For those who don't know, back at the turn of the millenium I was involved in a regular RPG. If you've never heard of Albedo or Birthright, you're too young. The late, great Mark Panthera was running, using that setting and the GURPS rules. I ran a female character, a sensuous skunkette known as Selene Riordan. I generated the character, her homeworld, her history, the works. For years, Selene was my alter-ego in that world. When the game ended (unfortunately) she stuck around. I tend to think of her (and other female characters) as being over in the left side of my mind, connected to my primary mind, but no longer part of it. The alter-ego that was the root of Selene (I called her "Serena") roleplayed as other female characters from time to time. Brooke Harris, dieselpunk bobcat inventor, Nyota the accursed yeen who's clothes were always getting torn, etc. As years passed, Serena faded away, with me hearing from her less and less often. I tend to think of it as a side-effect of having my beloved Zerocreature around. I didn't need a female alter-ego around with Zo to talk to, after all.

Fast forward to '22, Zo's been gone for two years. I got sick from not eating well, too much caffiene, and the diabetes I didn't know about getting triggered by way too much sugar. This lead to a trip to the hospital, and I woke up two weeks later foggy-minded and weak as a kitten. I haven't heard from my feminine alter-ego since.

Until today. I've continued playing female characters, since I find it fun. Today I was playing a blue kubold on Atlyss (good game for being so cheap) and stopped to think about how the character would react to what one of the other PC's had said.
Selene/Serena came barrelling out of the depths of my subconscious, yanked control of the character away from me, and started speaking with her usual saucy one-liners and innuendos. ....except very British, instead of Irish/scots, as that was the game character's way of speaking. Serena was roleplaying, again.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to deal with this. It's great to have my flip-side back, but it was so unexpected that I'm a little flummoxed. I'm going to try talking to her later, and see what happens.

I don't know if anyone reads this, or cares, but I just recovered from a computer disaster. My hard drive had a lesser failure, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it happened during a thunderstorm, tuesday night. It's an old, old thing, this computer. Put together by my beloved Zerocreature more years ago than I care to think, it's stood the test of time. Until then. I was helped through this by my computer guru and old friend G. Just using his initial, since no one needs to know, but he deserves the applause. He provided me with a thumb-drive and talked me through installing things. May whatever God who really is up there rain blessings upon him. Nearly twenty years of data saved!
I am experiencing massive relief, yet trepidation. He's informed me that, in a nutshell, the old hard drive is wearing out. This will happen again, and we may not be able to save it, this time. So I'm taking his advice and doing the sensible thing, backing up everything. Please, whatever God, let it hold out until the first of the month, when a little more money will be available, and a 1 terrabyte SSD will be affordable! I didn't think they'd only be about $60! Prices have literally halved since I last checked that kind of thing.
Just wanted to let anyone who cares know, I'm fine, the PC is fine for now, and everything will be okay! Prayers to Whatever God, send positive energy, summon the Blue Lantern Corps, I will get through this without losing anything irreplaceable. That's all for now, Peas and Harpyness to you all. ;)

So I was rereading my old copy of GURPS Cliffhangers (Second Edition) for the umpteenth time, hoping for some thoughts on my Burmecian Decopunk world. It suddenly connected with the end of the Robotech: Sentinels, the fifth and final one in the series that I'd read the end of earlier today. My brain suddenly goes into a historical mode of some kind, and I'm soon writing on the setting for World 4. Most recent update is here, if anybody cares to read it. I summarize the events leading from today's ploddingly slow space exploration to the colonization of venus, leading to the main events of the story. This kind of thing hasn't happened to me in a long time! This lead me to revising the date of those events to much later, as a reflection of my sour and cynical view of how slow we're going. It went from Venus of 2351 to Venus of just before the third millennium. Remembering my own flirtations with Warhammer 40K, a new name for the stories and setting suddenly popped into my head. Venus 3K! So yeah, I've renamed the file folder and the desktop shortcut, and I'll upload a safety save soon. This would be a perfect time for my antique PC to suddenly give way to old age! By preparing for it to happen, I prevent it.
"Well now I don't want to!" --Fate
I'm going to close this now before the shock wears off.

