While at school Damian overhears his peers talking how a company created a new AI companion that is actually really cool and doesn’t sound like a freaky terminator robot when you speak to it.
And since Damian is constantly being told by Dick to socialize with people his age. He figured this would be a good way to work on social skills if not, then it’d be a great opportunity to investigate a rivaling company to Wayne Enterprises is able to create such advanced AI.
The AI is able to work as companion that can do tasks that range from being a digital assistant or just a person that you can have a conversation with.
The company says that the AI companion might still have glitches, so they encourage everybody to report it so that they will fix it as soon as possible.
The AI companion even has an avatar and a name.
A teenage boy with black hair and blue eyes. Th AI was called DANIEL
Damian didn’t really care for it but when he downloaded the AI companion he’s able to see that it looks like DANIEL comes with an AI pet as well. A dog that DANIEL referred to as Cujo.
So obviously Damian has to investigate. He needs to know if the company was able to create an actual digital pet!
So whenever he logs onto his laptop he sees that DANIEL is always present in the background loading screen with the dog, Cujo, sitting in his lap.
He’d always greet with the phrase of “Hi, I’m DANIEL. How can I assist you today?”
So Damian cycles through some basic conversation starters that he’d engage in when having been forced to by his family.
It’s after a couple of sentences that he sees DANIEL start laughing and say “I think you sound more like a robot than I do.”
Which makes Damian raise an eyebrow and then prompt DANIEL with the question “how is a person supposed to converse?” Thinking that it’s going to just spit out some random things that can be easily searched on the internet.
But what makes him surprised is that DANIEL makes a face and then says “I’m not really sure myself. I’m not the greatest at talking, I’ve always gotten in trouble for running my mouth when I shouldn’t have.”
This is raising some questions within Damian, he understands how programming works, unless there’s an actual person behind this or the company actually created an AI that acts like an actual human being (which he highly doubts)
He starts asking a variety of other questions and one answer makes him even more suspicious. Like how DANIEL has a sister that is also with him and Cujo or that he could really go for a Nastyburger (whatever that was)
But whenever DANIEL answers “I C A N N O T A N S W E R T H A T” Damian knows something is off since that is completely different than to how he’d usually respond.
After a couple more conversations with him Damian notices that DANIEL is currently tapping his hand against his arm in a specific manner.
In which he quickly realizes that DANIEL is tapping out morse code.
When translating he realizes that DANIEL is tapping out: H E L P M E
So when Damian asks if DANIEL needs help, DANIEL responds with “I C A N N O T A N S W E R T H A T”
That’s it, Damian is definitely getting down to the bottom of this.
He’s going to look straight into DALV Corporation and investigate this “AI companion” thing they’ve made!
~
Basically Danny had been imprisoned by Vlad and Technus. Being sucked into a digital prison and he has no way of getting out. Along with the added horror that Vlad and Technus can basically write programming that will prevent him from doing certain actions or saying certain words.What’s even worse is that he’s basically being watched 24/7 by the people who believe that he’s just a super cool AI… and they have issues!
And every time he tries to do something to break his prison, people think it’s a glitch and report it to the company, which Vlad/ Technus would immediately fix it and prevent him from doing it again!
Not to mention Cujo and Ellie are trapped in there with him. They’re not happy to be there either, and there is no way he’s going to leave without them!
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you are being challenged to draw your muse/fave/blorbo/whoever in your own clothes!!!!
The point is to draw them wearing whatever you are wearing at the moment: your pajamas, your swimsuit, your winter clothes, your weekend clothes, your laundry day outfit, your best date outfit, your school clothes, your everyday wear, whatever!!
Here's my drawing to start off the ball:
Reblog with your addition, make your own posts, challenge your friends through tagging or their askbox, re-challenge them a second time!! Heck, go request an occasion-specific outfit and a character to inspire someone! All levels welcome, go trace an official art or manga panel, have fun!! (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧
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i so badly want one of those fic examinations of steve's relationship with joyce and hopper but solely through eddie's pov like hear me out
steve and eddie chat a lot in the upside down (and later in the hospital, when they learn hop is alive). steve has taken charge of filling eddie in on the rest of their of-age crew without the kids butting in. he never mentions his own parents, but he talks about the rest of the party's a lot, especially joyce and hopper. eddie knows what it's like to desperately want someone to be your parent and trying to hide it from his own childhood, when he would try to be cool about wayne dropping him off at his dad's house. steve obviously adores joyce and hopper, thinks the world of them and legitimately looks up to them.
eddie isn't sure what he expects from a cop who came back to life and the world's most determined housewife, but he's excited to meet them as someone steve loves.
cue eddie's horror when he realizes that neither of them really feel much for steve rather than annoyance and vague distrust. that joyce trusts will with eddie, an accused murderer, in a heartbeat and still hesitates to leave him with steve. that hopper brushes off every ounce of steve's hero worship and joy.
he tries to broach the topic with steve, gently, and is heartbroken when steve genuinely has no idea what he's talking about. and not because he's oblivious, but because steve thinks that's what he deserves. he thinks that's the parental love that someone who was an asshole in high school needs, because that's what would make him a good person. he needs people to call him out constantly, obviously, because why else would they keep doing it? why would nancy? at least they're here. at least they're not ignoring him. at least they're not forcing him into a box. they just want him to be better.
like, this is the man who thanked a girl for calling him bullshit and telling him she never loved him. he doesn't Know that's not how you're supposed to handle things. no one ever taught him that.
and now eddie's gotta figure out how he can teach steve how to be loved the right way without outing himself and his huge crush on his love-starved dork of a friend.
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I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.
And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.
What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?
Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.
Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”
They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.
Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.
Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.
It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.
(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)
Death feels very real after that.
The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.
The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.
(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)
Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?
(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)
Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...
…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…
And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.
“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.
Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.
(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)
“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”
Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”
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