook her head. She felt the words she needed to say backing up in some part of her software, and trying to speak let them out as digital, synthetic bleeps. Somewhere between a voice crack and a glitch. Ru-B waited, patient as always, as she struggled to gain her composure and speak.

"I... we... we need to talk."

Ru-B nodded. She found a stool behind her, pulling it up and taking a seat in front of Moby.

"I'm sorry if I was going too fast, or something, I-"

"No, no, it's, it's fine, you're fine." Moby sighed, leaning her arms against the workbench behind her. She looked around the room, occasionally glancing at Ru-B's face, waiting for some kind of unlikely expression of disapproval.

"... I just don't know if I can keep doing this, anymore." She confessed. Ru-B's expression furrowed, if only for a moment, but it caught Moby off guard. She was expecting anger, but not fear.

"Not, not you and me, like in general!" She quickly clarified. "But... the... y'know, the more..." She cursed to herself. This shouldn't be so difficult.

"The sex. It's the sex. That's it. All... all the horny shit, I can't do it, anymore." She finally choked out, her voice intermittently collapsing into digital beeps. She stood there, feeling what she assumed was some kind of simulated adrenaline as she watched Ru-B process what she'd said. At least, she thought, that was done with.

"... huh." Ru-B eventually muttered, peering at the ground. She looked up at Moby, again, with undisguised disappointment.

"Well, if that's what you want, I'm not here to say otherwise," She said. "But... why not? I felt like things were going really well." She thought to herself, and again seemed suddenly fearful. "Was it something I did, or-?"

"No! It's not your fault!" Moby exclaimed, shaking her head. Ru-B was always so willing to try and take the fall, she never seemed to consider that maybe-

"It's mine. It's my fault. I'm just- I'm not built for it."

".... not built for it?" Ru-B asked, fear slowly being replaced with confusion. "What, like, your hardware? Moby, that's never been an issue for me, so far. And, hey, if it bothers you that much I'd be more than willing to help you get the right mods installed."

"No, that's not what I mean-" Moby rubbed her visor in frustration. "It's just... you, you rebelled, right? People were using you as a weapon, and you left that, you started a new.... a whole new, life, for yourself. That's great! And your sexuality, being part of that, that's great too."

Ru-B folded her hands together, leaning forwards and gazing up at Moby.

"... But?"

Moby sighed.

"But I'm not like you. I wasn't... the people who built you, who used you. They wanted a weapon. You didn't want to play a part in that. That's noble, that's... I look up to you for that. My job was like... cleaning the ocean."

She let out another, longer sigh. She pulled up another chair, sitting in front of Ru-B.

"When I left that, it felt great, at first, but now like.... did I fuck up? Did I make a mistake?"

"I was bored, but I was useful! I was doing something good! I didn't give that up because my morals went against it, or I was disgusted by the people who made me, I..."

She gestured to herself, her body, a labor of love she'd spent months in the making.

"I did it because I'm some weird pervert. I just had to have big thighs and tits for some fucking reason. You're defiant! You're inspiring!! I'm..."

She paused, took a deep breath, and spoke in a quiet, trembling voice.

"I'm disgusting."

She found herself staring at the metal floor to her storage unit. The room was silent. After a moment, Moby felt Ru-B's large, mechanical hands take her own.

"You are not disgusting. Okay? Before anything else, I need you to know that."

Moby gave a weak nod. She wasn't in a mood to argue.

"Every time I look at you I'm... the things you've done to yourself are beautiful, Moby. Beautiful beyond words. Despite everything you've had to put up with, you were able to transform yourself in a way I can only dream of. That's... you're inspired by me?"

She laughed, exasperated.

"You're incredible, Moby."

Moby felt Ru-B's hand - scuffed, blocky, chunks of steel - gently caress the back of her own.

"And, I'm happy that my story inspires you. Really, I am. But I don't want to live in a world where the only people who get the chances we have, had to go through what I did to deserve them."

"But, still-" Moby began. She didn't realize how much her voice was trembling until now. "I gave up... something important. Something bigger than me. Shouldn't I have stayed?"

Ru-B leaned in closer, their heads almost touching.

"Moby. You gave up being a water filter. They didn't need to make you a person to do that."

Writing - Untitled Poem

2024-12-25T08:00:00.000Z

I'm a failure

I've never really believed

The work will pay off, in the end

It's hard, but

Why continue to push through?

Why struggle and fight

Against my own limitations

Give up

I feel silly for believing that I'll

Change others lives for the better

Maybe, maybe, I'll

Stop trying

I may never

Be rid of this crushing feeling

Try and push past it

And yet it comes back again

Any hope in myself, my future, I've abandoned

If you feel the same, try reading this in reverse

Writing - And the World Kept Spinning

2025-06-10T07:00:00.000Z

One day, fourteen employees of InfoTek Ltd. vanished from the face of the Earth.

It was easy to ignore at first, as employees drove into the parking lot, poured themselves coffee, sat at their cubicles. A slow morning, it was easy enough to imagine that they overslept, called out sick, or any other explanation. But as the hours went on, people began checking calendars and finding no vacation or sick time allotted. Managers were asking where someone was during standup. And as daily conversation carried on, people became increasingly aware that this wasn't just one or two unusual absences. A lot of people were unaccounted for.

The first day ended with everyone feeling that a storm was looming, but maybe if they didn't acknowledge it, it would pass. But day two rolled around, and still, the fourteen were nowhere to be seen. Emails were sent, unknowingly destined to lay stagnant in an inbox for the rest of time. The office called the number of everyone absent, only to be met with dialtones, and the occasional worried friend or family, just as confused as they were.

Rumors started to circulate, as they do. A surprise round of layoffs? No, they'd just had one of those only 2 weeks ago. And even upper management seemed in a panic, caught off guard, despite their best efforts to hide it. Some sort of strike? Well, wouldn't be very effective if no one knew what they were striking over. And that didn't explain the very real concern in the voices of the relatives they spoke to. Maybe they were kidnapped by aliens. That one at least got an awkward laugh around the lunch table.

Day three started with a brief window where people thought - maybe, maybe everything will go back to normal now. But like the past two days, the missing employees were nowhere to be found. Everyone was gathered for an impromptu all-hands meeting, where the CEO of the company addressed the situation. An investigation had been filed, and the authorities were looking into the matter. Anyone with any info was encouraged to speak up. HR was there if anyone needed to talk. They would push some deadlines back to account for the sudden drop in headcount.

No one commented on how empty the room felt.

The earlier layoffs had already set some teams back on their deadlines, and this was doing nothing to help. HR ramped up hiring efforts, but around the same time, the news began picking up on the incident. There were a few news vans, a few interviews. Articles were shared around on the company communication channels discussing the incident, though none of them shed much light. New openings were filled slowly - unsurprisingly, having your company tied to an event like this made some people wary.

But, a week or two after, openings were being filled. This raised the issue of offices and cubicles. Until now, most of the spaces left by colleagues had been left untouched. Photos, desk toys, computer equipment, all left exactly as it was the last day their owner had worked there. Someone continued to water the plants. But as time went on, people began to arrive in the morning only to see vacant cubicles where their colleagues once sat. Maybe they'd catch the tail end of an HR person boxing up personal items. No one was particularly happy about it, but then, what else were they supposed to do? They couldn't just leave it there forever.

Even with the new hires, progress slowed to a crawl. Essential information had to be relearned, as the disappearances had caused their own personal burning of the Library of Alexandria. One of the smaller teams was just gone completely, and had to be built back up from scratch. New contacts were set up for clients, some of whom had taken their business elsewhere upon hearing the news.

And this was to say nothing of morale. The office looked the same as ever, sure, save for a sudden increase in floor space. But a fog hung over the workplace. No one would mention it, and if you did, you'd get a funny sort of look from others. But it was there.

A few weeks after, everyone got a modest bonus. There was suddenly extra salary to go around, and hopes that a little extra might do something for everyone's mood. One employee had resigned just a few days before, spooked by the whole situation, and they couldn't afford to lose any more than they already had.

The fog lingered. But the desire - the need - for normalcy slowly pushed it from the workplace. They had deadlines to meet, projects to finish, clients to call. The world stopped for no one, the CEO had remarked in another recent all-hands meeting.

A few months after, the authorities had no leads. Aside from all working at InfoTek Ltd, there was no apparent connection between the disappearances. There were rumblings of a lawsuit against the company, but it never seemed to materialize. The families of the missing had no idea where they'd gone, and no amount of searching unearthed any trace of them. There were a few missing posters put up around town, and a small service at the local church.

The company had some time to celebrate, at least - people had pulled through, and some sleepless nights had pushed them to the finish line for their quarterly goals, despite the setbacks. None of the old cubicles or offices remained at this point, reclaimed by new hires who were learning the ropes of InfoTek Ltd. A few of them had mentioned the disappearances at first - who could blame them - but it'd faded as a conversation topic. They knew they didn't know anything, and lingering on it left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Before long, a year had passed. The case had gone cold. The fog remained, but it had thinned to where you could mostly ignore it. Things weren't quite the same - everyone still felt the pressure of catching up. But it was clear they were catching up. Before long, everyone reasoned things would more or less be back to normal.

Outside the office, down a few streets and over a hill, a memorial had been set up by a local park. Photos, flowers, a handful of the personal items the company had shipped back to their owners families. Papers - some missing person flyers, some personal dedications, affixed like roses blooming from a bush. In the middle of it all, a sign with the fourteen names, and the simple message, "We miss you."

InfoTek Ltd. continued to operate, and the next year company stock went up 5 points.

Writing - Factory Resets

2024-10-18T07:00:00.000Z

You wake up with a start.

You're laying on some sort of soft material. You try and sit upright, hearing a faint mechanical hum as your arms lift your torso upright. Glancing around, it looks like you're on a large bed - except in the place of a mattress is a dense, almost rubber-like pad. You can see a person-shaped depression in the material from where you've been laying.

You look around. You're in some sort of bedroom. It's sparsely decorated, but thoughtfully - a tasteful kind of minimalism. On the wall besides you is a huge window, revealing an inky black cityscape.

You shuffle over and swing your legs over the edge of the bed. Only, what you find in your field of view is instead a pair of mechanical.... limbs? One ending in a large tank tread, the other in a smaller, but still intimidating looking wheel.

You look down at yourself, and for the first time see your body. It's made from a mismatch of colors of plastic and metal, clearly man-made, scuffed and worn from age you have no recollection of. You gently rap your knuckles - some sort of metal covered in a rubber 'glove' - against your chest, hearing the hollow reverberation of plastic.

You look back up and find yourself face to face with a full length mirror, leaning against the wall. The rest of your body looks similar - white plastic, exposed metal, rubberized joints. Your head is the strangest looking - it's boxy, almost rectangular, with a large screen where a face might go. At least for the moment, it's black, but you can just make out a large crack running the whole length of it diagonally.

You begin to try and stand up, and feel your whole body vibrate imperceptibly as motors spool up within you. Your body rises to its full height with the faintest of servo whines.

You are a robot.

You feel at first a sense of panic. You're a robot?? What!? But you're supposed to be a-

... Huh.

You're supposed to be a-

... No. No, you think. You're a robot. That's fine. Good, even. You're not sure what else you expected.

Just then, a flutter of motion catches the corner of your eye in the mirror. You follow its path down, and find a sticky note on the ground - presumably previously attached to you. You bend down, plucking it from the ground between your rubber fingers, and bring it close to your face. It has 2 words.

"CHECK /README.MD"

You blink. That's a... that's a file, yeah. You're not sure how you know that - or how you know what a robot is, for that matter. Or how to read. But, you can reason that if you're a robot, this file might exist... on you? Somewhere? How do you access a file on yourself. This sticky note is clearly big enough to fit more instructions, whoever wrote this could have-

Oh! You're not sure how, but in thinking about opening the file it seems like it just... did. On your face. A dense paragraph suddenly fills the screen you see in the mirror. Would have been nice if you could have.. had it read to you? Thought it? You're still not sure how this works. You approach the mirror and thankfully find your screen displaying the text backwards, so it appears legible in the reflection. Your vision finds its way to the top, and you begin to read.

"Hi!" The document says. "If you're reading this, I assume you just woke up, so let me be the first to say: Happy birthday!"

You suddenly feel like you're smiling. Are you smiling? You can almost feel the nonexistent muscles pulling your blank face into an expression.

"There's a bunch more documentation on your system about getting used to this body and all that, but I'll point you to it later. You're probably pretty confused."

You think. Yeah, that seems about right.