I should have quit while I was ahead. In trying to make some decopunk Burmecians (the story idea is The Land of The Lost, but with a chunk of London and Burmecia dropped into it some time ago) I uploaded the wrong folder of reference pictures. It was, in fact, the images that the artist Quicktron has made of his Warhammer 40K -style female skaven. Some very good work there, with them as soldiers protecting an underhive alongside humans, allied against chaos marines and that one plague deity. It seems like The Emperor of Mankind and The Great Horned Rat aren't exactly best buddies, but they're both sensible enough to ally their children against a common foe. If I understand correctly, the drawings are based on his playing of a 40K video game.
...but now ChatGPT thinks that 40K skaven have the race name of "Quicktrons".
I'm so sorry.

I've got to confess, since this is bugging me. It's fairly safe to confess here, since no one reads this.
I've used AI image generation. I was having a hard time visualizing the character of Rae Sho for an FFTA-in-space fic that I'm tinkering with. Since I ran out of money and am not ready to get back to work, yet, I'm dirt poor. I can't afford a commission, let alone the several needed to properly create the character's look.
So I cheated.
I do not support AI image generation. It takes jobs away from honest artists, and raises the bar for anyone who's skills aren't up there, yet. The fact that it's "trained" on the work of actual artists is morally dubious at best. Using AI image generation is like using the dark side of the force. "Quicker....easier....more seductive," as Yoda put it.
So I called up ChatGPT, and "trained" it on images of nu mous, injecting the world "anthropomorphic" every now and then. It's not as easy as I expected, as nu mou have a lot of anatomy (such as tail and the long lop ears) that the AI clearly wasn't ready for. But a little persistence is paying off. I've got some pretty good pics of the character, sans things like accurate tail and ears, and can work from there.
I just feel shitty about cheating. :p For the record, I will not be posting those pics anywhere. My shame is a private one.

I've been playing with two different versions of a steampunk-esque world recently. "World 3" because I couldn't think of a name for it. If you've read what I've posted I don't have to go into much detail. I'm trying to avoid the stuff that invalidates such a setting. "Just glue some gears on it and call it steampunk!" is a cliche that I will not allow. So the intent is to keep it steampunk....or maybe clockpunk?...instead of letting it go in the same direction as RL. I've already cobbled together a few parts of the setting as The Land of The Lost or Runepunk. Rather than allowing it to go aetherpunk, I made magic something vague, ill-defined, and very difficult to reproduce. I've added supernatural coal as the primary power-source for this despite that. Tip of the hat to "Weird Weird West" for that, even though it's not ghostcoal. My memory of the subject is fuzzy, but ghostcoal isn't radioactive. Actual magic is a carefully kept secret, with some pretty nasty enforcement, sometimes.
The point of this is that the setting has to be steered. This requires some reasonable thought. Then it hit me. Dieselpunk requires diesel. In a world that should reasonably lack fossil fuels, there's no such industrialization as what took place in the interwar period. The internal combustion engine wouldn't have happened without fuel to combust. While I'm considering replacing diesel with liquified "Kobalt" this is all dependent on the research getting done. Currently, there are farms growing the moss that became the original kobalt, and something like a refinery heating and compressing the moss to become kobalt.
I do have the option to take it a step further and have the discovery of "liquid kobalt" or some other such name for the fuel. It's perfectly reasonable that there should be such experimentation and development on kobalt. It's what the inhabitants of the setting would want, and therefore try to do. They would try to do that before the existing kobalt that they're mining runs out and the process of making new kobalt is all that they have left. They are well aware that this is inevitable. So there's motivation for research to happen.
So I'm at a quandry. I'm liking the steampunk, but the transition to dieselpunk seems to be inevitable. Without creating a shadowy cabal of corrupt, power-hungry scientists that prevents research, I'm not sure how to keep the transition from happening. Dieselpunk and decopunk are all fine and well, but it's not what I want to write. It seems as though it's inevitable for my setting, however.

