Ammokkx

Grimoiric Heart - A Magical Girl Adventure

"Well said, Boundless!"

As the mochi rabbits spaced the small fry away from the construction workers, flashes of light would follow soon after in pursuit. Before the Pageless had the time to recover from the recoil they'd already been pierced by a particular magical girl's arrows. Robin stood dramatically on top of a nearby building, the rain crashing down around her. After she'd announced her presence with the initial volley, Robin jumped off and twirled in the air to land next to Kanata.

"Shadows are cast by the light that shines beside them... wherever you pageless threaten our peace, we will be there to protect it!"

Robin looked around, trying to find Yuri and Ayaka.

'Please leave the smaller ones to me and Kanata. Ayaka, Yuri- try to corner their leader!'

She drew her bow back and took aim again. The rain was obscuring her vision, but the bright mochi rabbits sticking to the Pageless made for an excellent target to aim at. This way, even if their shadowy figures were obscured by the downpour, Robin could still use her ally's power to make up for that weakness.

Secundi Lux

---

---

The hallway was empty, deserted, save for Chie's shambling figure. She kept her hand against the wall for support, inching forward step by exhausting step. Chie was in no real condition to be allowed a discharge from the infirmary, especially not without some kind of support or guidance. Despite that, with nothing but the tight bandages wrapped underneath her clothes, she continued to make her way to the cafeteria. Chie wasn't very assertive, but she could put up a brave front. Only when nobody was looking would she let show just how much of a wreck her figure was. As long as the girl could keep straight and still be half aware of her surroundings, that was good enough for her.

When people began to come into view, Chie pushed herself up straighter and began to walk without support. It made her dizzy to try, and the gash in her back still made her ever-so-tempted to flinch from the flashes of pain. Still, she greeted the hall monitors with a smile, signalling nothing wrong to the outside. The only clue would be her pale, pale face.

The cafeteria she arrived at was, as expected, already filled to the brim with chatter. Most students had already long-since began eating and socializing- which was not entirely unexpected, seeing as Chie was meant to have arrived there several minutes prior. The first thing Chie needed to secure was a spot to sit, but as luck would have it, she noticed her group of friends were eating together with a spot left open. She didn't know if it was a coincidence, or if they'd left it open for her. Either one was fine, really.

A little bit later, having walked unsteady with her tray, Chie managed to secure that open spot. She greeted the group with "Good evening, everyone." Chie then noticed a mildly-familiar face among them. "Oh, you're... Aoife, right?" she said, having remembered the girl from earlier in the day. "I didn't get to tell you back in the city, but... thank you for helping us."

Chie cast her eyes down, back at the food in front of her. She was a pretty slow eater normally, but right now she hadn't so much as even touched it. She didn't particularly look okay, but aside from the lack of appetite, Chie tried to not let it show too much. She thought to start some conversation so nobody would get a chance to ask, either.

"Earlier, they told me I cleared my test. I'm... no, we're Ars Magi now. It's almost a little surreal how fast it all went." Chie remarked. "I'm still having trouble accepting it."

A pause.

"...いただきます," she muttered to herself, finally digging into her food.

Grimoiric Heart - A Magical Girl Adventure

"Ah- thank you!" Yuzu said as she accepted the book. She gently held it in one hand and double-checked the list again. "Mmm, let's see. Sei-i-run... Seirun... Seyrun..." Yuzu mumbled to herself, trying to practice her senior's name a little. She wrote down the book's return date and then gathered everything together to put it all back to its proper place. She folded her arms over the list and book both, clutching it to her chest. When Yuzu looked back to the other girl, she was looking at the window where Scheherazade had decided to perch himself.

"The wind in this city... it's a very gentle one, isn't it?" the older girl said. Yuzu looked in the same direction.

"It is, right? The people here, too. I really love this city," she replied. Even though Scheherazade was blocking her view, Yuzu looked straight through them. Contemplating her hometown like this made the tension lift off her shoulders for just a little bit- until Yuri brought her back down to earth.

"If anyone needs me, I will be sorting books or something."
"Ah- Yuri?"