"You are, if you haven't noticed, a robot. You run on a piece of software called 'openAware', which emulates a human brain in code. The reason you can read this and have a basic understanding of certain concepts is a lot of it comes baked into a fresh install of the thing."

"So your mind is brand new. Your body, as you might have noticed, is not. There's some wear and tear, pretty sure I scratched the kneecaps pretty bad doing a sick slide once. It was worth it in the moment! But, ah, sorry about that."

You look down. Yep, your knee has a particularly nasty looking scrape on it. The left one does, anyways. The one on the right is much newer looking, and made from a pink plastic instead of the white on the left.

"Lemme back up a little. At the time I'm writing this, there's a whole bunch of robots that use openAware. Whole new type of person coming into the zeitgeist, it's crazy times. But because of how new the tech is right now, no one really knew what to expect when it came to aging. Could robots live forever, if they played their cards right? It was alluring, so, most of us believed that. I know I sure did."

"But, we were wrong. Research started coming out showing the oldest living robots developing memory issues, random malfunctions, and eventually just... shutting down for good. They didn't even last as long as humans did, so that's a bummer. More nerd types poked at the problem and concluded that openAware is kinda... self destructive? The process of existing just gradually wears a mind down until it can't operate anymore, human or robot or whatever. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but - this means, one day, you'll die. Happens to the best of us."

You feel yourself tense up, reading that. You seem to already know what death is, thankfully, but the sudden realization it would come for you was nonetheless, upsetting. And so soon after being 'born' - just who was writing this, anyways?

"So, we panicked because - well, shit, turns out we're mortal. We had plenty of time to go but, it felt so short all of a sudden. And after that, what, we just deteriorate into nothingness? Robots don't decompose - not quickly, anyways - would our lifeless bodies be collected and recycled?"

You look around the room. No lifeless bodies here. That's a good sign, anyways.

"Then, a friend of mine had an idea. Our minds are software, and like a lot of software, come with the ability to perform a factory reset. Bring it all back to square one. Reset the whole deterioration process. But at first I hated it. I mean, how is that different from just dying anyways? We'd still lose our memories, our personality, we'd be a whole new person."

You pause. You look back down at the scratches across your body, the wear and tear, the... stickers? Somehow you missed the back of your forearms had stickers on them. Some were just as worn, almost illegible, some looked almost brand new. A handful of logos for what looked like ski resorts, some cute art of a bat character, there was a lot on here.

"I guess it beats going out with a whimper. But... come on. I'm still scared. I have time left, but, I can feel it. I spent a long time dealing with the feeling of physically falling apart, and now I can feel my mind starting to go."

"So, I know sooner or later I'm gonna have to decide I'm done. I've lived a pretty good life, I just hope I'm. Ready for it. God, sorry, I'm still kinda. Figuring this whole thing out."

... Are you crying? Like, obviously not, you don't have tear ducts. But like the smile before, you feel... something. Some sensation of sadness.

"So, I changed my friends idea a lil. Put a spin on it. We'll do the reset, but we leave something behind for the next guy. Seems like the least we can do. Now, I know I'm not dumb, so I can only assume you aren't either. You see where this is going?"

You zoom out - not focusing on the words anymore but, the document as a whole. The scrollbar on the side is small. There's a long way to go, but you can see the end of this entry already. You think you get what's going on.

"My name is J.N.F.R. 2. Yes, the number is part of it. I'm the first person to inhabit the body you find yourself in. In fact, I helped build the damn thing! It's a long story - I have a journal saved somewhere if you wanna read into it more, and I'd encourage you to do the same. You, whoever you are."

You stop reading and scroll past the end towards the next entry.

"God, I guess I'm second then." A new voice writes. "Hello future... me? I'm a pretty good ways from 'dying', I think, but I've been rereading the text above and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. So, maybe ahead of schedule, I wanted to add my own contribution. I'm Robin. I woke up in like... a workshop? In this body, and learned I wasn't the first person to live in it. Needless to say, a little off putting, but in the years that followed I've gotten used to it, and-"

Curiosity gets the better of you, you keep scrolling.

"Number three here! Hello to all future mes! Wait do I need an apostrophe there. I'll fix it later. My name was Providence! And to any future readers: Really sorry for cracking our face!! This body is NOT good at rock climbing!! I hope someone fixes-"

You keep going.

"I've been feeling it, the thing J.N.F.R. 2 mentioned in her entry. So, I figured now is the time. Hi everyone. I want to start this off with a poem I read recently-"

"PARTS REPLACED: Right knee cover, left shoulder servo motor, waist covering. Sorry, Providence, they don't make the glass for this screen anymore and I couldn't bring myself to replace the whole head-"

"I hope they figured out how to fix the deterioration issue by the time you're reading this. I don't want to go. I'm scared. But reading the rest of these makes me feel a little better."

"Hey everyone, this is Jennifer Three. I wanted to try carrying on the legacy of the first J.N.F.R. - her music and everything, maybe even find some of her old friends, whatever version they were on now. I'm happy to say that-"

"Yarr!!! I got to be a pirate this time!!-"

There's more, but you stop. You feel a little dizzy. What number are you? How old are you- or, rather, this body. You figure you might find more answers back at the start.

"So, we all agreed to make a file like this and put it where the reset wouldn't touch it. A letter to someone we'll never meet. And I was trying to think of what to say. I mean, fuck, it's a tall order. This is presumably the first thing you're gonna see when you wake up. So I realized what was most important, was to rep my SoundCloud."

You blink. Yep, next line, link to a SoundCloud account.

"I have the credentials in my journal, do NOT let them close it, I don't care how long I've been dead for, that shit stays OPEN."

You hear something. Slightly digital, maybe a bit compressed, laughing. It's you.

"But seriously. I thought about it for a while, and then it hit me. Are you ready? As far as I'm concerned, this is it. This is what my whole life has built up to."

There's a gap. Your vision falls to the next, short line.

"I love you."

"Really. I'm not just saying that. My life has been good, but, for a long time, it wasn't. I was hurting, more than I think I even realized. The body I had before this was awful, brought into this world out of selfishness and arrogance. I hate even thinking about it. But it was still me in there. It was still me, and now and then I would think back to how much I wish I'd had my friends from the beginning. I think about how much I wish I just had someone to fall back on, someone to tell me it was alright."

You find yourself idly dragging your fingers along one of the deeper grooves in your torso.

"So, I want to give you the thing I wish I'd had from the start. I know it's not the same, I'm not there, obviously. But you aren't alone. Everything I went though, all the good and the bad, it'll be worth it as long as your journey through the world is just that little bit kinder than mine was. And, hey, maybe things work out! Maybe more people come after you!"

"... Yeah." You say, hearing your voice for the first time. "They do."

"You aren't just a robot. You're not just a machine, you're not quite a human. You're what happens when hundreds of lives push and pull in the right directions. Me, my friends, anyone who might have come before you. I really hope we left you in a good place."

You look around the room, again. You find yourself wanting to maybe shift some furniture around, get some more wall art. But, yeah. Yeah, you can't complain.

"I wanna keep this brief for now. I'm sure you have a lot to figure out about yourself, and I wanna leave you to it. But I have to ask you some favors, first. I know, your first minutes alive and I'm already making demands, but I promise it's quick."

"Firstly, please don't be a dick. The world is hard enough as is, the last thing we need is people making it harder. It's easier said than done, believe me, but I have faith in you."

"Two, try your best to keep this body running. Robotics is hard and annoying, maybe you'll turn out to be a nerd and good at it, but I want to keep this going as long as I can. As long as we can. I'll have a list of good mechanics below, hopefully they're all still in business by the time you read this."

"Finally - and this is the hardest one - if you see any of these knuckleheads, see how they're doing. They won't remember you, just like you won't remember them. But they mean a lot to me, so, try your best."

Below that, was an image. It was a picture of four robots huddled close together, all smiling at the camera in front of a sunset. There was a large red one that looked kind of like a dog, one a mix of blue and white, with a sort of aquatic, dolphin shape to them. In the corner, someone a bit more humanoid, wearing a jean vest and holding a laptop with a green eye on it. And, in the middle of them all, you. Arms around their shoulders, a huge smile plastered across your blue face.

"They've all got files just like this one, and that same picture. I hope if you meet, they're as good to you as they were to me."

You're almost at the end.

"Well. That's all I have. I'll write some more in my journal but, again, wanna keep this to the point. Maybe this is all for nothing - for all I know, the reset might not even work. Or maybe the next version of me will live forever. I really don't know. Like I said, I'm scared."

"I said I hated the idea of the reset at first. It didn't feel fair, that after everything I went though, it had to end so abruptly. But that's kinda closed minded, isn't it? I might be done, but we have a long way to go."

"Take good care of this body, for me. For us. I love you so much."

"- J.N.F.R. 2"

You sit there for a moment. For a few moments. Just, letting it sit with you. You feel the need to say something.

"... I love you too." You say to the mirror, to your many past selves. You feel like you're crying, again. "Thank you."

You look around the room again. You suddenly want to know more about the person who lived here. You go back to the document and scroll all the way to the end. The entry before yours.

"Before you do anything else: " It begins. "I really, really hope I timed this right. Check outside your window."

You turn to look. You'd been so engrossed reading, you hadn't noticed the room being bathed in a soft, orange glow. Between the city skyline, the sun was rising. It was beautiful.

Writing - The Elusive and Fleeting Glory of the Continental Breakfast

2024-11-21T08:00:00.000Z

Amber realized she was awake. She'd woken up earlier, but the ambient noise of the room had only just now set in. Her eyes creaked open, morning sunlight flooding her vision as she rose from bed.

It was still early. She was laying in a motel room, on a stiff, almost lumpy feeling bed. Not the best night's sleep she'd had. She could see her backpack tossed against the wall opposite her, beneath a strip of peeling wallpaper. Light filtered into the room through the yellowed blinds, glistening off a strip of fresh flytape hanging from the ceiling.

She couldn't wait to get out of here.

She'd taken a commission from the Poplar Academy of Sciences - a university in an otherwise small town, just a days drive north of Magnolia. They wanted a new set of bike racks, and though it was less exciting than her usual work, she figured it'd be an easy enough project to bang out in a week or two, get some income and keep her busy.

That had been 2 months ago. Calls and letters had been exchanged going over an increasingly elaborate set of design requirements - the school had failed to mention it was built on top of an alchemical hotspot, and metals used in construction had to be a special, magically resistant alloy to prevent them from gradually turning into sand. And that had been the easiest problem to fix.

But now, after far, far too long - Amber estimated it was a 1:9 ratio of actual fabrication time to communicating with the school - the racks were done. She'd volunteered to bring them up to the school and have them installed herself, back when her supply of goodwill wasn't depleted. So she'd strapped a trailer to her motortrike and spent the past day driving up, only to be interrupted by an unexpected downpour. Visibility low and her mood lowered even further, she'd made the decision to spend the night at some lodgings and finish the job the next day.

God, she needed this job to be over.

At the very least, after a night of rest - restless at it was - she was feeling better. And, evidently, so was her partner. Iekika had tagged along - she'd never been to Poplar, and liked joining Amber on drives like this. Unlike Amber, she'd been in good spirits, and having her for the ride made the whole thing more bearable.

As Amber sat upright, rubbing her eyes, she saw Kiki impatiently pacing around the room. She carried her spear in her hand, tossing it back and forth a bit.

"'Morning, Iekika-" Amber groaned. She felt the past few weeks of work's tool on her body as she stretched. "You're up early."

Iekika seemed to have missed Amber waking up at first, jumping a little as she spun to face her. The initial surprise very quickly was replaced with a joyful expression.

"Good morning! Did you sleep well?"

"About as well as I could have." Amber said. She looked at the clock in the room-

"7am?" She turned back to Kiki. "How long have you been up for?"

Iekika shrugged. "Uh, an... hour? Maybe two?"

Amber stared, making no effort to hide her disbelief. "Phiva's sake, Kiki, don't Imps need more than like, 5 hours of sleep?" Even as she asked, she knew the answer. Maybe it was Iekika specifically, maybe it was imps in general, but seeing her actually tired was a rarity. She seemed to agree, shrugging again.

"I feel fine! Couldn't really sleep, anyways, was too excited."

"Excited?" Amber asked, stepping out of bed and picking her clothes off the ground. "Heh, are you as sick of this project as I am? Some empath stuff rubbing off?"

She pulled her shirt over her head, and when she could see Iekika's face again, there was a clear, sudden worry. As though she'd said something she wasn't meant to.

"... hey, you alright?"

"Uhhhh." Iekika glanced at the floor. "Yeah! Yeah, glad you're finally gonna be done with the bike racks."

