expiationnet | OKCINDR POST #5

OKCINDR POST #5

Ever wanted to have CR with a character and wasn't sure how to get them to cross paths? Wanted a dating app so you can hook up with hot people? Wanted to just find friends because you're a lonely bastard?

With the update of the tablets and the apps, we now have a dating / friendship app called OKCINDR! Players can use it as they please for the two months that it's up -- just imagine that they're profiles to swipe right on and everything. The idea is to encourage CR that may be difficult to get with characters who may or may not be interested in events / posts / logs / other network posts.

So, on January 2nd, characters randomly look back at their tablets to see the following:

OKCINDR PROFILE RESET #4
PLEASE RESET PROFILE

This month, if players reset their profile, they will have a list of questions to answer:

- What is the maximum amount of sheep you have counted when trying to fall asleep?
- Is it harder to forgive yourself, or to forgive others?
- How strongly do you feel that the past defines a person?
- What is your dream?
- Why would an android's dream contain electric sheep? Are they particularly drawn to livestock animals?
- If you could return to one specific moment in your life, would you?
- How do you wake up from a dream?
- Please
- Wake up
- You must wake up

Players, of course, are able to ignore this message. However, if a character wouldn't fill it out but a player would like to participate... the profile mysteriously resets itself. There may even be responses sent from Character A to Character B without Character A actually doing anything, if you'd like! This is a completely opt-in scenario! But for players who would like to participate fill out the post:

network profile

Character_Name

@username

ABOUT_ME

CODING

<lj-raw><div style="width:280px;margin:0 auto;background:#fff;box-shadow:1px 1px 4px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.15);border:1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.1);border-bottom:4px solid #587AC0;border-radius:4px;overflow:hidden;line-height:1.7;font-family:tahoma,arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px;">

<div style="text-align:center;background:#587AC0;padding:5px 0 5px 10px;display:flex;align-items:center;color:#fff;font-size:25px;font-family:georgia,serif;font-style:italic;letter-spacing:-1px;"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/wmn8wYK.png" style="filter:invert(1);margin:0 5px 0 0;">network profile</div>

<div style="height:220px;overflow:hidden;">
        <img src="URL HERE" style="width:100%;height:auto;">
    </div>

<div style="border-bottom:1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.1);padding:10px 5px;margin:0 10px;font-size:13px;line-height:1.2;">
		<b style="color:#587AC0;">Character_Name</b>
		<div style="color:#999;">@username</div>
	</div>

<div style="padding:15px;max-height:160px;overflow:auto;box-sizing:border-box;color:#222;">

ABOUT_ME
 
	</div>

</div><div style="margin:3px auto 0 auto;width:280px;font-size:8px;letter-spacing:1px;text-align:right;"><a href="https://tessisamess.insanejournal.com/155095.html" style="color:#999;text-decoration:none;">CODING</a></div></lj-raw>

If you'd like to for shits and giggles, here's some notifications that may be used:

Name (@username) followed you

Name (@username) unfollowed you

Name (@username) blocked you

Have fun! Code credit.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

yeah, you know, with sheep and cows and horses and other animals

..... wait, do you actually know? well guess it don't matter if you're seeing it for yourself soon anyway

[ and as requested, he's sending her a ping of the location on the aldrip map! look at him being all tech-savvy, for a guy who died in 1989 he's doing well, ]

huh, cool to know. do androids dream at all? ghosts don't

thank you.

[She absolutely doesn't know but she's winging it.

Pod's adding this location to the map they're building... in the meantime:]

and no.
not the way humans do.

wait.
you're a... ghost?

just let me know when you wanna see it, yeah? i'll give you a tour, name all the animals. it'll be brills

oh, right

uh, yeah. yeah, i am

oh.
thank you.
i'll let you know.

[Another inexplicable act of kindness. She's not sure how to handle it yet. But she at least is remembering her manners.

She mulls over his next comment, given without any self-consciousness. After a delay:]

then we're the same.
sort of.

[ that's more than fine — she seems like she needs friends... and he's always more than happy to be one. ]

are we? i mean, genuine question, since i wouldn't have thought androids and ghosts are similar

ghosts are a sort of tale humans tell to describe the dead. is that right?
androids don't have souls. we're just

[another pause. she works out how to describe it.]

dolls.
but we can die.

neither of us is human, that i'll give you

but i don't believe that, about you being just a doll. you're here, you talk, you think... that's more than a doll. not human, no, but if you can die

well, maybe it's not a soul, then, but there's something in you that dies, yeah? and that something's what matters

[Another inexplicably kind thing to say. A2 feels guilty at receiving it, which is no surprise. She doesn't like overtures to be understood — better that people don't, and save themselves the disappointment.

Still, it's difficult to remain cold in the face of sincerity. She isn't sure how to respond to it.]

if there was something in me, it was taken away a long time ago.
same as everything else.

what do you mean? what happened?