Yuzu calling out to him was in vain, the boy having already retreated further in. It's not like Yuzu didn't understand how he felt, but... that wasn't a reason to act out like this, was it? Yuzu turned back to Seyrun, an apologetic look on her face. "I'm sorry... he's not usually like this. Thank you again for returning the book!"

With that, Yuzu followed after Yuri. He'd already begun picking up some of the books that other students had brought back and Yuzu noticed how large the pile had gotten. "Oh... we've really been neglecting our duties, huh?" Yuzu commented. She was still holding onto the book Seyrun had returned. Yuzu looked at her friend and said "It's a little too much for one person, isn't it? It'll be quicker with two of us, so let me help you out."

Thus- whether Yuri wanted it or not- Yuzu took a small stack of books herself to then return to the various bookshelves scattered about. "You don't have to do everything by yourself, you know?" she told him with a knowing wink.

Grimoiric Heart - A Magical Girl Adventure

Yuzu opened the door to the school's library, finding herself being the second on-scene after Scheherazade. It wasn't a surprise to find the familiar sitting there; after all, he didn't have any classes to worry about like Yuzu and the others. Yuzu didn't sit down quite yet, though. She wanted to wait and greet the others as they arrived... and there was still an awkward silence between her and Scheherazade. Yuzu greeted Yuri, then Ayaka when the two arrived shortly after she had. Just one more needed to join them now.

"Ah, Kanata!" Yuzu said as the youngest and newest among them joined in the meeting room. Kanata hadn't been on the team for long; in truth, yesterday was meant to be her first mission. "Right... yesterday..." Yuzu thought to herself. She felt her mind wander back to the day before.

---

"I won't let you get away!"

Robin's bow was drawn at Harlequin, the jester making her escape with the new grimoire in hand. She had a clean shot; all Robin needed to do was take it. The arena around her, however, was crumbling. If Robin took the shot, she'd have endanger Kanata. Stop the escape or save her friend; Robin didn't have any time to think about what the right decision to make was.

*snap*

Kanata's rope had snapped. She'd gone into freefall. "Watch out!" Robin shouted and, just barely, managed to catch the younger girl. Carrying her like a groom would their bride, Robin gave Kanata a reassuring smile. Forgoing the use of codenames, as the enemy had already fled, Robin- no, Yuzu had asked "Are you alright, Kanata?"

Kanata nodded her head and let out a quick "Mhm," before following it up with "What about the others?"

With the reassurance she was okay, Yuzu let Kanata down onto her feet. "Don't worry. Yuri and Ayaka are tough. Let's go check up on them," Yuzu told Kanata and grabbed her hand, positively pulling her along back downstairs to meet up with the rest of the team.

---

Thinking back, Yuzu didn't regret her choice of saving Kanata. Even if it meant letting the enemy go, her friends were more important. Maybe that's why Yuzu, unbeknownst to herself, gave the other girl a soft, reassuring smile. 'It's okay,' that smile said, something Yuzu didn't have the chance to tell her the day prior. Not that many words could've been exchanged in the moment either, with Scheherazade not waiting long after everyone's arrival to explain his mysterious silence on matters. Those two girls- the Darkkeepers- were under his guidance once. Now, however, they were corrupted by the forces they fought against.

And even after the explanation was finished did the party not get a moment's rest. An older girl approached the group, asking about returning a book. Yuri sprang up as the first to answer, but...

"You know there's a return slot at the return desk you could've just slid it in there, but no worries. What's your name?"

"Y-Yuri, that's a little..." Yuzu tried to interrupt, but she couldn't quite bring herself to finish the sentence with "crude" or even "unrefined". Yuzu was quite a bit more timid when she wasn't busy fighting monsters. While Yuri was a boy, his straightforwardness was still a bit... out of place. "I'm actually the, um, club president. Checking books in and out when the librarian isn't here is actually my task... err, I'll go get the list!"

Yuzu did as she said she would, gone for only about a minute as she searched for pen and paper. When she returned, Yuzu diligently compared the name of the book in the mysterious girl's arms to the ones on the list. "Let's see... It's this one, right?" Yuzu pointed at the spot she was looking at with her pen. Yuzu tried saying the name written down aloud, but it was clearly a foreign name. She wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. "The one under the name, um... Leviathan See-run?"