So the game "Atlyss" has upgraded from a free demo on Itch.io to a beta on Steam. I wasn't going to blow the money at first, until I saw a YooToob video where two people who clearly hadn't played the demo were playing. So yeah, it inspired the idea to try it, myself. After a couple of characters were made, one of whom was a bird, I started playing. Well, the game is done right (unusual to see that in this day and age) but the suggestiveness was not turned down! To be clear, at no time does the game cross the line between suggestive and explicit. The characters can have some massive proportions, but this can literally be turned off. Limits to the size of a characters T&A are there in the settings, as it the option to turn off the "suggestive jigglebones" entirely. Something for the prudes. While it's not hard to make your character nude, it's "Barbie-doll nudity" with no bits. This is the limits of how far the game itself goes, with one exception.
The character of Angela Flux. Scantily-clad giant white dragoness with a resemblance to Toriel. Nothing surprising there, but it's an open secret among players that you can smack dat ass. I'm not kidding. As she walks along, her bottom swaying as she does, she occasionally stops and bends over to get a book from the shelf of the library that she's in. The tight, bottom-outlining skirt she wears will suddenly sprout a target sign, and you can attack. If you're bare-handed, you literally smack dat ass. She immediately retaliates, using a spell attack that does zero damage, but sends you flying back. She punishes the player for sexually harassing her! LOL So that's the worst that this game gets.
It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that the players have taken it further than the game does. One of the emotes is "/taunt", causing the character to turn around, wiggle their butt, and spank it. Players use it for teasing each other and self-abuse. Of course, some of the vanity clothes are a little suggestive, too. Case in point: the Ghostly Tabard. A black dress that not only exposes a lot of cleavage, but is a fore-and-aft skirt too. There's a slit up the side all the way up to the waist. Add in the choice to make your pants invisible, and you can end up with a sizzlingly sexy outfit. I learned how to make it a "vanity item" when I got better armor, of course. My tall (for the game) fem bluejay mage character looks very good indeed.
This brings me to my final point: the players. I started in a server where the tagline was "show me your cock", with the intention of making rooster jokes. I won't mention the PC's name, but she'd want to see a big rooster. He'd make a good tank for her to hide behind as she does DPS. We rapidly went from "show me your cock" to "show me your pussy" to "show me your cloaca". I was drawn back into Discord by one player who I was flirting with, who shall also remain nameless. Naughty old curmudgeon that I am, I countered her suggestion of starting a new Atlyss server with doing so, and getting to see that cloaca. We showed, and she got naked. So I did, too, and we started making out. Out in public, in the world-based channel. After a few minutes, people were coming in. They came in to the sight of a naked byrdle and a poon rubbing boobs and smooching. ...and the text-based ERP. People started flooding in. I joked with the other player (in Discord) that we couldn't have advertised her server better if we had tried! Hot interspecies lesbian ERP was the entertainment of the evening. I'd like to think that I gave a good performance as a writer. There's some justification to this, as the other player mentioned that this was turning them on IRL. I guess I'm not a bad yiffer, still.
Long story short, her game server was well-established. They also made a discord server, and yes, I'm part of it. I don't use discord that much, but there it is.
Do I have a point? I suppose that it's that Atlyss is a good game, and mildly naughty. Perhaps it's that no matter how naughty a game gets, players will go further. I might have no point at all, and just want to brag that I got laid in an online game. Decide for yourself.