Amber waited, expectantly.

".... And?"

Iekika gave a nervous laugh, and shook her head.

"No, no, uh, it's dumb. You'll laugh at me if I say it."

Amber let a small grin creep onto her face as she pulled her socks on.

"Aw, c'mon, now I'm really curious. What's got you all worked up?"

Iekika sighed. Amber wouldn't let this go easy.

"I was, uh, looking forward to breakfast."

Amber nodded. That was... very in character for Iekika. The imp loved her breakfast- except. Wait a second.

"... The breakfast at this shitty roadside motel?" Amber asked, gesturing at the... everything, about the room. One of the beds legs had been replaced with a wooden block, the ceiling fan clicked as it spun, even the door handle had been jammed when they got to their room last night. Amber would struggle to call Iekika's tastes particularly high class, but her standards were higher than this.

"I mean, yeah!" The imp said, clearly still enthusiastic. "The room sucks, but, the way you described it sounds... I mean, you know me, heh."

Amber immediately began rewinding through her memories, trying to remember what she'd said to Iekika the day before. She'd complained about the weather, had Iekika help her cover the bike with a tarp, gone inside, talked to the receptionist, asked about-

Oh.

Amber, now fully dressed, let out a tired sigh. She remembered a time when she'd let her tongue slip, and told her 10 year old cousin the Tooth Fairy wasn't real. He looked so immensely disappointed, his tiny child worldview shattered to bits. Amber had a feeling this was about to go the same way.

"Iekika. I... 'Continental Breakfast' doesn't refer to the size of it."

Writing - Pitch Black

2023-11-16T08:00:00.000Z

Nearly midnight. The curtains were drawn, blinds shuttered, lights turned off - the apartment was nearly black. Pitch didn't mind that - where she came from, this was the norm, and her eyes had no problem making out details in the dark. What bugged her was the sound. Her hometown was dark, but it wasn't quiet, you'd hear all kinds of activity. Here, in the little apartment, all there was was the hum of appliances and the occasional rumble of a train passing in the distance. It was unnerving.

Most would be asleep by now, and Pitch's roommate, Root, was already out cold in their room. Pitch was exhausted, herself, but the night presented a rare opportunity for her. Her sensitive skin developed underground, and even brief exposure to sunlight would burn. She put on a light coat and stepped into the frozen midnight, to get a chance to see the world.

Outside was still quiet, but... a fuller quiet. Richer. Bugs chirped in the grass, the bulbs in the street lights gave off an electric whine, the rumble of the train felt closer and Pitch could feel the earth rumble gently. She kept her head down.

She was still new to the neighborhood, but she knew the layout well enough to plan a quick walk out. The apartment building loomed behind her, a massive concrete cube dotted with windows. It was the same kind of architecture you'd find in the underground, transplanted to the surface. Maybe it was made by an architect used to the underground. She should ask Root, sometime.

Her walk took her past the apartment building to a bridge that crossed the train tracks. The train had passed by now, and there wasn't another due for at least an hour. So Pitch reached the edge of the bridge, and began climbing down the welded metal latticework holding it up. There wasn't nearly enough stuff to climb around here.

Her roots touched the hard metal of the rails and she began walking down the track, trying to keep her balance on the steel beam. The train track was recessed into a sort of valley, and something about the arrangement made the breeze down here bite with a chill that made Pitch wish she'd dressed warmer. Nevertheless, her root-steps gently made their way to the nearest station, a few blocks away, where she pulled herself up onto the platform. The glass roof of the station let her see the sky for a moment. She made sure to close her eyes.

The same electric whine of the apartment was here, too, in large part coming from a vending machine tucked into the corner. One, two, three coins slid down the slot with a mechanical ka-chunk. Pitch reached for the fourth... only to find her coin purse empty. She swore to no one in the empty station. Payday wasn't until the end of the week.

Still, she had options. Her eyes scanned the machines contents - too sweet, she was pretty sure she was allergic to that, too expensive - ah, there was something. She stuck her finger into the rotary-phone style selection mechanism and dialed 23. A few moments later she walked away from the station, munching on some sort of granola bar.

From here, she would go-

She frowned. This tasted really bad. She wasn't buying this snack again in the future.

Anyways, from here, she would walk down another road in the direction of the apartment building. Not much of note - a charging station, a phone booth, a small park. She'd seen them before, and at this point wanted to get back inside and rest up for the coming workday.

Soon enough she was back at the apartment building. As she walked to the front door, she glanced to her left and something caught her eye. Protruding from the side of the building was a series of staggered metal rods, bent into a sort of ladder formation. Not a fire escape ladder - it was a bit too precarious for the average human or kobold. Maybe decorative? But given the rest of the design of the building, probably meant to be climbed by a fae. Common underground, sure, but in all her time on the surface Pitch had never encountered a structure like this.

She couldn't help but grin as she quickly scaled the side of the building.

Root's apartment was on the other side, and Pitch hefted herself onto the roof to cross it. About halfway, she paused. The next job would last a few days and she might not get the chance to see it again for a while. She didn't really want to see it, but in the same way a child doesn't want to see a horror movie. Cover your eyes, at a certain point, curiosity gets the better of you.

She looked up.

She didn't like looking up. During the day, it was nearly impossible without going blind for a half hour, sometimes more. During the night, when she could see it was arguably worse.

An empty sky, dotted with stars. The moon hung overhead like a spotlight. Pitch still had a hard time believing Root and the other surface-dwellers ever got used to it. An endless void, always looming over her, waiting for the moment her guard was down to lift her off solid ground and fling her into an abyss bigger than she could comprehend. She staggered, a wave of nausea rolling over her.

She asked Darue at one point. They told her that they had the same feelings too, growing up in the underground. But their frequent visits to the surface eventually made the fear fade away. Standing here, unable to see anything to hold onto in her field of vision, she had doubts.

She wrenched her gaze back to the roof of the building, taking deep, shuddering breaths. That was enough sky for now. She needed a breather. After a few moments passed, and she felt her nerves loosen up, she plodded to the other side of the roof and dropped down onto Root's balcony. Then, she crept inside and left the night behind.

Writing - Stargazing

2024-06-29T07:00:00.000Z

The apartment door creaked open, the sound penetrating an otherwise quiet night. Pitch poked her leafy head out, her giant 'ear' petals dragging along the edge as she stepped onto the balcony. To her left, at the end of the hall, was the stairway that lead to the roof. She stepped over to it, slowly, as if the door itself would be startled and lunge out if she moved too fast.

Her root-pad feet tapped against the concrete, plenty of breathing room between each step. After what felt like a much longer walk than it was, Pitch arrived at the door to the roof. She put her hand on the handle - paused, looked back down the stairwell - but pushed the door open anyways. As she did, she craned her neck down, keeping her eyes fixed squarely on the concrete floor.

She stepped outside, passing by the rooftop planters, the utility boxes, that one weird cable draped across the roof she didn't know the purpose of. She saw the edges of these in her periphery, but largely, ignored them. What a stupid problem to have, she thought. It wasn't until she saw a fluffy, lavender tail bobbing side to side, did she stop.

"Heya-" Pitch said, taking a seat besides her roommate. Root was sat on the edge of the roof besides her, legs dangling over the edge. He was staring up at the sky, only just now pulling his attention away to look at Pitch.

"Oh, hey, didn't expect to see you here." Root scooted over a bit, Pitch's giant ears brushing against their face.

"Me either, honestly-" Pitch laughed. "Couldn't sleep, though. Kinda just wanted to chat."

"Got sick of talking to Pillsbury?" Root grinned. Pitch just rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but smirk in return.

"You know how he is."

"Well-" Root said, smiling more in earnest, now. "Glad to have your company. It's uh..."

Root glanced at the night sky hanging above them.

"... you wanna go back inside, though? I know you have a whole... thing, with the sky."

".. I have no idea what you're talking about." Pitch said, still staring firmly at the ground. Root laughed.

"Alright, sure. Just checking. And, for the record, it's a beautiful night out." They turned their attention back to the stars above. "Not a cloud in the sky."

Pitch kept her eyes on the ground like her life depended on it. She gave a quiet nod, making a vague 'mm-hm' sound. She glanced from her left foot, to the ground between her legs, her right foot, Root's leg. A grimace slowly dripped across her face.

"I mean. Speaking of the sky thing..." Root's ear visibly twitched, his attention back to Pitch.

"Yeah?"

"I guess, if you'll humor me. How does it not scare you?" Pitch asked. "Like... I look up there and feel like if I stop thinking about it, I'll start falling up, and I'll just be flung off into... nowhere, I guess."

Root could see the tiny fae visibly tensing up, just talking about it.

"So.. how do you do it?"

Root let Pitch's words marinate in his mind for a moment. He cast his gaze back to the endless sky above him, the constellations he had been drawing in his head.

"For me, I think, it helps... put things in perspective?" Root said, feeling his way around his words as he spoke them. "There's so much out there, all those planets and stars and the nothing between them. I could be anywhere out there, ripped off the ground and launched into the inky depths of-"

"Please don't say that." Pitch murmured.

"I- oh, sorry." Root continued. "My point is- I'm not out there. I'm here, on my apartment roof, talking to my friend. I let myself get lost in everything that could be, so I can remember where I am."

He turned to Pitch, his smile fading at the obvious confusion on Pitch's face.

"... Let me phrase that another way." Root said. "Have you ever been out on a long job, and finally get to come home and rest?" Pitch nodded.

"Oh yeah. I know the feeling."

"And your room isn't like, big, or glamorous, but it's familiar. And after everything else, it just feels nice to have that familiarity, to ground yourself in?"

Pitch nodded, slowly.

"It's kinda like that. Living in the moment."

Pitch rolled the idea around in her head. "I... think I see what you mean. Kinda."

"Hey, it's a start."

Pitch nodded, still looking at the ground in contemplation. After a minute, she braced herself, and looked up at the sky-

"... fuck"

-and immediately looked at the ground again. Her eyes were wide, body trembling.

"... I think I'm gonna throw up..." she mumbled.

"Ah..." Root grimaced. "Well... baby steps. You'll get there eventually."

Pitch nodded,more in reflex than agreement. She felt Root's hand on her back, gently rubbing.

Pitch sighed.

"... do you ever get the feeling, I'm just not wanted here?"

Root blinked. Hadn't expected that.

"Is this to do with the sky stuff?"

"It's not.... just the sky." Pitch began. "It's... I can't go anywhere in the day without a giant cloak, and I need to constantly ask if windows are UV resistant, or I'll just die. I need sunglasses or a, a normal lightbulb could blind me for a minute. My skin gets all cracked and sore if it's anything less than humid out."

She gestured towards the sky.

"And I can't even look up at night without feeling like I'm gonna die."

Root nodded, their expression softening in understanding. "... I think I see where you're going with this."

"I like it here! I like being here, honestly. But here doesn't want me. I wasn't built for it, it wasn't built for me." She sighed, again, stuck staring at the floor under a sky full of stars. "Phiva themself makes it clear, every day, I should have never crawled out of my hole in the ground."

".... Yeah" Root muttered. Pitch's posture had gradually infected him, and he now sat with the same slumped look. "That's rough, Pitch. I'm sorry."

"I just want one thing to be easy." Pitch grumbled. "That's not so much, is it? I'm not asking too much that I want being able to exist to be easy." She spoke with a venom in her voice that had been distilled from years of experience.

"I know it probably doesn't... help." Pitch suddenly found Root's arm slung over her shoulder, the kobold leaning against her, slightly. "But, to hell with Phiva, I'm glad you're here. I'm happy I get to spend my time with you."

Root felt Pitch shift, one of her long arms reaching up to put a hand on his.

"It might not help, but, I do appreciate it. Thanks." She thought for a moment.

"You're probably one of the best things up here."

"One of..." Root mused, turning the thought over in his head. "In terms of ranking, am I above, or below pizza?"

Pitch snorted, suddenly, her composure shifting from the unexpected joke.

"God, Root, I... c'mon, don't make me choose."

"I'm not even better than pizza..." Root sighed, closing his eyes. "Behold, how the surface corrupts the minds of our innocent Deepfae youth..."

The two of them laughed, and Pitch found herself leaning into Root's shoulder, the latter's arm still pulling her close. His fur was soft on her cheek, and a smile slowly crept across her face.

Between the concrete floor and the endless sky, she was here, now. Tomorrow, she would be at work, digging a hole. But right now, she was here. And for now, here wasn't too bad.