Secundi Lux

---

"S-Selma?!" Chie yelled out in surprise and worry as the giant among them crashed into the pavement. Chie's increased gravity was still in effect, meaning Selma crashed into the floor harder than she had any right to. This prompted Chie to hurriedly try and reverse the effects, which took a moment. She wanted to rush over and check to see if her friend was okay, but the girl's knees were giving out and buckled under the exhaustion. Chie's transformation became undone, the now-mundane girl having to rest her hands onto the ground for support as to not completely collapse on the spot.

She needed a moment to catch her breath, that much was certain. Chie was content with letting Rivka take the lead in talking to the two new people, occasionally glancing Selma's direction to make sure nothing was wrong. The latter still seemed lively enough, so her ars magi form must've been sturdy enough to withstand most of the blow. It was an admittedly small relief, but a relief nonetheless. One of the two new arrivals- one Noel Nilsson- seemed to take notice of Chie.

“Hey, you don’t look so good.” Noel said. She gave Chie an offer that was hard to refuse, going: “You need help getting back? I can give you a hand.”
"M... mhm. That'd be nice," Chie replied back. She lifted herself up using Noel's outstretched arm, then used Noel's shoulders as a support to be able to walk steady. Chie couldn't really tell, but she looked pretty pale. Her wound was still open, so she must've been bleeding the entire time. It was a small miracle she could stand at all.

The walk back was slow, but that was for the best. Chie was pretty weakened. She was getting a little sick of gritting her teeth to ignore the pain, so as to try distracting herself some other way, the normally-quiet girl took a moment to go out of her usual character and start up a conversation by herself.

"That... void that attacked us," she began her talk, "it was stronger, right? Why do you think it showed up?" Chie asked to nobody in particular. "And..." she continued, "could an even stronger one have come out back there?"

Nexus: The battle for one's memories.

"You're a Commander, aren't you?"

Rui, at the town square, was stopped dead in her tracks when she heard a voice call out from behind her. She turned around, finding the source to be a girl around her age, or maybe just a little younger. Rui raised up Lumia's card to show it to her would-be challenger. "Mhm. I've been looking for some others." she said. The slightly younger girl had a confident grin on her face, but Rui's was placid. Rui followed the other girl, out of the public's sight. They found themselves standing in a small side street not many people pass through.

"Open."

---

Memories

A thick fog set in around the two girls, obscuring their surroundings. No sooner than it had arrived was it gone again, the duo transported to the battlefield. A sea of yellow mist was continuously shifting below Rui's feet, some of it making it onto her platform and tickling her leg.

"So it's this place again..." Rui muttered to herself. When she went to look for Sora, Rui was made to watch from the sidelines. Now she stood on her own platform. The girl was almost indifferent as she calmly looked around, eyes lazily scanning from one end to the next. Rui's two coins appeared above her head, three for her opponent. Somehow, in this battlefield, Rui felt at ease. The reason why... she just couldn't place it. She turned her head down to the table in front of her. There, for the first time, she saw her Avatar in their own body. Lumia was standing proudly, outside of the card Rui always carried around. Rui gave her a soft smile and said: "Lumia. Can I count on you?"

Lumia turned hear head over her shoulder and smiled back. "Leave it to me!" was all the confirmation needed between the two of them. The hands of the massive clock above their heads turned to yellow, signifying Rui got the head start.

After her Color Charge, Rui wasted no time in calling forth an attacker. The turn passed to her opponent, who's own attacker forced Rui to reveal a card in her hand. As the battle went on, Rui's hand and deck were slowly chipped away at. Her cards were shaved off one at a time. Rui's situation looked desperate at a glance, but in actuality none of the cards discarded were hindering her plans. Rui remained calm and managed to easily play through it, even turning around the effects on her opponent's head with a well-timed Trap card.

"W-what's wrong with this girl?" Rui's opponent nervously began to murmur. "I've been doing nothing but attacking her this whole time, but she remains so calm...!"
"She's... looking past us," the girl's Avatar, draped in a cleric's robe, chimed in. "It's like we're not even on her mind..."

"Cherub's effect lets me use two yellow to set Angel's Strike back from the Trash onto the field," Rui calmly ignored the duo. She set up her counter to their strategies, ensuring her own safety. Rui looked up from her board. "You've won before, right?" she suddenly asked of her opponent.

