Computers beat humans at Go, the Cubs won the World Series, Donald Trump was elected President, and now all of your friends are being transformed into anime characters. 3 seals left.
Yudkowsky - Dark Lord's Answer
Behold my next (actually first) light novel. In my own opinion, “A Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!” is better, but experience has taught me that I have no darn idea which of my writings people will like more or less. Feel free to let me know how it went.
Content warnings: sexual abuse, economics.
The Empress and the Rebel
Original writing prompt: “Write a romantic comedy. Difficulty: both lovers are emotionally mature and have excellent communication skills.”
SHE is gowned in a black dress sewn with tiny emeralds, rubies, sapphires too small to detract from the darkness of her gown, instead giving it the illusion of a rainbow sheen. The gown falls modestly to the floor around her legs, and covers her bodice completely, but is incongruously backless. A thin gold circlet surrounds her head, set in front with a diamond the size of an eye. Her golden chair is set with cushions also gold-dipped.
She is sitting at one end of a marble table clothed in silk damasked with the tracery of ravens; a table long enough to separate her from the other side by further than a man could lunge in a single motion.
HE is huge, muscular, a full head taller than her, clad only in a thin white loincloth; and he is chained to a solid stone chair on the other side of the silk-clothed marble table. His face is clean-shaven, and somebody has braided silver flowers into his flowing brown locks.
MAN: I swear upon my father’s bones that I will not attack you if you remove my chains.
The WOMAN’s voice is prim in reply.
WOMAN: My father may also have died too early, Mr. Thoron, but when I was a child, His Grim Majesty recited to me every night from our family’s accumulated list of guidelines. Rules thirteen through seventen are quite clear about how to behave in the presence of an attractive captured hero… forget I said ‘attractive’. I mean, you are, of course, but… damn it, I’m making a fool of myself, aren’t I.
MAN: Maybe a little.
WOMAN: Hold your tongue, wretch.
MAN: Thoron holds his tongue for no one! But in all seriousness, your Grim Majesty, my own people also have ideas about guidelines for dating. There aren’t supposed to be chains. At least, not on the first date.
The WOMAN taps her fingers thoughtfully on the table.
WOMAN: There seems to be some cultural distance between us.
MAN: One could say that, yes.
WOMAN: Is this really… dating? I captured you. I now own you. You’re my harem slave, not a, a…
MAN: We’re seated at a nice marble table waiting for a chef to cook our food. I am reasonably sure this is a date.
The WOMAN covers her face in her hands.
WOMAN: It is, isn’t it. Oh, god, I’m on a date.
MAN: And you chained your date to a chair.
WOMAN: Silence, slave!
MAN: You know what they say about women who have to chain their men to heavy stone objects.
WOMAN: But I'm… I’m not…
MAN: I can’t help but wonder if you also intend to keep me chained down while… inviting me in for coffee.
WOMAN: I… yes, I suppose I do. But if you’re not restrained, you might…
MAN: Ravish your majesty’s fair form?
WOMAN: Escape. Look you, don’t think I don’t understand what you’re up to! You’re trying to seduce me! Yes, I know, I started it, but you’re trying to seduce me back only so that you can get away and rejoin your army!
MAN: Maybe I’d ravish you first and then escape… you’re blushing. Ha, you’re actually blushing!
WOMAN: You should perhaps ask yourself if it is wise to taunt the Grim Empress when you are her captive!
MAN: You commanded that I be taken as your harem slave and you’re blushing because I talked about ravishing you. You’re not… you’re not a virgin, are you?
WOMAN: Oh god no. I’ve had the best courtesans in the Empire, male and female. So you’d better not slack off in, in…
MAN: You can’t even say it. 'In bed.’ Go ahead, try to say it.
WOMAN: What’s wrong with me? I’m the Grim Empress. I don’t do shy.
MAN: Perhaps I shouldn’t be asking, but… do you do serious relationships?
WOMAN: Not… yet. Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m thinking about this.
MAN: With respect, your Grim Majesty, if a long-term relationship is what you have in mind, you might want to consider how to best proceed past this point and whether chains should be involved.
The WOMAN looks away.
WOMAN: We could have a long-term relationship with you in chains.