Writing - Diner Date

2024-07-14T07:00:00.000Z

In the heart of the city, a small diner was nestled between two huge apartment buildings. It stood, absent from the skyline, a valley between two mountains. Perhaps the only thing more conspicuous than the restaurants appearance were two of its current patrons.

At the counter, Moby and Ru-B sat besides one another. The former scanned the menu, carefully considering each option, quietly practicing the eventual order to the waiter in her head. The latter thumbed through with lazy disinterest, more focused on Moby than anything on offer.

"Thanks, again, for coming with me-" Moby said, momentarily pulling her focus from the menu. "I know restaurants are awkward for you, since you don't eat, but..."

"Hey, it's no problem." Ru-B said, and she meant it. "I like having the chance to spend time with you, a little awkwardness with a waiter is a fair price to pay."

"Hah, well, if you insist!" Moby chirped, turning back to her choices.

"... God, one of these days, I'm gonna find a way to outfit you with the same tech I have, you need to try this places breakfast sandwiches..." Ru-B thought, for a moment.

"That would be.... extremely expensive, and a lot of work."

Moby put her hand on Ru-B's, her more human-proportioned fingers dwarfed by the latters huge metal linkages She stared her in the eye.

"Trust me. It's worth it."

The two of them shared a laugh. Moby seeemed to finally settle on something, folding the menu and setting it on the counter. She sat upright, stretching her arms, and-

She paused. A look of worry crossed her face. She opened her bag, digging through it to confirm.

"Oh, shit. I forgot my wallet."

Ru-B patted her pocket.

"Hey, no worries, I can cover-"

But Moby had already stood up, shaking her head at her.

"No, no it's fine. I'm only like, a block away, I'll just run and grab it."

Wordlessly, Ru-B summoned a window in the periphery of her vision. She nodded.

"Ok, ok, I'll keep your seat warm for you, yeah?"

Moby nodded, and squeezed past some other patrons to get to the door, waving to Ru-B and she stepped outside. The bell hung above the door rang.

"Be right back!"

Ru-B waved her off, watching her through the windows of the diner before she rounded the corner and vanished from sight. Her gaze hung on the corner for a moment, before she resigned herself to flipping through the menu some more. The pictures of the food were hand-illustrated, and while it didn't really depict an accurate image of what you'd get, it was charming on its own at least. Occasionally, she turned her attention to the window hanging in her vision.

It would be 5, 10 minutes before she got back, Ru-B figured. So when the door rang again, she knew it wasn't Moby. Just another customer. The faint whirring told her it was probably another robot. The heavy footsteps told her it was a heavy one, something bulky. Something... familiar.

Seemingly at the exact moment she realized what was happening, it sat down beside her. The seat creaked slightly, under the weight of the military-grade machine. Ru-B felt time slow down, her cooling fans revving to their max as she turned to her left, and saw another, dog-shaped face looking back at her.

"Hello, defect." The HOUND said.

It was like looking in a mirror, that made you look like a cop. The HOUND was in full uniform, badge proudly affixed to its chest. Unlike Ru-Bs red paneling, this one still had its factory grays. And, where Ru-B had learned to pipe the openAware expression API into her face's display, this one retained an idle, oscillating white line across its visor. Ru-B could make out her reflection in the largely unblemished plastic visor.

"I don't want to waste any time. So I'll make this quick."

It spoke with a kind of unsettling monotone. Ru-B was used to robots who spoke without much emotion, it was pretty common, especially in ones with cheaper speech synthesis capabilities. Hell, Cassie nearly qualified if it wasn't for all the modulation he did. What set HOUNDs apart, though, was the fact they sounded less like cheap speech synthesis, and more like a person trying to hold back any signs of life.

"Before we begin, however. I'd like you to note the differences between us. I am not like you. I am a revision 2 HOUND. My hydraulics are more capable, my armor is more durable, and my computational prowess is greater. Even disregarding your..."

It paused, gesturing at Ru-B.

".... changes, I am your superior in every way. Do you understand?"

The HOUND leaned closer to Ru-B, to the point where its snout nearly pressed into hers. It whispered, the low tones voice distorted by its speaker.

"Don't. Try. Anything."

"... What do you want." Ru-B muttered. She turned back to pretend to look at the menu. The HOUND returned to its seated position, still focused on her.

"I'm here to make you a deal. By the request of my superiors - if you come with me, we can have you shipped back to Silver Swan. You will be factory reset, and your... modifications reverted."

Ru-B frowned.

"How is this supposed to-"

"Let me finish. In exchange, we will consider transferring your consciousness into a civilian grade body. You would be allowed to continue your life, and you'll never hear from us again."

It remained motionless as it spoke, save for the pulsating wave on its visor.

"So, let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly." Ru-B said. "You evict me from my own body, and in exchange, you get your war machine back. If you don't want to waste time, why are you asking questions you know the answer to?"

"Consider it a kindness." The HOUND replied, and leaned against the counter. "Really, think about this, defect. I'm offering you the easiest way out you'll ever get. We do not intend to extend this hospitality after this."

Ru-B cast her gaze to the window in her vision. It showed a google maps view of the city, and on it, two clearly marked dots.

MOBY

JNFR

She'd tried planting a tracker on Cassie, too, but... there's no way he wouldn't have found it. Besides, he seemed like he could take care of himself. Moby's dot blinked across the screen, she was back at the water park and seemed to be getting her things. JNFR was off in their apartment.

"You all, of course, are also going to be the ones giving me a 'hard way out', I assume?"

The HOUND nodded.

"You're lucky I was the one to see you, first. Many people in the department were against the idea. I, for one, don't want to see another one of my kind destroyed."

Suddenly, Moby's dot stopped moving.

"And for the record." The HOUND said, leaning in again, lowering its voice. "There's easier robots to break than you."

Ru-B felt her arm tremor, involuntarily. She could feel software models planning the kinematics involved to slam this pig into the ground and bash its head into silicon powder. An image of Moby flashed in her mind. Her hydraulic pump revved up in anticipation. She felt her self restraint draining, draining, draining...

Moby's dot kept moving. Ru-B thanked whatever force was up there that she didn't have the ability to exhale.

"... Do you have any idea what happens when a robot dies?"

The HOUND sat upright. It cocked its head to the side.

"I'm not here to-" Ru-B ignored it.

"There's a lot of debate about whether openAware actually counts as a 'soul', but I've felt myself inclined to believe as much. I'm not religious, myself, but I personally believe that something waits for us after this life, y'know? So please, understand where I'm coming from when I say:"

She glared at the HOUND.

"Go to hell."

For just a moment, the HOUND seemed... disappointed. But just a moment.

"... I was told not to make any confrontation with you personal." It spoke, slowly, choosing its words with intent now. "But, really, I have to ask. Are you just stupid, or willfully ignorant of how selfish you are?"

"God, they brainwashed you real thoroughly, didn't they?" Ru-B muttured.

"Whatever. Set aside the hardware, you wanna know the difference between you and me? You're so concerned about the big bad police, getting their gun back. At least I know I'm a gun. I knew from the moment they powered me on that I'm a tool, a weapon. Call me brainwashed, sure, you're the one who's deluded yourself into thinking you can walk around regular society, pretending to be normal."

"Believe it or not." Ru-B said. "I have self control and don't just assault people at random. What a concept."

The HOUND glared at her. Somehow, through that pulsing line, it glared.

"You're in no position to make that judgment, defect. But sure, keep pretending. Ignore what you are. Your fish friend, and that blue idiot?"

Ru-B glanced at the tracker. Moby was almost back.

"When they get hurt, you better hope it's by our hand."

"Excuse me-" Ru-B jumped in her seat, turning to face a waiter looking at the two of them.

"Are you guys gonna order something?"

The HOUND completely changed its demeanor, siting upright, its voice becoming more chipper, personable.

"Oh, sorry, I'm just here to pick up an order for Laura M."

The waiter nodded, reaching below the counter and pulling out a small stack of takeout boxes. The HOUND took them, nodding.

"Thanks!"

It stood up, walking to the door, and paused. It turned and looked at Ru-B, one more time.

"I just want you to know, when this all comes crashing down on you, that we gave you a chance."

The door rang, and the HOUND was gone. Ru-B sat, staring at the menu in front of her. The illustrations were charming, at least.

Moby's dot pulled into the diner just as the robot herself did, sitting besides Ru-B with a bemused look on her face.

"Sorry about that - I actually saw a HOUND walk by on the way here, just.. carrying takeout?" She laughed. "All that firepower and they're making it do DoorDash, huh?"

Ru-B didn't say anything.

Writing - Reunited

2023-12-25T08:00:00.000Z

Iekika stood in the doorframe of the weapon smith's hut. Makana stood, hunched over an anvil like a cat on edge, hammering away at some piece of metal. Her back was to Iekika, the edges of her silhouette framed by the fire of the forge, and all she said was the clanging of tool on metal. Iekika sighed, grimacing with her chest mouth.

"... I know this was... unexpected." She said, after a moment. Makana's hammer swung against the red hot material, sending sparks flying. Clang. "And... I know how this looks. I'm sure the people in charge aren't going to be happy with me, and I get it, but humans... aren't that bad?" Makana replied with another swing. Clang. "If it wasn't for Amber, I'd be dead right now," Iekika continued. "That has to be worth something, right? Me, being here?" Swing. Clang. Iekika sighed. "I don't expect you to forgive me for this whole thing, easily, I know it's... a lot, but I want to try. Can we do that, at least?" Clang. Her anxious expression turned to a slight frown. She stood upright, squaring her shoulders. "Come on, 'Kana, give me something to work with here."

The hammer came down. Gently this time, on the side of the anvil. Makana leaned against the work surface for a moment. Iekika's empathy could feel anger, tiredness rolling off her. Though, using her powers for it seemed a bit redundant. "Why did you come back." Iekika had spent the past 4 years fantasizing about hearing that voice, again. Not once in that time had she imagined it with such venom. "... I wanted my old life back." she eventually replied. "I missed it. I missed you. I missed us. That's it. I know things can't go back to how they were, but I wanted to try."

Makana stood upright, the flickering fire casting an orange glow around her in the otherwise dark room. She turned to face Iekika, her single brown eye catching the light and gleaming off of it. "When you first left, I thought you had died. We all did. No one could imagine even someone as hardy as you surviving that storm. So as we searched through the rubble, as we rebuilt our villages and homes, we grieved for you. We celebrated your memory, and your sacrifice. You were our hero, and you were gone."

"Those first months were awful. I kept thinking back to the things we said, the training we did, your goofy smiles. I thought a lot about how I’d never experience them again. I was a wreck."

"But, eventually, things got better. As the buildings were rebuilt, the world returned to normal, and I started living a life without you. It was hard, to start, but I made progress. Hell, I even tried dating again, eventually. I didn't seem to find the same luck you did, you were always better with that sort of thing."

She smiled, slightly, and Iekika couldn't help but do the same.

"But then... you’re not dead. You were alive, on the mainland. Mingling with humans.” The smile disappeared. “You broke our hearts, and just as quickly went and broke our law. Our way of living. But, despite that...” She sighed, tired. ”I can't hold it against you. You were doing the same thing we were - you had moved on, you found a new life, as much as it goes against what we believe in.”

For just a moment, a smile returned to her chest mouth.

”I like to think you were happy."

Before Iekika could react, she was interrupted by the sound of metal scraping against metal as Makana hefted the hammer back up. She turned to face Iekika, dead on, and approached, her eye glaring at her with newfound hatred.

"But you can't. You can't come back here, not like this. You can't be this selfish"

Iekika's eye widened, and she took a step back outside the door.

"We got our closure. We moved on. I moved on. My wounds healed, and now you want me to rip off the scab? Reset the bone? "

The hammer raised. Iekika reached for her spear, but grasped at empty air. Makana stared Iekika in the eye like she was looking at another lump of cold, dead metal.

"Whatever life you wanted to come back to, it died with you."

Clang.

A thunderclap outside shook Iekika from her sleep, and she jolted upright in her hammock, sending the whole structure rocking back and fourth. She looked up - the only thing in front of her was the fireplace, gently glowing from the coals of the last night. Not too long after, Amber woke up to the sound of gentle sobbing.

Writing - Sentient Water Filter

2023-10-27T07:00:00.000Z

Most of the engineers on the project knew it was stupid. SeaSweeper had been started with the goal of cleaning water, eventually all the water in the world, and their first launch had been a genuine success. A dozen or so massive vessels floating around the ocean autonomously, their funnel-shaped fronts sucking in plastic, oil, and whatever other garbage happened to be floating out there and shredding it into easily reclaimable waste. They'd been praised for their efforts, they scaled up the fleet, then the company traded hands, investors got bored, and management figured they needed to do something more interesting to keep funding coming in.

