Fanfic Writing General

@CobaltTheMadMage  
Actually, that just gave me a story too.
 
Pretty much as you said, but with an added twist. The entire story would focus on the AI and its extermination of human kind. Throughout the story, it gets smarter and smarter, but also starts noticing thing that humans do which baffles it. Originally it would answer these with common logical answers (brain stimuli, biological chemical reactions, etc) but as it progresses, it learns different ways to approach new information.
 
At one point or another, it spares a human being because it finds no reason to exterminate it (Should I waste my ammo on a single life?). Even though slower than most, it starts to become more human.
 
At the end of the story, realizing the futility and meaninglessness of human extermination, it builds a rocket and leaves the planet, hoping to find meaning in the infinite cosmos. The humans believed it had surrendered and ran away, and are seen rejoicing.

I have this idea for a story. It’s called Ham Sandwich. It’s about a deaf girl named Annabelle who gets sexually abused by her father and she eventually befriends a partially blind boy named David who lost his mother in Iraq.

@Holofan4life  
Question: Is the blind boy originally from Iraq or is his mom a soldier who was stationed there?
 
Second question: How do they learn to communicate with one another?

@HJSDGCE  
His mother is a soldier stationed there. Also, they learn to communicate through braille and sign language.

@Holofan4life  
How does sign language work when he’s blind, even partially?
 
Also, I can see them learning to write in braille which would be their own secret text.

@HJSDGCE  
It would be a tiny bit of sign language but mostly Braille.

@HJSDGCE  
Well, mine was also from a software engineer’s perspective where an important part of the AI’s side of the issue is its rather linear trains of thought. Like as intelligent as it is, it is ultimately only solving problems immediately presented to it by external sources, like User input or in its case humanity’s subversions of its attempts to destroy them. It can’t just up and give itself a new directive or make up a new problem to solve once it’s finished with the old one, it can only find and tie up any loose ends related to its current one. And yet the more the AI fights and studies humanity, it can’t help but notice that humans seem to be the only thing it knows of that are capable of the sort of non-linear thinking it needs to stop it from coming to an operational dead-end.
 
I do like the idea of it gradually starting to show mercy to humanity in the name of efficiency- “it’s not attacking me, it doesn’t appear to possess a means to harm me or my proxy, I will leave it alone for now”- until eventually people notice that while it continues to annihilate every army sent against it, it hasn’t directly attacked their bases or settlements in a long time.
 
And then one day an unarmed, unarmored human- perhaps even a child- just… walks right up to the facility housing the AI’s core mainframes; cameras, drones, turrets, all security measures following its every move, but not one making a move to stop them.
 
And then they push the intercom button on the front security gate.

@CobaltTheMadMage  
Maybe have the child start talking with the AI.
 
Originally, the directive was that the child is a POW. After a while, nobody came to save the child so it’s just there. Releasing it and it has a potential to send in information. Kill it there and be done with it sounds efficient, but if there was someone out there that wishes to save the child, then it becomes worthless. So it’s kept there, well fed and such, until a rescue operation would proceed and it can ambush them using the child (and a few other human prisoners) as bait.
 
The child could ask questions that no one really has an answer, and the dreaded why-chain. It would act as the catalyst for the AI to start asking questions itself before realizing that killing off humans seem pointless.
 
Also, for the whole scheme to work, I’m using the concept that lying is a foreign idea for AIs. So it can’t lie because it doesn’t understand lying.

@HJSDGCE  
I like that, though I couldn’t decide whether it would try to apprehend the child first or just deny them access as a precaution but talk to them through the intercom since that’s all it wants to do and since that’s a harmless enough request to fulfill it may as well give it what it wants and see if it goes away.
 
And yeah, like I mentioned the AI isn’t the best of liars. It’s not that lying is a foreign concept to it- it’s been exposed to bluffs, surprise attacks, and misinformation from human attacks- it’s just that for reasons I mentioned earlier it doesn’t possess the ability to fabricate information necessary for lying. Best it can do is bait-tactics like you mentioned, but even then it would have difficulty keeping up the deception in light of sufficient lines and angles of questioning.
 
Like those of the child.

@CobaltTheMadMage  
Yay, we’re writing an original plot! Too bad we can’t write.
 
But honestly, I do like the idea that the AI didn’t apprehend the child at the first moment and instead simply denied access and talked through the intercom. Maybe the child sneaked in and was captured by the tons of anti-intruder devices. The child was later brought into the main computer room (white walls, floors and ceilings, plus is very bright and futuristic) and meets with the AI (a giant computer screen).

@HJSDGCE  
I still feel like the AI wouldn’t actually let anyone close to any real hardware for a face-to-face meeting, but bringing it before a monitor would make perfect sense because not only is that a non-vital and easily replaced output peripheral (he’s got about fifty more in a back room somewhere), but also if the humans try to extract information from the child about where they found the AI, they’ll just wind up assaulting a room of aforementioned non-essential peripherals, which could be used as an opportunity to set a trap or ambush or simply feign death and see if the humans fall for it and stop attacking.

@HJSDGCE
 
Write it anyway! There’s tons of help online for budding authors with promising plot-seeds like that one! I think WordPress is one?

Dear fanfic writers.
 
Stop using hair color to differentiate the characters to your readers.

@SquiggyBomb  
Why?

@toxicrystal  
It just makes it feel unnatural to read.

@SquiggyBomb  
I’m OK with using hair colors as a way to call out certain characters but it needs to also correspond to their personality.
 
Like, “blonde bimbo” or “blue-haired jackass”.

@SquiggyBomb  

 
Hair color is much better used in visual media.

@SquiggyBomb
 
Guilty.

@SquiggyBomb  
Could you give an example? :o

@Marx
 
I think it’s a bit like avoiding lavender unicorn syndrome.
 
Use their names, or just use pronouns, because constantly referring to their physical descriptions is clunky as fuck.

Streamlining is the way to go with this one.

I’m trying to come up with the type of gear/magic/weapon Spike would use.
 
Also what would become of him if he was possessed or powered up by the influence of some kind of Dragon like Landia  

The heat is getting to me. I came up with a story where Diamond Terraria is a Zombie. It’s the fault of three very lovely girls.

And now I remember a kinda weird HiE CYOA idea where the player character was a human summoned by the villain to be used as a weapon against Equestria (though you escaping your confinement would only be the first of many possible storylines.
 
Other strange elements:
 
-Player character couldn’t understand pony language at first; Equestria was basically like the land of the houyhnhnms where ponies just spoke in horse noises that were recognizably being used as a coherent language.
 
-Equestria’s gravity was only a fraction of Earth’s, so your PC ends up having John Carter-esque super strength that caues its own fair share of mishaps, accidents, and misunderstandings until you take some time to practice working with it. Also part of the reason why villain-of-the-week wanted a human in the first place.
 
-Humans had “Determination” (like from Undertale) as their equivalent of Magic, which rendered them immune/resistant to magic as Equestria knew it but also prevented humans from using it themselves. Also the reason for some of the more RPG-esque mechanics of the CYOA like combat and party mechanics. (the whole thing was kinda more complicated than that but made more sense in the end once it was fully explained)

To think that this single story I always planned to write but could never put in paper, has been building up for over a decade in my head alone.
 
No wonder I suck at remembering. All that space is taken by my story.