"What's it to you?" the girl bit back at Rui. Their Avatar worriedly looked up to her Commander.

"What kind of opponent were they?" Rui asked.
"Nee-chan?" Lumia looked back to Rui, who didn't answer her. The face of the opponent on the other side of the field darkened.
"That's not your business," their answer sounded, "and you should be more worried about yourself. You only have-"
"...two coins. And my brother only one." Rui interrupted and finished the opponent's sentence for her. "Someone took advantage of him in his first battle. He trusted that person, yet they betrayed that trust..." she mused to herself. "One of us risks losing something precious each time we enter this field... my brother, me and you..."

Rui threw her head back and looked up, being met with the endless black void up above. "Back then, I was really angry about that. But somehow... now that I'm here, none of that seems to matter to me."

Rui's opponent was unnerved by her. But it wasn't just them: Lumia, too, could feel something was wrong. She didn't want to say anything, but the musing Rui had something cold and unfeeling in her eyes. They were like that Haruto's eyes. Lumia turned back and put her gaze towards the floor. "I think... we'll win in just two turns, Nee-chan," she told her commander, focusing back on the battle to get her mind off of the situation. Rui moved her gaze down again to look at Lumia and paused. She closed her eyes.

"...No. It's over by the next one," she said with absolute certainty.
"Aren't you confident?" the girl on the other side snippily said back. She shored up her defenses, seemingly an attempt to avoid Rui's prediction. When the next turn came around, Rui only briefly looked at her drawn cards.

"I think I understand it a little now..." she whispered under her breath, "what it means to fight for a wish." Rui raised up her head and threw forward her hand. "I'm using two Incantations: Colour boost and Heaven's Gate. The first gives me another Colour to use this turn... the second sends your field to the Trash."

Rui's yellow colour gathered and spiralled together, up and away from her table. Its collective light pierced through the three cards on the other girl's field. "N-No... you didn't have those cards earlier! They weren't in your life, or your hand..."

"...Nee-chan drew them," Lumia answered in Rui's stead. She closed her eyes for a little while. 'It's like she said. It'll be over now. But she couldn't have known that she'd draw Heaven's Gate...' Lumia pondered to herself.

"You have a wish worth fighting for, right?" Rui asked her opponent. "What is it?"

The other girl went quiet. "That's... not your business," she curtly replied.

"I... guess not. Full attack."

---

Rui shuffled along the road back home, one hand holding Lumia and the other her now-three coins. Lumia was fast asleep, exhausted after the ordeal. Even if Rui wanted to talk to Lumia, her voice would never reach the Avatar. Even so, Rui whispered "Thank you." to her.

Rui looked back at her three coins. She watched one of the other girl's turn black before her eyes, which meant Rui must have taken a memory of hers. It left her conflicted, but she didn't have a choice. Everyone was fighting for something, but Rui still didn't know about anyone's wish. The only ones she knew about were hers, and...

"Sora?" she muttered to herself when she thought to hear a familiar voice. There, on the other side of the road, was her brother. Rui stood still for a second, frozen with both Lumia and her coins in hand. Sora seemed to have noticed her at the same time she had him, since the boy was staring at her equally puzzled. Rui closed her palm so the coins would vanish and rushed on over to him with a smile. She was closer to their house than he was, but Rui didn't care too much- she just ran right past it.

"Sora! I thought you'd be home already... no, nevermind that! I went to the card shop, like I said. I put aside the ones I think your deck could maybe use! Here, let me look through my bag for you..." she excitedly began to share with him. Instead of waiting to show them to him inside, Rui eagerly started rummaging through her bag to find the cards she'd bought for the two of them.

Monkeys and Typewriters

Yeah, I know, good job posting in this thread about half a day after the discussion died down. I was busy, shuddup.

Either way, the short answer is: Yes, bots can create art. No, they cannot create art right now.

The issue with artificial intelligence in its current form is that it doesn't know what it's doing. We're using brute force methodology to make them guess with as much accuracy as they can what the thing they're meant to be guessing is. Note that a lot of this guessing is reactive- You give them an image of a frog and they say "I'm like 98% sure that's a frog right there". This is the most common and refined type of AI we have right now. It doesn't create anything- it's just able to recognize and react.