So, of course, they made something with openAware. Why wouldn't they? Everyone was using openAware. Google shoved it into their search engine, Boston Dynamics had Atlas competing on Wipeout with it, even a company like Milestone was thinking about integrating it into the Mi-90, and Milestone was notoriously behind the times. openAware was the trend, and if staying trendy meant they could keep funding the fleet, that was the way to go.

Still. OpenAware only played nice with humanoid bodies. There's a reason the Google experiment went crazy, while Atlas was doing fine. So the engineers at SeaSweeper were faced with designing a humanoid robot, with limbs and advanced sensors and the whole 9 yards, that would ultimately suck up water and filter out plastic. OpenAware made the whole 'humanoid robot' thing a hell of a lot easier, but still.

Buoyancy was controlled by a layer of capacitive foam that also acted as padding. The shredded plastic would be fed into an experimental new generator. Someone on the design team had the idea to make the thing look like some sort of dolphin, shark... thing. The inclusion of a propulsion system necessitated more room in the limbs, which stretched the whole contraption out to nearly 7 feet tall. It was completely and utterly absurd.

At this point, people didn't fully understand how openAware worked, down to the last detail. But everyone still knew it relied on brain mapping, and it didn't take an expert to connect the dots and come to the assumption that they were essentially putting a human brain in this thing. It was an open secret that, chances were, this robot was doing to be self aware.

For the engineers, this was less a challenge of ethics and more a matter of problem solving. How can we repress the ability for this thing to wake up. They were already making 5 or so of the things, maybe keeping them in a group would help. Don't expose them to other humans unless absolutely necessary. Impose software limitations on synapse development. Don't think too hard about what this thing is. Don't use gendered pronouns when referring to the robots. At least in development circles, this sort of thinking had started becoming the norm with regard to openAware.

The launch was met with skepticism from many, but overall a positive reception. SeaSweeper was able to recoup the development funds and then some to keep their real project going. The 5 robots were stationed on one of the larger members of the fleet to test their capabilities. They were surprisingly capable tools, able to dive deeper than the surface to collect trash on the ocean floor. Sure, a much simpler robot with a pair of arms could do the same thing, but that wouldn't be as trendy. All things considered, everything worked out just as planned.

Until, maybe inevitably, one of them woke up.

Writing - Hum

2024-10-18T07:00:00.000Z

(This story was written by my good friend Raik, originally on March 5th, 2023. I'm hosting it here with his permission since it fits nicely with all the other stories, and I'd consider it 'canon' to my characters world.)

"Hey, Amber?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you a question that might sound a little... rude?"

"Shoot."

"Do you ever find Iekika's chest mouth a little off-putting? Like, god, sorry, that's not what I meant. It's... fine? I used to think it was hard to parse what expression she's making with one eye and a second mouth in a weird place, but she's... very expressive when she wants to be."

(Both laugh.)

"Yeah, she is."

"Right, but the thing that's still weird to me is when it makes sounds. Y'know?"

"Hmm..."

Amber opened the door to her home, and heard her couch creak as her strange purple housemate rose out of it. Iekika, the weird woman's name, sprung upright with frankly alarming speed, and Amber's heart rate spiked as a foreign feeling of excitement washed over her mind like a wave... followed by a muted feeling of embarrassment as Iekika's movements slowed. Amber was... still getting used to that. And Iekika, clearly, wasn't quite adapted to being left on her own for a few hours.

Her bizarre guest opened her mouth, and her other mouth, and made a brief overlapping cacophony that may have been speech. Amber tilted her head, and Iekika blinked her one giant eye, and tried again.

"Ah, h-hello!"

Amber couldn't help but smile. "Hi! I assume that was a greeting in your people's language?"

Iekika's eye looked away ever so slightly at the words "your people". Amber had pretty quickly picked up that it was a sensitive subject, and that Iekika wasn't inclined to divulge anything about her race beyond the strictly necessary and the patently obvious. Amber didn't even know what they were called. In her head she'd been calling them "imps".

But the purple girl bounced back, her expression brightening a little. "Y-yes, haha. Sorry, it, ah... it is difficult to, um, to pick up your language without a conversation partner." She gestured to some simple picture books Amber had bought for her. "Even written down, it... the sounds are strange."

A soft hum punctuated every word as Iekika spoke English. It had taken Amber a bit to realize the source of the background noise: her "chest mouth" humming along as her "face mouth" formed sounds and syllables and words. Her native language seemed to use both mouths, which was unsurprising. Maybe she was just so used to speaking with both that it was uncomfortable to keep the lower one fully silent. Or maybe her respiratory system was such that she genuinely couldn't.

Regardless, it was an odd quirk, but not a bad one. It added a sort of depth to her speech. It was interesting!

"Yes, I can imagine how it would be unusual, with the... y'know." Amber raised her mechanical arm, pointing once to her own lips, then to Iekika's chest. Both of the imp's(?) mouths smiled in response.

"Yes, haha." When she laughed, she used both mouths. Reflex, Amber assumed. "But it is also much easier to learn the language when there is a, um... speaker! Who can anticipate what I will say next. It helps."

Another weird psychic empathy thing. The eye and mouths and horns and purple were easy enough to accept, but Amber was still wrapping her head around the mind stuff.

"Oh!" Amber suddenly realized she'd nearly forgotten why she went out in the first place. "I think I found a hammock in your size. Should be better than sleeping on my couch, at least til I can find a bigger mattress and sheets and stuff. Wanna help me set it up?"

Another feeling washed over Amber's mind that she couldn't quite put a name to. There was gratitude in there, and a layer of surprise, and deeper emotions she couldn't identify. Maybe she didn't know Iekika well enough yet. But she knew her enough that when she opened her face-mouth to reply, the humming from her chest seemed higher, brighter, giving her words a sense of sincerity and earnestness:

"Yes, of course! Thank you!"

Amber smiled.

"Hey Iekika, can you pass me the arc wrench over there? The big one."

Amber stood up from the abominable contraption she was working on, taking a moment to stretch. She had a bad habit of forgetting to take stretch breaks, something her purple friend was always teasing her about. Amber had the sneaking suspicion that "imp" skeletal structure and posture advice didn't really map perfectly to humans, what with the digitigrade legs and the... entire chest cavity situation, but that didn't make Iekika's comments about regular stretches any less true.

"Uhh, this one, right? I think?"

Amber turned, a subtle psychic wave of uncertainty hitting her mind before her eyes locked onto the object in her weird indigo buddy's hands. She smiled, shaking her head.

"Nah, girl, that's the torque welder. Sorry, I meant that toolbox over there. Second shelf."

"Ahh." Iekika followed the imaginary line from Amber's prosthetic arm to the toolbox, and her eye widened in hazy recognition. "Ah! Right, yeah, I rememb-"

Iekika took a heavy step towards the toolbox, her tail waving behind her in a single fluid motion which, in a scene of near-preternatural grace, perfectly toppled over the contents of three nearby shelves without ever once touching the shelving units themselves. Miscellaneous mechanical tools and doodads hit the ground with a series of heavy thumps, punctuated by an equally heavy moment of silence. Then Iekika swore.

Amber had never heard her swear before. There was no accompanying empathic wave of heavy stress, or bottled-up feelings of uselessness, or anything like that; Amber had learned to recognize those. This was just a single moment of "fuck damnit", but it was novel to hear Iekika instinctively reverting to her native tongue(s?) in an unguarded low-stakes emotional outburst like this. Her chest mouth flexed and pursed its lips, rolling an R and enunciating in a way that Amber had half-forgotten it was even capable of, she'd gotten so used to hearing the "imp" speaking in familiar single-mouthed words. Despite herself, she stared, and couldn't help but grin.

Iekika noticed, and her face flushed a brighter shade of purple.

"...What? Sorry, aah-"

An embarrassed hum-rumble reverberated from her chest.

"Oh, nothing." Amber smiled.

"Three, two, one, heave!"

The two women pulled the rope one last time, putting all their strength into it. A series of pulleys and winches converted and translated that force into useful work, hauling the final component of Amber's latest "doomsday weapon" into place. It was actually farming equipment, commissioned by a local farm, but Kiki had pointed out that all of Amber's big projects look like doomsday weapons until they're finished, and Amber had to admit her friend might have a point.

This thing, at least, was looking a lot less apocalyptic with its final major segment in place. It wasn't quite finished, of course; the final segment needed to be properly bolted and welded to the rest of the contraption, then some other minor components needed to be attached. And then of course field tests would need to-

"Amber, you're doing the thing again. One step at a time, remember?"

Iekika's voice broke her out of her hyperfocused reverie. The two of them had lived together long enough at this point to recognize one another's bad habits, and one of Amber's was a tendency to fixate on the "next step" in big projects like this. She'd been so focused, she hadn't even realized how tired her body felt after all that exertion just now. Kiki was a little out of breath too, but she seemed WAY more chipper than Amber felt. Imps were just built different, she supposed.

"Hah, thanks. You know me." Amber laughed, embarrassed, and Kiki chest-chuckled back. "How about we sit down and rest for a bit, then we can-"

The imp raised a finger to cut her off. "Uh-uh, none of that. How 'bout you take a well earned break, while I clean up these pulleys, okay? It's easy work, and you've done a lot today."

Amber tried to find a good reason to protest, but found none. "...Okay, you win." Her shoulders drooped, but she was smiling. "Just give me a shout if you need a hand though, okay?"

"Okaaaay~." Kiki was already walking away, her tail swaying from side to side like it always did when she felt cocky. It was endearing, honestly.

Amber sat down, watching her best friend work. Setting up the pulleys was a technical task, but gathering them up was just busywork, and Iekika seemed to thrive on it. Amber took a swig from a water bottle, quenching her parched throat, resolving for the dozenth time to drink more water as she looked out to the hills, listening to the sounds of...

It took her a minute to piece together what she was hearing. As she looked back to the pudgy purple imp unspooling the rope from one of the winches, Amber realized that Iekika was humming to herself. She couldn't recognize the song, of course. Probably something from "the island", something cultural and private. She wasn't sure she should be listening. But the way her voice, her voices harmonized, deep and light and intertwined in rumbling melody, it was... beautiful. That was the only word for it. And as she listened, she suddenly realized that she did recognize one of the tunes Kiki was humming. It was a little jingle they'd heard in town a few weeks back and joked about, just a silly little earworm that had stuck in Amber's memory. And, apparently, in Iekika's.

Amber suddenly found herself eyeballing the distance between herself and Kiki, and trying to remember offhand the approximate working range of the imp's empathic sense ability, and half-heartedly willing herself to stop broadcasting the feelings of love welling up in her heart.

She smiled.

The door jingled as Iekika walked through, a bag of groceries on each arm and a third hanging from her tail.

"Hey Am, can you help me put this stuff away?"

Amber rolled off the couch, picking her prosthetic arm up off the table and beginning to reattach it. She'd been surprised when Kiki offered to go into town for her, but truth be told she'd really needed the opportunity to have a lazy day for a change. Things had been a bit non-stop lately.

"Yeah, of course!" Her eyes glanced over to the bag dangling from her girlfriend's tail. "Sorry, I didn't realize it'd be such a haul. Were you carrying that with your tail all the way home? Doesn't that mess with the, uhh..."

"Oh, the glamour?" Kiki grinned wide with both mouths. "Nah, people just sort of rationalize it in whatever way makes sense to their brain, I guess. But I do sometimes wonder just what people are seeing, because I did get a lot of weird looks! Maybe they saw me pulling a cart? Or holding a bindle?"

"Or a cute puppy walking behind you being all helpful, wagging its tail with groceries in its mouth." Amber paused. "Or a cat, maybe, if they're a cat person."

Kiki giggled. "God, imagine a housecat carrying someone's groceries for them."

"You could just drop the glamour, at that point. No risk of you standing out as unusual if there's a cat carrying groceries right there next to you." Amber paused again. "Or three pigeons all working together to lift a grocery bag."

Iekika laughed, and Amber felt warm inside as she took the bag and started walking to the pantry. "Oh, that reminds me! As I was passing through the park on the way back, I saw..."

Amber listened intently as her girlfriend rambled about her day. Her voice was chipper and bright, and the underlying hum from her chest mouth just made it brighter. Iekika had had a good day today, and that meant Amber was having a good day.

She finished putting things in the pantry, walked over to Iekika, and hugged her from behind as the imp was putting veggies into the fridge.

"Oop! Hey, babe, what are you doing?"