MAN: It might end up somewhat one-sided. Empress Teria, I’ll level with you. I don’t have any relevant traumas in my past, so I’d probably think it was hot the first time you tied me up and had your way with me. It’d be less hot the thirtieth time.
WOMAN: You presume much.
MAN: You named me your harem slave.
WOMAN: I did. And let’s be clear on one thing, you will be… what was that phrase you used? Something coffee?
MAN: Invited in for coffee.
WOMAN: Is that seriously what they call it in the Unconquered Territory? How does that even make sense? What does coffee have to do with sex? Is the coffee a metaphor, for, for… I can’t figure out what the hell that’d be a metaphor for.
MAN: No, it’s literal. The notion is, you’re drinking with somebody at a bar. You head home together, and when you get there, whoever’s house it is asks if the other person wants to come in for coffee. If they say yes, they’ve entered your house and that’s one step closer to the two of you having sex.
WOMAN: You Lightsiders and your crazy taboos! Why all the indirectness? Not that it isn’t cute, but just… pay her, blackmail him, kidnap somebody. Or, I don’t know, fucking talk about what you actually want from each other, maybe?
MAN: So what do you actually want from me, your Grim Majesty?
The WOMAN stares down at the table.
WOMAN: I want that over-muscled body in my bed. I may want a long-term relationship. And maybe, god, I don’t know, you were very nearly smart enough to defeat me. I want you as my loyal lieutenant, and, and, shut your mouth, I’m still talking. I might want you to father the next heir to the Grim Throne.
MAN: You understand that there are parts of that you can’t get just by chaining me in convenient positions.
WOMAN: I know. I can’t even get everything I want from you as a harem slave that way.
MAN: So, if I understood you correctly, your philosophy of life is based on just directly trying to get what you want. How will you obtain what you desire, your Grim Majesty?
WOMAN: Through… winning your heart by being really good in bed with you? Ugh, no, you don’t have to say it. I wouldn’t believe you if you pretended to be that easy.
MAN: I’m not. For me, it’s about… well, it’s about ideals.
WOMAN: Fucking Lightsiders! Ideals, really? Can’t it be about power and wealth and having your way with the pliant form of the Grim Empress herself?
MAN: No. I’m sorry.
WOMAN: I don’t suppose this is as simple as my asking you what you’d want in exchange.
The MAN looks down at the table.
WOMAN: You want your homeland, the country of Yoruun, freed from the Grim Empire. That's… not on the table.
MAN: It’s, it’s not just Yoruun. You want me as your loyal lieutenant? I’d have to believe in what you were doing. In everything you were doing.
WOMAN: This is the Grim Empire, you don’t have to be that loyal. A certain amount of trying to bend the Empire to your own whims is expected, it could include lower taxes or something…
(Both of them are silent.)
WOMAN: This isn’t going to work out, is it.
The MAN smiles.
MAN: Maybe not, but I’m not giving up just yet.
(Waiters silently enter, bringing with them plates of food.)
MAN: However, you need to at least unchain my hands enough to let me pick up the silverware.
WOMAN: Oh, we have slaves for that here!
Cognitive Trope Therapy
“I’m not saying TV Tropes is right about everything,” I typed into the chat window, “but right now it understands your life better than you do.”
I have invented a new form of psychotherapy
I call it Cognitive Trope Therapy
the way it works is that when you have a thought, you write it down
like, say
“You are different from the others. You will never know their innocence… and that is why you should hate your own existence. Die. Die. Die.”
then you figure out whether, if your life were a fantasy novel, these words would be spoken by figures wearing black robes, and speaking in a dry, whispering voice, and they are actually withered beings who touched the Stone of Evil
and if so then you don’t listen
I would write this up as a pop psych bestseller but it would be only two pages long
now
I know what you are thinking
you are thinking “but what if the whispering voice seems like it might have a point”
I get that this isn’t meant to be rigorous, but “it’s okay to focus on yourself, hurting yourself in the name of effective altruism is bad, why not sit down and rest for a while?” sounds exactly like the sort of think a dark-robed figure would hiss at a protagonist.
You obviously don’t read the same books I do. :P
Wait, am I missing something?
