• Nacarbac [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    15·
    2 months ago

    It’s funny to say, but it’s so damn close to Rorschach/the Scramblers from Blindsight or Echopraxia - mostly the latter for spoilery reasons. It’s nonsentient but can output sapient-ish things that we are vulnerable to mistakenly interpreting as from a person, because our brains are adapted to a universe where the only things that can (appear to) talk back are other persons and we can’t help but fill in the blanks.

    minor spoiler for Blindsight

    In their first exchange with the massive space spider-fungus, it insists that it is a Perfectly Normal Human Spaceship that enjoys local beer and sportsgame. Given the absurdity of that they do a lot of tricky and unexplained linguistic tests until realising what’s going on and then resolve to just ignore it as meaningless at best and dangerous at worst.

    major spoiler for Echopraxia

    In Echopraxia, one of the major characters is reprogrammed into a killer puppet via his interactions with Rorshach’s chatbot imitation of his son. It’s unavoidable - he even kinda knows it’s happening, but he just can’t give it up. (Though this is a biased viewpoint from the main character, who doesn’t exactly have much agency themselves…)

    • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      Haven’t read Echopraxia but Blindsight is one of my favorite cosmic horror stories. A fucking masterpiece and everyone should read it if you’re into that sort of thing.

      • Nacarbac [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Echopraxia is really good. It’s trying to do something harder, and vaguer, than Blindsight. The viewpoint character is a cockroach scrabbling around under the heels of giants fighting over some incomprehensible truth, telling himself that he’s beginning to get it, he’s cool.

        …a Disco Elysium/Blindsight crossover makes a weird amount of sense.