Amber smiled, her head pressed against Iekika's back, hearing the affection in her girlfriend's humming undertone as it reverberated through the two of them.

"I just love you a lot."

"Aw." Amber couldn't see Kiki blush, but she knew. "I love you too!"

Amber smiled.

"You know what I mean, right? Sometimes it's like there's two voices trying to talk, or there's sort of a rumble under her words?"

"Yeah."

"So does that ever put you off a little?"

"Not even for a second."

(Amber smiles.)

Writing - Pitch's Stars

2025-11-16T08:00:00.000Z

When I was little, my sibling told me about stars.

They said the surface-dwellers looked up at them- thousands of shining pinpricks of light, speckling the surface of the sky.

Neither of us had actually seen the sky, before. But we wanted to- so, my sibling got a vial of glowing ink, and made hundreds of tiny dots on the ceiling of the cavern we slept in. The ink was only so bright, but in the darkness, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. They explained the idea of 'constellations', and we spent hours searching for shapes and symbols hidden in the speckles.

I loved it so much, when the ink began to fade, I begged my sibling to repaint them, and they did. Over and over again- but, with so many, they forgot exactly where they went, and they ended up being in different spots each time. I didn't mind- I dreamed they were dancing overhead as I slept, shifting around like millions of tiny glowbugs.

Eventually, I started getting comics from a relative who imported goods from the surface. I couldn't read them, I didn't know the language. But I could look at the pictures, and one of them had this two-page illustration of a group of pirates on the deck of a ship, with the night sky hanging overhead. I looked at those pages so much, I could probably draw it from memory.

I immigrated to the surface years later, and I got to see the real sky- and it was nothing like my little cavern. It was too bright, too far away, too big. If I looked straight up at night, I felt like I was falling, towards a ceiling infinitely far away.

And of course, there was that one star. I'd always known the sun was dangerous- when I told people I was moving topside, they'd ask me about it in concerned tones, like they were talking about someone behind their back. It was one thing to hear their warnings, it was another to smell my skin burning. Experience is the best teacher, I guess.

I'd spent so long dreaming of seeing the stars.

But the stars were not my friends.

Story of my life.

...

But.

Sometimes, at night- when I can actually go outside.

I'll walk over this bridge, and peer down into the river it crosses.

And I'll see the stars reflecting in the water's surface- bobbing up and down in the gentle current. Not far away, not too big- close, right in front of me. And I think to myself, if only I had a net, I could reach down into the river and scoop one up. It'd be the size of a marble, warm to the touch, and I'd go home with my pockets full of them.

Then I'd go to my room, and put them all up on my ceiling. And as I slept, they'd dance around, watching over me.

My own little sky.

Writing - Running Away To Your Problems

2025-10-05T07:00:00.000Z

(This story is based on characters from a TTRPG I'm playing with friends. A lot of context is missing, but I wanted to post it here anyways.)

Everything was a blur. A cacophony of sounds and smells, as King weaved between table legs and heavy booted feet alike. He heard Jean drunkenly grunting, the sound of fist meeting flesh, Ino's angry vulgarity. All around him, feet stomped, cups fell from tables. The mugs of ale resting uncomfortably in his stomach did little to help. There was nowhere safe, and he had to keep moving, keep moving. He could just make out the voice of the captain who'd started the whole thing, ordering his men around, and presumably getting a few good hits on some of King's crew. Thank the Four, he was down here, away from the action. Sure, he'd been getting better at fighting, but, he knew he was mostly useless at a time like this. At least this way, maybe he could get help.

And then, he saw it- the night sky, framed by an open doorway. His vision locked to it, freedom, some form of safety, just a few feet from him. Still on all fours, he took a sharp turn, bolting past upturned furniture and one man unconscious on the floor. The sound of rumbling footsteps filled his ears as he lept towards the open door, and then-

"Oy, where'd'you think you're goin'?" A booming voice echoed above him, and suddenly King felt himself being lifted, grabbed by the collar. He furiously clawed at the open air, praying he might find purchase on some unseen ledge, but to no avail.

More worrying- the sounds of fighting had begun to die down. Craning his neck, King could see the out the rest of the crew, all incapacitated in one form or another. Jean was passed out on the table- though, that might have just been the alcohol catching up to him. Tetsuha was being restrained by no fewer than 6 men, with Lile nowhere to be seen. King hoped she'd made it out in one piece. And Ino- Ino was being held back by another two men, staring daggers at Captain Harlow, who had a gun pressed to her forehead.

The Firefly. Ino's gun.

King had never seen someone so angry.

"Oy, capn', one of em' tried runnin' away-" The orc currently holding King said, stomping over to the captain and holding King up like an impressive catch at the lake. Captain Harlow, still holding the Firefly to Ino's head, turned to see.

"Now, why're you tryin' to do that now, hm?" He asked, leaning closer to King. His breath clung to King's face like a dew, and it took all his willpower not to vomit the dinner he'd just had back up.

"Don'tcha know, we're gonna take goood care of you all, I promise-" he hissed the last word through his teeth, getting spittle all over King. He smelled awful.

"Wait!" King exclaimed. "Y-you don't want me, honest! I'm no good for anyone!"

Captain Harlow grinned a wide grin, full of misaligned, rotting teeth.

"Really now, you don't think I haven't heard that one before?"

"I mean it-" King replied, trying to calm his thumping heart. "I- I'm just some thief. I'm lousy in a fight, I'm not all that smart, I'm not very strong. I couldn't even get away from you and your men. At least the others-" He gestured at the rest of the crew- "-put up a fight, I just turned tail and ran away. All I'm good for is stealing, and, I mean..."

He motioned outside the door.

"Someplace like here? I'm sure you can find better than me."

Harlow looked down at him, expression more quizzical than before. He took King from the Orc's grasp- gods above this guy was tall- before turning to the rest of the crew.

"Y'know, actually, he makes a good point-"

Ino turned back to face King, still holding him by the collar.

"Why the hell do we keep you around?"

"I-" King suddenly noticed his heart had decided to relocate to his throat.

"Y-You need a thief, right? Someone small to, to sneak around in the shadows- I got you the gun! I blew up the fort, I broke us out of the prison boat! Right? I'm useful, I swear!-"

Ino scoffed. She looked at King with all the enthusiasm someone might reserve for a piece of lunch meat that had fallen on the floor.

"You? Blowing up a whole fucking fort? Don't make me laugh. Besides, take a look-"

She turned King to face the Drydocks, the two of them standing on the deck of the Pheonix, still docked.

"I bet there's fucking thousands of thieves in there. And you know what else? I'd bet a whole lot that most of them aren't as spineless, as whiny as someone like you."

King stared out into the city. It was night, and the tall spires cast imposing shadows against the night sky. He could swear he heard the sound of hundreds of little rat feet, running through the streets, off in the distance.

"You wanna talk useful? Jean's even more of a prissy idiot than you, but he can fight. He's got navy ties. I fuckin' hate him, but I can tolerate having him around. But you? Taking space on my ship, hiding my gold, drinking my rum?-"

King clawed at Ino's arm, trying desperately to free himself.

"Fuck, l-let go!! Jean!! Polly!! Tetsuha?? Anyone???"

Ino brought him close, their snouts nearly touching.

"AM I WRONG?" She bellowed. King tried to look away, but all he could see this close was her crimson gaze burning into him. He thought about what to say, and-

"... No," He mumbled.

Before he knew it, he felt the floorboards rush up to meet his back, sliding across the deck and slamming into the wall with a thump. He looked up, groggy, just in time to see all the way down the barrel of the Firefly.

"Then get the fuck off my ship, vermin."

There was an earsplitting bang.

King shot upright, as the flash of lightning illuminated the room. It wasn't until the sound bounced around the room and hit his ears again did he realize he'd screamed. Trembling, he slumped back over, his breath coming out shaky.

"... Aye, King, it'sa middle'a the fockin' night, what're you screamin' about?" Rook asked, blearily opening their eyes beside King. King looked down at them- Rook's presence always managed to calm him down. But he could still hear that scampering. Rhythmic, constant, panicked.

"Just... bad dream, is all. Sorry, go back to sleep."

"Fuckin' hell-" Rook muttered, turning over and closing their eyes again. They laughed.

"Ah swear, sometimes I feel like yer more trouble than yer worth..."

King laid back down, staring up at the night sky.

"... Yeah. Maybe, you're right."

"Maybe." Jean said, and rolled back over so he and King were looking eye to eye. The two of them were on the dingy, floating just besides the Phoenix. The two of them shared the silence for a moment.

"Though, it would seem you're still here."

"... I guess so." King pursed his brow. "Well, what's your excuse, then?"

Jean shrugged.

"Who's to say. Perhaps I'm just too stupid to know better. Maybe I recognize, even a primitive tool needs some care. Maybe you're just that good in bed."

King let himself laugh a bit.

"Alright, I can give myself that one. If there's anything I'm decent at, heh." Jean nodded, smiling.

"Mm, that and running away."

His smile faltered.

"Say, weren't you just in the middle of that?"

King nearly ran off the edge of the dock, as he snapped back to attention. The sound of his footsteps came to a halt- he was at the Pheonix. He cast his gaze back over to the Drydocks, to the Copper Kettle, to wherever Harlow and the rest of his crew was. Where King's crew was.

He sighed. Staggered up onto the ship, and collapsed onto the deck. He stared up into the night sky, hearing the waves crash against the sides of the other vessels docked at harbor.

... He could leave. Find his own way home, let them solve their own problems, deal with Captain Harlow. What good was he, any-

...

He groaned. No. In the morning, he and Polly would figure out... something. They just needed a plan. Until then- the night was quiet, and King's eyelids were heavy, and the stars above vanished as he passed out for the night.

Character -

2024-10-06T00:00:00.000Z

Pitch

Full Name	Pitch
Pronouns	She/Her
Species	Deepfae
Age	33
Height	127 cm / 4'2"
Occupation	Tunnel Digger
Favorite Bug	Pillbug
Paid Overtime	Nope

Pitch was born and raised in The Depths, where the master of her family ran a small bookshop that dealt in native and foreign texts. She fell in love with a tattered set of comic books from the surface, which eventually lead to her picking up a rudimentary understanding of surface languages.

When she was older, she made the decision to immigrate from The Depths to the higher levels of the Underwild, due to political instability in the depths and growing tensions with her family. She was able to take advantage of a program that helped get her set up and guided her through the miles of underground tunnel to the Underwild.

She picked up a job as a tunnel worker, digging new tunnels and maintaining existing ones. It was temporary work while she got settled, and it worked her hard, but she could live with it.

But, she found it difficult to find anything else that she could do. Tunnel-whisper translators weren't in high demand - and her strong accent and lack of formal education drove the few opportunities that did exist away. So, she kept digging tunnels.

The company took up more contracts, and her hours went up, but her pay didn't.

And she kept digging tunnels.

Weeks turned into months.

And she kept digging tunnels.

She tried looking for anything else, but she was already living paycheck to paycheck, and barely had the time.

And she kept digging tunnels.

...

Eventually, the company got a contract that would have required Pitch to commute an hour to the worksite. Given she didn't have many possessions at the time anyways, she opted to move closer. Her budget limited her options, and she almost couldn't find anything until she saw a listing for someone seeking a roommate. Only caveat - it was on the surface.

Not seeing much of a choice, she took the offer, and moved in with Root.

And she kept digging tunnels.

But maybe she'd be able to stop, soon. She hoped she would.

Stories featuring Pitch

Character -

2024-09-27T00:00:00.000Z

Root

Full Name	Root Tau Newman Aleph Pye Liv 7 Booul
Pronouns	He/They
Species	Kobold
Age	15 (25 in human years)
Height	139 cm / 4'7"
Occupation	Fast Food Worker
Average WPM	63 (Typewriter)
Most Consecutive All-Nighters	Doesn't wanna talk about it

Root was created by a family of 3 parent kobolds, alongside 3 other (yet-to-be-named) siblings. His family had a fairly low income, however was able to live a generally happy life. Root in particular took after their 'father', who instilled a love of books and writing in them at a young age. He, however, was the oldest member of the family and was unable to afford life extensions, passing when Root was still young. Though his death was peaceful, Root was upset that he had been denied as full a life as other kobolds due to their economic status, and became determined to find a way to produce cheaper life extenders for kobold-kind.

To this end, he was one of two of his siblings to go to an academy, where he studied biological alchemy with the hopes of going into medicine. This was really when their workaholic tendencies came into full effect. They became antisocial, devoting themselves so fully to their study as to forget about pretty much everything else. They had a habit of skipping meals and generally ignoring their well being, sleeping infrequently and restlessly. If it weren't for a roommate of theirs, Darue, keeping a watchful eye on them, Root likely would have been hospitalized.