Eliezer on LW: “We should become supremely rational, moving faster than the comparatively timid procedures of Old Science. We must conquer death itself and win immortality, the faster the better, dismissing those who would urge restraint in this effort as hidebound and inferior thinkers. We shall build unspeakably powerful artificial intelligences to rule over us, transform us from weak creatures of flesh into beings of pure information. Then we’ll build giant structures that blot out the stars, and finally realize our destiny of taking over the galaxy.”
Eliezer on Tumblr: “Avoid things that sound too much like what a fictional villain would say.”
I see no fictional villains here.
(via slatestarscratchpad)
This isn’t going to work, but for the record, and on the vague off-chance that anyone who doesn’t already know possesses the mental capacity to update, I’ll state that I am actively hostile to neoreaction and neoreactionaries. Anyone posting a neoreactionary concept on my Facebook wall would be instablocked and the comment deleted. It’d be like their posting creationism on my wall; somebody needs to reeducate them, but it’s not going to be me. I think that if you do argue with neoreactionaries instead of just blocking them, then you’ve been suckered into Somebody Is Wrong On The Internet syndrome and trollfeeding.
I’m writing this, not in any real hope of any of my Tumblr kismesis-stalkers listening, but because I do think there is a reasonable duty to occasionally repeat “Nope” for the historical record when somebody has gone around suggesting that you are endorsing the Cult of Hastur or whatever.
So if in the future you hear anyone on Tumblr mention “Eliezer Yudkowsky” and “neoreaction” in the same sentence and the connector isn’t something like “deletes", then remember always that that poster is intellectually dishonest and probably lying to you about other things as well.
so, i’ve done with hpmor reading. and let me say you, sigh.
I hate it when plot has an EVIL and while lesser evils and fiends and minions are killed of for justice, in the end of the big plot the EVIL is handled with mercy, heroes remember their moral stances and author has a placeholder for the redemption ark. I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT SO MUCH
and when the author themselves has enough conscience to know it would raise a question so makes it through deus-ex-machina that there is no other way than to have EVIL be held alive BUT still have a place for redemption UUUUGH
wait you actually read the story
and your critique of HPMOR actually makes sense and isn’t based on a wildly uncharitable misconstrual of the story involving a motivated epic failure of reading comprehension
and you haven’t even attributed a conspiracy-theoretic dark motive to me as an author where I’m plotting to train people to tolerate evil or something
i’m confused
is this actually tumblr
blacksheepboybucky asked: Fuck Marry Kill: Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter, HG Wells
Fuck Eliezer
Marry: potter
Kill: HG
It might be a while until the next time I’m in New York and have free time. Are you planning on visiting the San Francisco Bay Area anytime soon?
Consider the claim, “There are no leafy greens that are good in salads.” We can refute this claim by presenting arugula.
Consider the class of claims that cannot be refuted by presenting arugula. We will term these claims unarugulable.
Consider the term “unarguably”. It may initially seem like this term is empty of meaning, since we can argue with just about anything, e.g., “Well, I say the Sun *did* crash into the Earth yesterday.” But what about arugula? You can’t argue with arugula. It’s just a plant. Thus, arugula is unarguable.
We can furthermore demonstrate the above fact by presenting arugula - “See? It’s right here! You can’t argue against it, it’s not a claim!” Thus arugula is arugulably unarguable.
If the claim that something is arugulable is itself arugulable, then, following the terminological rule for designating similar philosophical concepts such as superdupervenience, we shall say it is arugulabugulable. Conversely, everything not in this class is unarugulabugulable.
“A Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!” is now available, $0.99 at Gumroad (EPUB / MOBI / PDF / HTML) and Amazon.
Sample chapters in HTML here.
Print book and Kindle Unlimited version should be available in a couple of weeks or so. For Amazon reasons, when I put up the Kindle Unlimited version, the Gumroad version goes down for 90 days.
If you have no idea what genre this is supposed to be in, one of the better light novels I’ve read online is Evil God Average.
Tumblr… this is your protagonist.
Today is National Coming Out Day!
I have nothing to declare.
My friends are all going into the red line at Customs with their guns and swords and dial-a-yield suitcase nukes, and all I have are the plastic butter knives of polyamory and BDSM.
Maybe it’s not vanilla, but it’s sorta, you know, Trader Joe’s 73% dark chocolate flavored with organic orange peel.