That doesn't mean there aren't AI that can't spontaneously create right now. Take Deep Blue, the chess computer- through playing itself more times than 100 humans combined could play in a lifetime, it's able to create this unique style of chess nobody else can with the sole purpose of winning. That said, Deep Blue is just operating on a bunch of self-gathered data, and is just recreating the most effective strategies it remembers. Still, it's a step in the right direction of "creation" and "creativity" since it did, on its own, learn how to play chess really good.

A step beyond even that would be those "image generator" bots you see. I hope you're familiar with the concept, but if you're not, this anime doesn't exist. Here you can see that the bot certainly is doing something, and creating pretty good results considering it's a robot... but there's one critical flaw: It also cannot filter out its own imperfections. Just like how the image recognition bot can say "This is 98% a frog" the image creation bot can only ever make 98% of a complete image. It'll never create a 100% truly 'correct' looking art piece because it does not inherently understand what it's actually doing, it can only guess "this is what you humans want, right?" and even that comes with the caveat of only having gotten to this result after being told thousands of times "yes" or "no". It didn't spontaneously learn anything, thus it couldn't actually create any art.

This, currently, would be the same issue you'd have for literature. While generating an image is easy (for a robot. I know how hard it is to draw.) since it's only one, large static combination of colour, creating the nuance of language itself? That's a different story entirely- quite literally, given the topic of the thread. There are story bots out there, but they're more than a little jank, because there's just one issue: Language does not make any kind of sense.

Language is inherently subjective as it is an ever-changing, continually evolving process of people adapting their vocal chords to make the other guy be gooder at ur spoken tongue. In order to write in a language, it's not enough to have objective knowledge of the words in that language: you need to be intimately aware in the exact manner and nuance of how people speak and talk to each-other... and you need to be aware of that in a subjective manner. That is what makes a text truly unique and yours; the fact you speak in the way you have adapted to based on your experience conversing with other people. If a robot analyses each of these individual voices and finds and average between them, even if we made that coherent, the 'average' would lose all possible meaning because it would sound so boring and, well, everyday. The AI wouldn't have a voice of its own because it has everyone's voice.

This is why I said "unless the AI can be meaningfully subjective and arbitrary, it cannot create art" in the status bar yesterday. AI, in its current state, does not and cannot know why it's doing things right or wrong. It's arbitrary, yes, but not with a purpose- it's arbitrary because we told it to be. Unless an AI can start actually thinking for itself, having freedom of thought, and knowing why it's doing what it's doing, it cannot ever make something we will truly enjoy without going "okay but this part's super wonky though".

Even if the premature AI we have could, by some miracle fluke, generate a piece of art of any kind that didn't have blatant flaws... well, it wouldn't matter, because it'd have generated that once. We ignore the millions upon billions of failed attempts prior, and we'll continue to ignore the attempts after, too. Because the AI is brute forcing until it finds something that works, it doesn't have a goal in mind beyond what the human behind the screen tells it to. Without approval from the human, the AI would've tossed it out and kept trying- so it's also the human element that's the deciding factor in the end.

PPQ made the point of "but we ignore the thousands of wannabe manuscripts in real life too" and, yes, but how is that relevant? Even if we didn't like those manuscripts, each and every single one of them had more purpose and vision behind them than the robot stringing random words together. Even the worst manuscript among them would be better than 100's of attempts by the bot, on the sole basis that it has more of a cohesive flow and at least makes some kind of sense. Even if they didn't, at least the author could explain why they did things the way they did, and if their answer is "idk, i wanted to be random" that's still a decision they made. The AI's answer will always be "because the data told me to" which means it will always generate predictable, meaningless results.

Freedom of thought is a critical component in creating consistent art. Even if an AI wrote the best piece of fiction on the planet, it couldn't do that twice.

A human could do that twice, and that's what it means to make art.

Grimoiric Heart - A Magical Girl Adventure

"I suppose... you're right," Robin acquiesced. "Not everyone I save is a good person. I could even be fighting evil to save evil. Neither Merlin nor Monarch are here to help me. But even so..." her voice trailed off. She raised up her bow, not to take aim, but to show it off to her opponent. "Even so, I believe in them."