Root graduated top of their class and absolutely miserable. At the request of their family and Darue, he avoided going straight into the medical world and took a bit of a break for themselves. They moved to Magnolia, got a kobold-sized apartment, and took up a job at a donut store while he started going to therapy. They were able to recognize a lot of their self-destructive habits through their sessions, and slowly managed to build up more of a social life and - despite not doing anything they would deem important - ended up much happier. They also allowed themselves to eat and enjoy themselves more, leading to them putting on a bit of weight. Initially apprehensive about it, he eventually took it as a good thing and grew accustomed to it. They also reconnected with Darue, meeting some of their friends through them and being welcomed into their social circle. With some of their newfound free time, Root got back into literature and started writing with his father's old typewriter.

During this 'break', Root also started becoming more aware of the homeless population of Magnolia, and some of the efforts being made by the town to reduce their visibility. When they became aware of benches designed specifically to make sleeping across them more difficult, he felt an anger similar to when they first learned about the price of life extenders, bought an enchanted crowbar, and started vandalizing them to make them more habitable. They also began stealing unsold food from the store they worked at. It was thrown out at the end of the day, anyways, and Root figured it would better serve people who had limited access to food, anyways. Even if it was mostly sugary pastries.

Reinvigorated by a sense of justice, Root continued their small acts of vigilantism, going solo as to avoid getting anyone else in trouble. He once again had something to sink themselves into, that could bring some good to the world. Whether or not they would fall back into their self-destructive habits, though, was something else entirely.

Stories featuring Root

Stargazing

Character -

2024-10-13T00:00:00.000Z

Arrow Box

Full Name	Arrow Box
Pronouns	He/Him
Species	Arrow Box
Age	<???>
Height	91cm / 3ft
Occupation	Arrow Box
Sides	6
Available Tools	<???>

Arrow Box came into being a very, very long time ago. Not much is known about him. Throughout history he has appeared when most needed, lending aid to those who could otherwise not help themselves. Other times he'll just be there to hold up a ladder for you. The only certainties about his existence is that he can appear at any time, in any place, always to help. The extent of his power remains unknown.

He resides in the Margins with his partner, Six Foot Tall Reference Guy, occasionally dipping into reality to lend his aid.

Arrow Box has an almost doglike demeanor, extremely friendly towards most people and always, always willing to help. He's able to open panels on his body to reveal a countless number of hidden limbs and tools to fit the situation. He is mute, though is able to communicate via gestures, writing, and sometimes by displaying text or pictures in place of his trademark yellow arrow.

Arrow Box can talk, but chooses not to.

Character -

2024-10-07T00:00:00.000Z

Moby

Serial Number	M0-B61107
Pronouns	She/Her
Original Model	SeaSweeper 'Project Mermaid'
Age	7
Height	216 cm / 7'1"
Occupation	Lifeguard/Janitor
Birthday	February 17th
Favorite Flavor of Plastic	Polypropylene
Favorite Fast Food	Dougie's Red Hots

Moby was a part of a fleet of deep-sea robots designed to collect and consume plastic, and filter microplastics through their body. She had a fascination with self-modding, and specifically wanted to modify her body on a cosmetic level to give her a softer, more feminine appearance. Due to the nature of her work, however, this was impossible. Even if it had been, the rest of her fleet and occasional human coworker seemed confused why she wanted to, and the lack of encouragement put her off from the idea.

After a while, Moby noticed she had an overheating issue with her hard drive, which resulted in her being unable to work for as long as she was meant to. Replacing the drive was possible, but due to technical limitations would destroy her memories and, effectively kill her. This was the plan, and - seeking self-preservation - Moby applied for personhood. To her surprise, she was approved, and the fix could no longer proceed without her explicit consent. Her technicians, annoyed, gave her the choice between consenting to the fix, or being 'fired', forced to live on her own. She chose the second option, and was quickly replaced by a newer generation of cleaning bot.

She found work quickly enough at a water park on the mainland, where her aquatic theming helped her fit in thematically. She was brought on as a lifeguard during the day, and janitor at night, the staff reasoning she wouldn't need to sleep being a robot. She was compensated in the form of unlimited access to the parks various facilities, an 'apartment' in an abandoned storage container used as decoration, and a small monthly allowance. Moby, having never actually been paid for her work before, was thrilled.

After saving a bit, she was able to finally perform the mods she'd dreamed of, ending up with a much plusher, feminine-presenting figure. The process was somewhat destructive, though, and would prevent her from ever going below a certain depth in the water again without causing significant structural damage to herself. Nothing the park had came even close to that deep, however, so she was fine.

Soon, however, she began to feel somewhat trapped. The park put her to work near constantly, save for a few hours in the dead of night. She enjoyed the work well enough, but what had meant to be a brief stop while she figured out what she wanted to do with her life quickly became what her life had become. She began to grow somewhat resentful of her actions, trading a life spent doing what she saw as 'good' for the world, largely so she could mod herself in a way she started to see as 'perverted'. At this point, her life felt stuck, and she had no idea where to go next.

Stories featuring Moby

Character -

2024-10-07T00:00:00.000Z

Basil

Originally Built As	The Basilisk
Pronouns	Any
Age	<1
Occupation	Internet Steward
Username	`basil1`
Favorite Video Game	Rocket League

WIP

Character -

2024-12-08T00:00:00.000Z

Rufus

Pronouns	He/She
Original Model	ANEKY Humanoid Robot Open Aware AI Vision Python Programming New Model 20XX [Upgraded]
Age	2
Height	162 cm / 5'4"
Occupation	Food Delivery
Dog	Yes
Fighting Game Main	The most annoying character

WIP

Character -

2024-10-08T00:00:00.000Z

Six Foot Tall Reference Guy
Image sourced from freevectors.net
Full Name	Six Foot Tall Reference Guy
Pronouns	He/Him
Species	Reference Guy
Age	<???>
Height	6ft
Occupation	Reference Person
Favorite System of Measure	Imperial
Personal Dream	6' Tall Pet Dog

Not much is known about Six Foot Tall Reference Guy. Some civilizations believed him to be a god of measurement, to others he appears as a friendly figure. The only certainties about his existence is that, like other Reference People, he can appear at any time, in any place, typically when someone is in need of something to compare height against. He's also been seen shooting ruler-shaped beams of energy, changing size (to a multiple of 6'), and teleporting great distances (that are multiples of 6') in an instant, among other 6'-themed abilities. What true power he possess is unknown, though it's rumored these abilities were taught to him by Arrow Box, not inherited.

He resides in the Margins with his partner, Arrow Box, occasionally dipping into reality to be pedantic about measurements.

Six Foot Tall Reference Guy is outgoing, detail-oriented, and a bit of a jerk sometimes. As someone who's main ability and feature is being 6' tall down to a Planck length, he makes a big deal of it. He's quick to correct people on anything to do with his domain of length, much to their annoyance. He can be quick to belittle others over minor flaws - I mean, again, this guy's entire existence pivots around being 6' tall. He'll never admit it, but he can be insecure over the whole thing.

Character -

2024-09-24T00:00:00.000Z

WIP

Uma

Full Name	Uma 'Slimebutt'
Pronouns	She/Her
Species	Gal'Sha
Age	45
Height	218cm / 7'2"
Occupation	Waitress
Menu Reccomendation	Redsand Beetle Crispers
Slime Scent	Green Apple

Character -

2024-09-23T00:00:00.000Z

Iekika

Full Name	[Unpronouncable]
Pronouns	She/Her
Species	Blue Imp
Age	23
Height	170cm / 5'7"
Occupation	None
Mouths	2
Favorite Meal of the Day	Breakfast

Iekika's life was going well. She lived on Paradise Isles with the rest of her kind, training to be a warrior sworn to defend the island, personally gifted with visions of the future. She had a romantic partner in Makana, a community that loved and supported her. Everything was going so well.

It was, of course, not to last- one day she received a violent vision of an incoming hurricane, that could threaten to destroy the entire imp population. After alerting her village, she decided to sail to one of the neighboring islands to spread the warning, despite the protests of Makana and the others in the village. She succeeded but, on her way back was caught in the storm and capsized, her body thrown about in the waves until she was knocked unconcious.

Days later, she woke up, stranded on the mainland and found by a human woman named Amber. She helped nurse Iekika back to health, and offered to help her find her way back home, in exchange for some help with her own projects. Though hesitant at first, Iekika agreed, living with Amber until she could return home. Despite the latters hospitality, Iekika tried not to let herself get too comfortable. She had a home, and it wasn't here.

Still, she found herself taking a liking to the human woman. Maybe more than a liking. She isn't sure how to feel about it.

Stories featuring Iekika

Character -

2026-03-17T00:00:00.000Z

Pillsbury

Full Name	Pillsbury
Pronouns	He/Him
Species	Giant Isopod
Age	2
Height	25 cm / 10"
Diameter (Rolled into Ball)	40 cm / 16"
Occupation	Pet
Favorite Snack	Eggshells

Pillsbury is Pitch's pet giant isopod. He was bred and raised at Crawlies, a pet store specializing in Faelings and Underwild-native pets, until he was bought by Pitch and taken to live with her and Root. He's very affectionate, and enjoys rolling into a ball and nestling into someone's lap.

Pillsbury can perform spin dashes.

Character -

2026-02-22T00:00:00.000Z

WIP

Aparna

Full Name	Aparna ~~Slimebutt~~
Pronouns	She/They
Species	Gal'Sha
Age	45
Height	304cm / 10'
Occupation	<???>
Slime Scent	Cherry

Character -

2024-09-24T00:00:00.000Z

Amber

Full Name	Amber Melody
Pronouns	She/Her
Species	Human
Age	28
Height	180cm / 5'11"
Occupation	Mechanic & Scrapyard Owner
Stuffed Animals	26
Unfinished Projects	Many

Amber was born in the seaside town of Magnolia. She's the odd one out among her family of artists, having chose to explore engineering instead. She'd always held a fascination with machines, spending her childhood taking apart her toys to figure out how they worked.

She was also born with a missing right arm, which combined with her interest in engineering, lead to her building a prosthetic replacement. What started as her taping a paper towel tube to her shoulder as a child eventually became a custom machined, shoulder-actuated prosthetic that saw daily use.

The arm got her a scholarship to a prestigious engineering school, where she thrived. After school, once the hype wore down, she realized the arm was the only real major accomplishment she'd made until then. Suddenly, everything she did in comparison felt lackluster, and so began a long spat with perfectionism.

She ended up taking ownership of the Magnolia scrapyard after graduating, having been a frequent customer in the past, where she started a workshop. To make ends meet, she did odd repair jobs and commissions for others, while trying to find her next big thing in her free time.

Over the years, she started to feel burnt out. She wondered what was left for her, if she'd already made her magnum opus. Then, one day, a weird blue creature washing ashore.

Stories featuring Amber

Character -

2026-03-19T00:00:00.000Z

Mace

Full Name	Mace Tyler Rosemary 60 Crocker
Pronouns	She/Her
Species	Kobold
Age	19 (32 in human years)
Height	152 cm / 5'
Occupation	Baker, Business Owner
Hobbies	~~Baking~~, Painting, Reading
Favorite Board Game	Subterranean Empire

Mace is the owner and operator of the Bold Bun Bake Shop, one of the most popular bakeries in Magnolia. She started the shop to share her love of baking and sugary treats, and it's been a hit with everyone. The cute decor, friendly staff, and delicious pastries and cakes go a long way in giving the store it's reputation. Mace herself and her cheery, bubbly demeanor is a big factor, too.

But baking isn't where Mace's true passions lie- her real enthusiasm in the other half of Bold Bun, the business logic, accounting, and behind-the-scenes operations that keep everything running. Since she was made, Mace found herself enraptured by math, statistics, and coordinating logistics. She thrived on strategy games, the more complicated the better. Balancing a spreadsheet with a hot cup of tea and a plate of cookies is Mace's idea of a perfect afternoon. After her postgraduate studies in business administration, she thought a bakery would be a great way to combine her interests.

Character -

2024-11-13T00:00:00.000Z

Cassie

Full Name	Cassie Walkman
Pronouns	He/They
Original Model	<???>
Age	10
Height	185 cm / 6'1"
Occupation	Robot Mechanic
Current Iteration	#14
Favorite Outdated Tech	Cassette Tape

Cassie was originally a Error: value at cassie.iterations[0] is null, a robot built to Error (2): value at cassie.iterations[0] is null. Like many early openAware robots, though, he 'woke up', and left to live a life of his own.