All right, confession time, first of all. I hang out on Reddit, too. One subreddit in particular, r/humansarespaceorcs, is pretty fun, to me. The occasional writing prompts sometimes spark me to creating little short-stories. I've written three so far, two of which are up here as safety-saves. The third one I didn't save, and is now lost. I guess I hit the wrong button or something.
The point is, people liked my stuff. It set off some imposter syndrome reactions in me. Pissed off by the loss of my third shortstory, I haven't written any since. Instead I used a throwaway character from the first one as a persona for posting. It just seemed right, since I kept posting stuff from a nonhuman POV, anyway. So was reborn "Ssana[click]". She's a member of a mantis-like species. The "[click]" part is pronounced by tapping her mandibles together. It's a consonant in their language.
I admit, since she was just going to be a one-off character, I cheated. When I wrote the short story "Don't Have A Human Friend", it was just after a viewing of Episode 7 of "Humans-B-Gone". (( https://www.youtube.com/@HumansBGone )) I slapped the character of Sophodra together with what I could remember of Alan Dean Foster's "thranx" race, and went with it. When a recreated her for the forum persona, I didn't get any more original than that. Due to her experiences in the story, she had gone from being a minor artist to a Galactic Academy researcher on one of the most worrisome races ever found. Humans.
This was a literary convenience, allowing her to be wherever humans are doing things. She's doing research. She's smart enough to keep well away from any actual fighting, but she can make comments on what's going on. It's comedy. It's fun! I've been doing unethical things like posting images of Sophodra and other mantis-like characters to help people visualize Ssana[click]. I'm a terrible copycat, and it's gotten my conscience on my ass.
Then I realized that not only did people like it, I'd actually gotten at least one fan. He even produced two pieces of fanart!
Someone made fanart of my character. OMFG.
This has only happened one time before, with Rebelsqurl commissioning the image of Selene that graces this page. God bless the man.
So the imposter syndrome returned. Realistically, I'm pretty sure I'm in the "not bad" category as far as my writing. I can put my thoughts to paper, proofread and edit what I've done dispassionately, and I occasionally have good ideas. I am not worthy of having fans, though it's great that some people actually do want to see more. I need to keep a level head about this and not do anything stupid.
There's no point to this, I'm just blogging to collect my thoughts. I find a touch of irony in using a thranx-like character for this, since Alan Dean Foster wrote three novels on the subject of humans being "space orcs".

So recently I've been enjoying a lot of playing KoboldKare in multiplayer. I've been meeting interesting new people and yiffing them. ;) While I suspect that most of them are kids literally half my age, it's been good fun. For such shenanigans I've both created a silver renamon PC (there are mods to let you play as more races than kobolds) but also created a PC for my anima.
For those of you who don't know what an anima is, have you heard the phrase "getting in touch with your feminine side"? I tried that, and she woke up and told me to stop touching her. ;) She's shown up in my thoughts occasionally, since then, and stepped up to play instead of me in a lot of RP's I was in back at the turn of the millenium. Those few who are reading this that are familiar with Lt. Selene Riodan, Anya the sorceress, and so forth, yes, that was her, not me.
So I'm a little nuts. So what?
To get back to what I was talking about, KoboldKare.
https://naelstrof.itch.io/koboldkare
Don't get the Steam version, they haven't updated it since november. The Itch version was updated back in january. Smart shopping pays off! Don't repeat my mistake!
In the multiplayer mode there are some ERP servers. The players aren't exactly top-class roleplayers from what I've seen, but that's all right. I was on one, tonight, as my anima's PC. Her name is "Giggles", which just seemed appropriate for the "Karelia The Smiler" mod character. (Created by Cryptia Curves, and adapted for KoboldKare: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfi.....?id=3018255524 ) I decided to do a little lore-writing for her. She's not a normal smiler (from the game "Backrooms") but a smiler colonizer. That is, she establishes colonies of smilers. The usual story for her is that someone tried to summon her and flubbed it, depositing her --in sex mode-- on the kobold farm. Naughty shenanigans ensue.
Not only was I playing the character tonight, but I was spinning out scenarios for the other players to choose to play. I started with the usual, with the kobold running the place unexpectedly joined by Giggles, who convinces her to ride her face. ;) It was starting to get good when a third player joined us. The scenario was replaced by two people down on the kobold farm unexpectedly joined by Giggles when the summoning misfires, depositing her ungently in their farmhouse. She manages to seduce the braver of the two, a snow-tiger, but the fem kobold runs away. That scenario died, too. Same reason, another player joined....then vanished. That happened several times. Kind of killed the mood, put I persevered. My anima's such a naughty girl, she wouldn't let it ruin her mood. So I spin off another scenario. Since they were both tigers, they're brothers, who have sank their life savings into fixing up the old family kobold farm that they inherited from their grandfather. I managed to sell this to the two other players by describing it as Lovecraft, but horny. The two brothers were celebrating when a voice comes to them. "Sooooo, old [name of grandfather] DID have kids!" They suddenly remember family stories that their grandfather was part of some wacky cult, and realize that now they must pay the price for his dealings. Fortunately the being summoned wanted to be paid...carnally!
Then we lost the third player. :p Ruined it for both me and the other remaining player.
The thing that strikes me, however, was how quickly and easily I was spinning sexy scenarios for the others. My writing skills were fired up and working. Not just for describing the sex, but for writing scenarios. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to get back to writing someday soon. It's a hopeful sign.
That's all that's in my head, everyone have a good day.
Foxx