[ and maybe he shouldn't be asking the life story of someone he's only just met... but he can't really help it. he wants to make sure she matters, which means understanding her, which means asking about her. ]

[This time, her delay in responding is significant enough that it appears as if she's abandoned this conversation altogether.

Eventually, however...]

i was sent on a mission that was designed to fail.
survived because of my team. i was the only one who made it
then yorha came for me.

[ oh, charles thinks, well, pushed too far, then. he waits, though, and waits, and then figures that he should probably send her an apology for prying and tell her that it's fine, he doesn't need to know —

but then his tablet pings with a message, and he blinks at it.

and then, quite sincerely, ]

shit.

that's fucked up, to have done that to you and your team... and i'm sorry for your loss. for your team. they didn't deserve that.

yorha, though... what's that? and you don't need to answer. just tell me to mind my own business if i push too much. just- well. i told you that you matter, yeah? so what you've been through matters, too.

[This level of sympathy and acknowledgement of her team is not one she's ever received. Not even with Anemone, who had experienced the same loss so intimately, yet like her, was unable to speak openly about the pain of it.

She studies these impossible words for a long time, feeling a painful tug in her chest. Her vision blurs, goes hot at the corners, and she blinks hard to make it stop.]

i can answer. ... i'll tell you if it's too much.

[It's a sort of grace she rarely gives people. But this place was new. Her circumstances were new. And the people here... they seemed to want to listen. To understand. No one ever had before.]

yorha is the organization i belonged to. the organization that... created me.

[ oh, good — he's glad he's getting through to her, at least a little. and he's fully prepared to take the no; he knows all too well how hard it is to talk about painful stuff that still sits inside your chest like an ugly, dark sludge, impossible to clean out, sticking in your trachea when you try and speak of it.

but he doesn't think of that, now, not when the answer and its implications make his anger spark hot and bright. ]

wait a bloody second

so the organisation that created you is also the one that sent you guys on that mission?

fucking hell. sorry, but from that, i'm not a big fan of them. you free of them, now?

yeah. they created us for the mission. didn't know until it was too late.

[Had there been a time where she'd felt this sort of righteous anger at YoRHa's betrayal? She can only remember feeling hurt. Her anger had instead turned, often in unfair ways, to the machines who tormented them so. She'd been reluctant to kill her fellow androids when they hunted her down, until it became clear she would not be understood. Then it was a matter of survival. But she had never felt that all-consuming rage toward them. Only pity and regret.

... Excepting 2B, but that was complicated.]

i'm free from them.
but now i don't know what to do
no machines to kill. think it'd be pointless to kill them, anyway

[ as much as he tries for it to be otherwise, his anger is an easy thing to set alight — he keeps it under a tight lid usually, but he can't help it, not when the many unfair things in the world are laid in front of him. not when it's about the suffering of those who shouldn't be suffering... especially when he thinks that the organisation created these androids — are essentially their parents, in a way of thinking, and then sought to destroy them —

yeah, it's no wonder he's angry. ]

well

don't think most people really know what they're supposed to do with their lives. so don't worry, you're in good company

i'd recommend starting from finding something that makes you happy. you know, something beyond just survival?

[Everyone felt like this? Even the humans here, she wants to ask. But she knows the answer. They were made in humanity's image, all. Why would the inner turmoil of a god's be different from its creation?

Still. It makes her feel oddly unsettled, like the earth beneath her feet is suddenly moving. After everything else, though... this was not such a terrible revelation.

But the rest of what he says troubles her further. Frightens her — happiness, to her, was just another thing that could be taken away without warning.]

something that makes me happy?
i don't know.
nothing's real, right? if whatever happiness here is fake
then what's the point of finding it?

Edited 2025-01-25 05:35 (UTC)

just because where we are is a construct doesn't mean this isn't real, does it? you feel, and you think, right? you experience emotions, right here, right now. you can be hurt. you can get angry. you can love someone.

how's that not real?

maybe this isn't, like, reality in the way that it is out there, in all the worlds... but we're living here, now. and any time you exist, happiness is always worth it.

[He's right. She did feel real, and unfortunately alive, when so many had died for her and because of her, someone weak and undeserving of life. She often wondered what No. 4 had seen in her to thank her for giving meaning to her life, and if she would ever see it in herself. She had not seen it yet. And she had not seen it in 2B either — their similarities made this impossible. Perhaps she never would.

But what was the alternative? Someone had decided she should live. So she had to. Even in this false-reality.]

worth it, huh.
i don't know.

[She was afraid to seek happiness for herself. It had ended in failure every single time. All she could do was try to guarantee that happiness happened for someone else.]

i'll think about it.

thank you.

[ he can tell that she is struggling with the concept — simply from her asking whether it even matters, to be happy... but this, too.

well. if he can inspire her to even think about it, just for a moment, then it'd be worth it. ]

anytime.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OKCINDR POST #5

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🎀 puts a wrapping bow on this!