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Tinker Tuesday for April 15, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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I think it sounds rad. Like an alternate-universe set of Metal Gear Solid sequels.

Little bit of Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead, too. Makes sense as it’s like cyberpunk but for necromancers.

Act III might be a bad fit for a game since it relies on taking away player agency, at least until the final decision. Visions of the Mass Effect “Reapers go away” buttons, except in that series, your character has always been making a difference. There’s a real risk of not just nihilism, but unfun nihilism. I remember almost dropping A Fire Upon the Deep, despite its amazing premises, because of how bleak it felt for the protagonists to run and run with no expectation of a turn. This kind of plot can be done, but it’s not trivial!

I can’t think of much mainstream fiction which handles that sort of AI race plot. Maybe Marathon approaches it on a very fantastical, seed-that-instantiates-the-AI level. Reminiscent of Hyperion Cantos, I guess.

For less mainstream stuff, uh.

  • Animorphs: the reckoning. The fact that fic of a children’s series veers into AI value alignment is, like, several layers of spoiler.
  • Pokemon: the Origin of Species, ditto. Actually, it might be spoilers that it dips into organized conspiracy territory, too.
  • The World as it Appears to Be, a bizarre Overwatch fic. I don’t even like Overwatch, but this was unreasonably interesting. Probably the closest to your Act 2/3 plot.
  • Ra, by qntm. Double extra plus spoilers that this one involves AI at all.

I’d say these are all amazing on their own merits, but I have weird taste. For all I know you’ve already read half of them if you hang out on /r/rational. I also never read any of the Twilight or Madoka Magica rationalfics, which have a good chance of conspiratorial AI takeoff plots.