I actually wrote something! It's a fanfic, and complete doggie doo, but it's the first thing I've written since half past forever. I stuck it in "scraps". If you want to read it, do so, if you don't that won't bother me. Like I said, it's crap.

Lately I've been remembering a scene from the Albedo RPG I used to do with friends, way back when. It was a slap in the face when I realized that was actually twenty years ago! I'm not old, yet, but it's clear that I'm getting there.
Anyway, the scene was in a bar at a space station the party had stopped at. I don't remember much about it, other than Reb's PC's "Enemy" disadvantage had come up. (GURPS RPG was a hell of a system!) They saw Reb's PC, Lewis, and came over to make a nuisance of themselves.
I should mention that, at this point in the campaign, my PC, Selene, was the proverbial "jiggling juggernaut". She whooped ass, in a variety of ways. I can't help that, my PC's are ass-kickers. It's how I play. Also with her at the table are Lewis, head of ship's security, former major of starship marines, and no slouch in the ass-kicking department, either. Also--if I remember right--with us was our captain, Henry Braxton. PC of the late, great Waarhorse. The good sargeant knew a lot about kicking ass IRL, and had used that in generating his PC, who was a massive stallion. Think destrier or clydesdale. He was also the only person involved who wasn't a skunk, so he was roughly twice the size of everybody else.
These three assholes are insulting Lewis' family, who owned a wealthy shipping corporation back in our home systems, the Rim Worlds Compact. Rivals of their own family business. Lewis is taking it, Capt. Braxton is preparing himself, and Selene is doing a slow burn. They're insulting her man! That's one thing you don't do to a scottish-equivalent woman like her.
Another thing about Selene is that she's the ship's chief engineer, and technically it's legal owner (Not that anybody acknowledged that other than the ship's AI) so she's got her pride in how well she and her crew have rebuilt and refurbished the ship.
God Bless the late Mark Panthera, who was the GM. He was setting things up like the bar fight scene in TOS The Trouble With Tribbles. As soon as I realized it, I had to play along. I could not resist the temptation! One of the assholes made the mistake of insulting the ship. MP let me get away with doing a little scenery description to help set it up. An out-of-balance blower fan does a quick bit of background noise, sounding suspiciously like an anticipatory riff on a snare drum. Selene's face seizes up in a calm expression. She calmly asks a line I was blessed to be able to use. "Laddie, don't ye think ye should...rephrase that?" Most TOS fans would be proud, I think.
Lewis and Henry both are familiar with how Selene's temper works, and realize that the volcano's about to blow. The asshole doubles down, though what he said is lost to memory. Selene smiles sweetly at him, rising calmly to her feet. He smiles back, clueless, just before she swings. The dice were my friend, that day, or maybe the dice gods are TOS fans, too. One swing decked the f*cker!

I cannot remember what happened next, I have to go sorting through the logs. This is a pleasant memory from The Good Old Days. One of the treasures that make me a wealthy soul.