---

~Memories from the Literature club~

"She looks so peaceful like that, doesn't she?"

Yuzu, Yuri and Ayaka were gathered around a table in their clubroom. They came back to celebrate after their second rescue mission, a close shave they barely got out of. Ayaka was fast asleep, her head resting inside the arms she'd folded over the table. Yuzu's comment was affectionate, but Yuri didn't give much of a reaction to it. He'd been strangely quiet ever since their victory.

"Do you think we did the right thing?" he asked Yuzu. She looked puzzled, blinking a bit.
"Huh? I... I think so, right? We saved those people and defeated the pageless..." she replied.
"But... they were Yakuza. Should we really save bad people, if they're going to hurt others again later?" Yuri asked of Yuzu. She tried to fumble something out, but...
"That's... I..." ...she couldn't give him an answer. Yuri gave Yuzu an apologetic smile.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have asked that right? I think I'll go home early today. You should keep Ayaka some company, alright?"

Yuri left the club room, leaving just Yuzu and Ayaka. Up until then, the three of them had gotten along without issue, but now, Yuri seemed to be at odds with the rest. Their days afterwards continued as if nothing had happened, but Yuzu had felt a rift forming between them. One that had taken a long, long time to heal...

---

"Back then, I couldn't give you an answer, Yuri." Robin thought to herself, never breaking eye contact with her adversary. "But now..."

The girl opened her mouth to give her answer.

"No matter who it is... no matter what they've done... I'll use my bow to protect them! I'll save their lives so they have the chance to become a better person!"

Robin jumped backwards into the air, her increased athletics giving her enough height to land on top of the cubicle used as an entryway to the stairwell. She had a perch to look down at her opponent from. "If you're going to harm these people, then I'll stop you each and every time! En Garde!"

And with that, Robin fired her first shot at the juggler.

Staff update

While I personally didn't interact with Storm much at all (or any mod, really), I thought Candy Canes were a super cool and fun idea. It's really nice to have a positive event like that and made the community revel in a bit of festive spirit. I hope we can have more events like that in the future, even if it's not strictly a mod that organises it next time, but a regular user working with the mods. Or something. Maybe. idk. Can't say much about them outside of that event, but they did good there.

one less mod to get in my way of seizing full control of the means of RProduction

Grimoiric Heart - A Magical Girl Adventure

"This finishes it!"

Robin had leapt up into the air to deliver her final shot to the enemy pageless with a flourish, the impact of her arrow pinning it to the floor. "Gah! Curse you, curse you!" it would yell back at her, but Robin paid it no mind. The dome worried her, still, but for now, the danger had passed. She wanted to give a speech about how once more evil had been brought to justice, but a voice from up above interrupted her before she got even a single word out.

"Laaadiies and Gentlemen! What do we have here!?"

Robin reacted quickly, shooting her gaze upwards to scan for the source. She saw the figure dangling from their tightrope. Said figure would give Robin a warning: "Lookout! Don't you know it's dangerous to stand under a tightrope? What if something falls on your head, you wouldn't want that, would you?" and as their last sentence finished, threw out an attack to the magical girl on the roof. Robin was just in time to recognize the club that had been thrown at her, rolling to the side to avoid being crushed underneath. She recoiled a bit from the shockwave, but managed to get back on her feet without much issue otherwise. Scheherazade's voice rang out in Robin's head, mentioning a certain group of 'Darkkeepers'. At the same time, Robin's assailant made themselves known: A young girl, not much different from her. She seemed to possess magical powers, just like Robin and her team, and was dressed appropriately for the occasion. The other girl's costume was that of a stage performer's.

Even as the girl in front of Robin taunted the markswoman, she would not immediately raise her bow. The other girl, aside from the initial attack, hadn't yet made a move. She might've been anticipating Robin to strike first, so the latter opted to talk rather than fight. "Are the Pageless your doing?" Robin would ask. She didn't let her guard down, carefully watching her opponent's movements so she could be ready to dodge at a moment's notice. While observing like this, Robin continued her interrogation: "If they're not, then why are you working with them? And... why would you attack innocent people?"