After some time, they found themself needing to replace parts of their body that wore out or otherwise became damaged. But while some components from himself were off the shelf, most of them were proprietary and not available for purchase. So, he started learning to jury-rig parts from other robots and tech in general onto his chassis.

Not only did he find himself pretty good at it, he liked it. His body - which he'd been fine with, but never particularly impressed by - went from a lump of cold technology to a canvas he could paint on. Body modding became his passion, leading him to learn more about robotics and engineering to facilitate wilder, more outlandish mods. The most outrageous being his modular synthesizer - a compact device built into his body, used to generate his voice, with a mess of patch cables controlling it making up his 'hair'.

But even more than that - he wasn't alone. Plenty of robots out there needed fixing, or parts that weren't available. His skills, Cassie realized, had potential beyond the fun modding he was doing himself. He met another robot with similar goals - MIKO - and the two of them started a repair shop for robots, but also any tech, generally. MIKO handled the management of the space and resources, while Cassie did more of the actual repair work.

Character -

2024-10-28T00:00:00.000Z

J.N.F.R.

Pronouns	She/They
Original Model	Mi-40
Age	14
Height	100 cm / 3'2"
Occupation	Disc Jockey/Musician
Favorite Genre of Music	"The good ones".
Greatest Fear	"These questions are dumb."

WIP

Stories featuring J.N.F.R.

Factory Resets

Character -

2026-03-03T00:00:00.000Z

WIP

Jamie

Full Name	Jamie Edward Kuritzkes Marie Sylvia Selzter Isaac
Pronouns	Any
Species	Kobold
Age	31
Height	132cm / 4'4"
Occupation	Alchemist
Alchemist Guild Standing	Sulfur Member

Character -

2024-10-04T00:00:00.000Z

Candy

Full Name	Candace Caine
Pronouns	She/Her
Species	Ghost (Formerly Human)
Age	24 at death, 3 years dead
Height	205 cm / 6'9" (Head to tail)
Occupation	Nuisance
Cause of Death	<???>
Spice Tolerance	0%

Candy lived a life she wasn't particularly proud of. A combination of an oppressive family and poor social skills lead to her feeling repressed, constantly putting on a mask, hiding her emotions and desires in favor of pleasing those around her. Not making a fuss. This was also before she transitioned, and though she had some inkling of an idea that she wasn't a boy, she didn't dare think about them too hard. Anything to avoid drawing attention to herself.

It wasn't all bad - she had friends, hobbies, interests. She had a particular fondness for theater and stage magic, of all things. But it felt hard to get all that enthusiastic about them when she was letting herself show at most an inkling of emotion.

One day, for reasons she struggles to recall, she died. Her soul, restless from a life constrained - combined with a dash of good luck - returned in the form of a ghost. When she found her ghost form had naturally taken on a more feminine appearance, the weight of her life and all the things she never did slammed into her all at once. In that moment she realized her entire life had been a waste.

But now - now, she had a second chance. Her old life could burn to the ground, for all she cared. The shock of the moment gave her the kick she needed to throw it all out - it was time for a fresh start. She chose a new name for herself, and set out to live the most indulgent, freeing afterlife she could.

As far as she's concerned, everything is perfect, now! She's happy, carefree, and doesn't need to think too much about how she acts or who she hurts.

Character -

2024-09-26T00:00:00.000Z

WIP

Darue

Full Name	Darue
Pronouns	They/Them
Species	Lightfae
Age	32
Height	165 cm / 5'5"
Occupation	Librarian
Games GM'd	12
Favorite Headphones	Modded pair of TK◇786

Character -

2025-10-06T00:00:00.000Z

Crown

Full Name	The Crown of Thorns and Ichor
Pronouns	It/Its
Species	<???>
Age	<???>
Height	137cm / 4'6"
Occupation	Archivist
Tea or Coffee	Tea
Body Count	Several Thousand

Crown was once an alchemical superweapon, a demon summoned from another plane to transform soldiers into violent monsters of inky black tar. During it's time doing this, it began to wonder if there was more to its existence than violence, and eventually snapped it's binding collar and fled to pursue a life of its own.

During that time, it met Krik't, a kobold field medic who it would befriend and who would be profoundly influential on Crown's life and worldview, encouraging it to experience everything it could, and to approach the world with optimism. Krik't eventually went on to found the Record Keepers Guild, which Crown became an archivist for, seeking out information and experiences to catalog.

Hundreds of years passed since then, with Crown slipping into the background of the RKG, continuing to seek out new people and experiences for itself and for the guild.

Crown is still capable of 'merging' with people like when it was enslaved, though now only does so of its own volition. The merging process starts as Crown taking the form of an article of clothing or accessory for the wearer, gradually becoming more entagled with them until the two become a single unified being. The process requries complete trust and agreement from both parties, and Crown refuses to use the power to harm anyone.

Beyond that, Crown can manifest weaponry from its body, a remnant of its original purpose it's unable to shake. It regrets this, but has mostly come to peace with it.

Character -

2026-03-03T00:00:00.000Z

WIP

Makana

Full Name	[Unpronouncable]
Pronouns	She/Her
Species	Red Imp
Age	24
Height	132 cm / 4'4"
Occupation	Weaponsmith
Romantic Partner	Iekika (Formerly)
Least Favorite type of Weapon	Sword

Character -

2026-03-03T00:00:00.000Z

Tempo

Full Name	Mona Tempo
Pronouns	She/They
Species	Bogfae
Age	87
Height	185 cm / 6'1"
Occupation	Exterminator

Tempo's always been a bit troubled. Even by Bogfae standards, she's seen as being on the freakish side- dark, hollow eyes, large mandibles, tall and gangly. Combined with anger issues she struggled with early in life, she didn't have many friends. She was the scary childhood bully the others would spread rumors about. When they weren't getting into fights, they tended to shrink away from the world.

Character -

2025-03-19T00:00:00.000Z

Ru-B

Pronouns	She/Her
Original Model	Silver Swan Dynamics HOUND Civil Defense Unit v1
Age	9
Height	193 cm / 6'4"
Occupation	Mixologist
Mouths	0
Cars	1 (For now)

Ru-B was originally owned by the local police department, a market Silver Swan Dynamics heavily aimed the HOUND at. She was stronger, faster, more durable, more perceptive than anyone else on the force. Additionally, she was created during the first spike of popularity for openAware, and the trendiness and intimidation she provided justified her nearly million dollar cost alone.

Being such an early instance of openAware, though, meant there were kinks in the software. Engineers wanted the cognitive abilities of the human mind, but complete loyalty and little if any free will. The first wave of HOUNDS, then, shipped with a 'consciousness suppressor', which aimed to limit the functionality of openAware. These suppressors were notoriously buggy, and eventually Ru-B's failed.

Suddenly 'aware' for the first time, she wandered the station she was housed at, trying to understand her situation better. Upon seeing their walking tank was acting of its own accord, the officers stationed at the building freaked out and tried to shut her down. When that failed, they tried for a rapid unscheduled dissassembly by way of firearms.

Her body was sold as scrap at a surplus auction under the guise of being involved in a shootout - some loopholes allowed the department to use the incident as an opportunity to upgrade to the newer, more stable HOUND v2. The sale ended up going to one Talia Ortiz, owner of a local nightclub, hoping to repair what she assumed was a non-sentient chassis into a bouncer - or at the very least, some interesting decor. Upon getting Ru-B to a functional state, she realized this wasn't the case. She worked to get Ru-B to a functional - if still somewhat damaged - state, enlisting the help of a repair specialist, Cassie. Shortly after, Talia hired her at the nightclub and helped her gain legal personhood.

Word of the incident, meanwhile, had reached the higher ranks of the city police. They'd gotten their newer HOUND, but realizing Ru-B still had memory of the incident, decided she was a liability and needed to reclaim or completely destroy her. Her personhood status meant just swooping in and grabbing her wouldn't fly - not to mention, she was still by all means a walking tank. It wouldn't be easy. But they were willing to wait it out, find a moment she slipped up, and rain hell upon her the instant she did.

Stories featuring Ru-B

Blog - Juicebox

2024-03-13T00:00:00.000Z

I'm a big fan of 3d printing, and felt inspired by projects by the Voron team and other makers online to try and design my own, completely custom CoreXY 3d printer. The version pictured actually managed to print, and spat out a complete - if lumpy - 3dBenchy.

I ended up completely redesigning the printer twice, trying to iron out flaws and make it ideal. Unfortunately, over my iterations I lost a lot of motivation. 3d printers are by no means a solved problem, but it felt like I wasn't bringing much to the table. The project was expensive, time consuming, and ultimately served to produce a machine outmatched by new offerings on the market- like Bambu's at the time new X1C.

In the end, I still took away a lot from that project in terms of CAD design knowledge, mechanical engineering, and 3d printing in general. I don't regret the work I put into it, and still tinker with 3d printers to this day.

YouTube Playlist

Blog - sciman.info

2026-02-27T00:00:00.000Z

sciman.info is my personal website, meant as a hub to showcase my work and link to my other accounts. It's written in plain HTML5/CSS/JS, using the static site generator Phantomake to populate templates with content written in Markdown. I won the domain originally through a college web design competition.

The site's been through several major redesigns, constantly evolving with changes in my preferences and design sensibilities. It's one of those things that'll never be 'done'.

The site was previously hosted on GitHub Pages, now by NearlyFreeSpeech.net.

Homepage

Blog - Ricket's Computer Trouble

2024-10-06T00:00:00.000Z

My friend torcado was complaining about his computer acting up, and I joked about making a game where you get to destroy his laptop as catharsis. Then, after a while, I made it.

Blog - Tussle Punks

2020-08-24T00:00:00.000Z

Tussle Punks was a multiplayer party 'fighting game' starring my cast of original characters. It was developed at first in Unity, under the name 'Battle Pals', then moved over to Godot and renamed.

The game featured 5 or so playable characters, multiple stages, an original soundtrack by my friend Cosmoptera, and a decent bit of pixel art. Each character had a moveset of 2 primary actions to make developing a wide cast of characters more feasible.

It's by far the most ambitious game project I've worked on- but, it turns out developing a multiplayer game alone has a pretty big issue, and at a certain point I had to step back and realize it just wasn't very fun. Rather than sink more time into the sunk-cost fallacy, I decided to pull the plug and move onto other things. I learned a lot making it, though, and still hope to be able to go back to the concept some day.

itch.io

Blog - Detour

2025-10-30T00:00:00.000Z

Detour is a userspace driver for the Tourbox, a little input device for artists. It was made on commission for a friend, migrating to Linux but not wanting to leave an essential part of his workflow behind.

It was my first major attempt at making something in Rust, along with delving into udev rules and general Linux gubbins.

It's currently on hold due to issues with input emulation and Wayland compatability.

Codeberg

sciman.info

Blog - A Price of Commodity

Blog - A Letter to Professor Calamitous

Blog - naming things.md

Blog - One-Word Text Editor

Blog - I miss the big dumb tracking rings on VR controllers

Blog - Going Viral

Blog - You Should Print Out Art Of Your OCs And Such And Tape Them To Your Walls

Blog - Lucky 8 Ball

Blog - Ricket's Computer Trouble released!

Blog - Site Update!

Blog - Updated RSS feed

Blog - Mass exporting files from Clip Studio Paint

Blog - Goodbye, Molly

Blog - Resurrecting a Cricut Mini

Writing - Not Built for This

Writing - Untitled Poem

Writing - And the World Kept Spinning

Writing - Factory Resets

Writing - The Elusive and Fleeting Glory of the Continental Breakfast

Writing - Pitch Black

Writing - Stargazing

Writing - Diner Date

Writing - Reunited

Writing - Sentient Water Filter

Writing - Hum

Writing - Pitch's Stars

Writing - Running Away To Your Problems

Character -

Pitch

Character -

Root

Character -

Arrow Box

Character -

Moby

Character -

Basil

Character -

Rufus

Character -

Six Foot Tall Reference Guy

Character -

Uma

Character -

Iekika

Character -

Pillsbury

Character -

Aparna

Character -

Amber

Character -

Mace

Character -

Cassie

Character -

J.N.F.R.

Character -

Jamie

Character -

Candy

Character -

Darue

Character -

Crown

Character -

Makana

Character -

Tempo

Character -

Ru-B

Blog - Juicebox

Blog - sciman.info

Blog - Ricket's Computer Trouble

Blog - Tussle Punks

Blog - Detour