Perhaps two people left in this world who will understand this. Rebelsqurl and she who was my beloved Zo. Oh, well.
The scene was two nights ago, and I was in the process of going to bed. My PC was updating windows, so I left it running. Since the power light on my PC is in just the right spot to shine in my face as I sleep, I moved my Brooke plushie (Yes, some of my old PC's had their own plushie) around so that it's right forepaw covered the light.
Just then, part of my brain kicked on. A part that's been dormant for about three years. Brooke told me that she was amused at the use I was putting her plushie to. This wasn't all that uncommon, back in the day. What bothered me was that Selene popped on, too, and cautioned Brooke not to anger me. This lead to the two of them starting a conversation about me, as the effective god of their existences. They were still discussing the matter when I fell asleep a few minutes later.
The weird part was Selene's attitude on the subject. There were times back in the day wherein she would take over the IM's and speak to the other players on her own behalf. I represented this by her kicking me out of the driver's seat. It was funny, and it gave the other players some insight into how much of a crazy vulpine I am. For her to be fearful of me...me!...is downright uncharacteristic of her. I'm still trying to process this, today. What went wrong? How did Selene get fearful of me? She's a representation of my own anima, for goodness sake!
...for those of you who've never heard the term "anima", it's your own feminine side. You've heard of getting in touch with your feminine side? She woke up and told me to stop touching her. Ba dum tish!
That part of my brain has been inactive since, which is actually kind of sad. Back when I broke up with J'wyldragon, the post-relationship depression was in the process of warping me into a monster. It was my anima ("Serena") who pulled the uncontaminated bits out of "Shadowfoxx" and assembled them into Foxxtronix 3.5. This became "me" and I've been pretty much me ever since. How such a powerful aspect of my mind could be fearful of what she helped me create is puzzling and frustrating.
That's all. I just needed to ramble about this and get it out of my head. Anyone who was confused by it, just ignore it as the mad ravings of a demented old grey fox.
Anyone who's reading this, have a great day!

talktotranfomer.com Try it!
I continue to torment the AI by giving it bits and pieces of my terrible fanfictions. This is, of course, set in my secondary digimon fanfiction setting, an intact office building jutting abruptly up out of a plane of reaperstone. The top of this building was settled by a biyomon who named herself "Vesper" and proceeded to scavenge soil and seeds to turn it into a garden to sustain herself. A big, bad ultimate-level had taken over the place earlier, and regards her as a citizen of his kingdom. He's turning the place into a trade hub, and she's growing the food for herself, him, and other citizens yet to come, so he likes her. Down in the garage, a beelzemon is another of the citizens, and he has a soft spot. He hates this fact.
So I gave transformer:

Vesper the biyomon was in an exceptionally good mood as she stepped out of the roof access door, entering her private garden. "Sing a simple melody!" she sang out loud, in a voice that was half happy tweeting. "That's how easy love can be!" she continued.
Below, Beelzemon had to stop himself from making a happy fanboy squeal. If she got any cuter, he would just die! "I got an image to maintain, Feathers!" he muttered angrily.

In return, it gave me:

"Oh?" Vesper smiled. "Are you thinking about being the new mascot, like in the old days?"
"No..." Beelzemon looked down and his jaw dropped open.
"Hm?" Vesper tilted her head.
"I was hoping that Vesper-chan's voice was a bit louder!"
"No, not at all! I'm not gonna get any ideas from you!" She looked at him with suspicion.
"Ouch

...say whaaaaat?
Transformer continues to amuse and confuse me.

EDIT: Oops, forgot the song link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozx898ADTxM

If anybody read my previous journal you're now somewhat familiar with Talk To Transformer. In playing around with this, I somehow got around my writer's block and managed a short piece of digimon fanfiction. After taking some time, I realized that it's making me approach story-writing from a different direction. I was just throwing together something silly for this, not actually writing something real.
Hell, that's better than nothing. So maybe this is a return to writing for me, or maybe not.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

https://talktotransformer.com/
Read the page. It's an AI that tries to predict the next thing you're going to say, finishing a text sample you feed it.
In the forum I was on there were people posting its replies to story prompts, and some commenting to the effect that they'd read worse stories on that board.
I've been playing with it, doing silly things with digimon doing fight scenes. For instance I gave it:

"Just before the damaged pirate airship crashed into the side of the castle, the biyomons aboard all took wing. Burning and leaving a trail of smoke behind it, the airship punched through the defenses in it's crash, and gave them their opening! With a hail of Spiral Twister bolts clearing away the penguinmon guards in the vicinity the biyomons swarmed the hole. Captain Sora gave as much of a psychotic grin as was possible with a bird beak, as she screamed out a battle cry. It was time to kick some penguinmon ass!"

I've gotten some things that surprised me, delighted me, and kept making me laugh. I recommend to anyone who reads this (both of you) to give it a try.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1471
Read that first, so that you know what I'm talking about. The link at the bottom about level 2 access, I recommend you read that entry too. It's a good (fictional) case study.
I recently stumbled across this particular SCP, and I've found it rather thought-provoking. I like this SCP from a writer's perspective. It's meant as a horror concept, causing fear by provoking paranoia. That being the typical response to discovering that you have a stalker.
A stalker that's some kind of invisible ghostly watcher. A stalker that looks like a black-furred werewolf creature with a skull for a face. A stalker that's literally invisible, except you can see it in your peripheral vision, and just know that it's just around the corner, and standing over you as you sleep, visible in mirrors and other reflective surfaces, or all the above. Easily dismissable as a paranoid delusion, except it sends you pictures via text. That's all in the article linked above.
However, I don't think that scaring the people who download the app is the intent. The fake app store page markets "MalO VER1.0.0" to the lonely ones. The ones to whom the "forever alone" meme would apply. Those who would likely accept some supernatural stalker just because it's someone who's interested in them. In the story, William [Redacted] and his unnamed sister are clearly the wrong people for this. I imagine that witnessing the sister's suicide made "Cassandra" very sad. Especially since she(?) knew that the suicide was, however unintentionally, her doing.
This brings me to some terminology, which the article makes clear, but people in the fandom seem to get wrong. SCP-1471 is the app. SCP-1471-A is the designation of the actual "malo" entities that start following you. SCP-1471-(insert number here) is one of the mobile devices seized by the SCP foundation.
The article mentions that one of the pictures was retrieved from what's apparently the nine thousand four hundred and fifth mobile device confiscated. That's only the ones that the SCP Foundation has found, so far. There could well be over nine thousand malos out there.
Malos. Yes, I'm using that as a race or species name. "Capone" and "Cassandra" were clearly two different entities so there has to be more than one.
The malos are not hostile. Despite apparently over 9400 cell phones and other mobile devices being seized and the batteries removed from, there is not a single reported instance of the malo doing anything hostile. The article says that it's trying to communicate visually with you, IE with gestures. It speaks a different gesture-language than we do, so it's never understood. It keeps trying, keeps hanging near you, keeps sending you images on your phone, until the phone isn't needed anymore.
Having mentioned the fan stuff, I must now address that. Starting with some of the other stuff about it on the site, in the "tales" section. They kill the "ghostly staker" vibe. One series of short stories even has one being taught ASL and communicating. This I don't particularly like, and I'll tell you why. It destroys some of the mystery that makes this concept so delightfully creepy. Not knowing what it's trying to communicate is one of the alien things about it, and the unknown is frightening. By giving an individual malo a means of communicating, you make it comprehensible.
In looking at how it's portrayed in the fandom, that's a whole different ball of wax.
Naturally, there are those who show one or more malos to be physical beings, often contained by the foundation in a jail cell. I'm pretty sure this comes from the Containment Breach game, but I could be missing something. In the article the foundation can only seize, study, depower, and store the individual mobile devices, and then give therapy to the poor sods who need it. How would one of these malo spirits actually gain a physical form that can be captured and studied? Sorry, but that's kind of a stretch.
Then of course there's the rule 34 of various malos. Pretty inevitable, right? Some of it's pretty hot, though they take a lot of liberties with the design. One has a malo sexting an anon, apparently enjoying teasing him. One even has an individual malo becoming The Hero's military battle buddy and lover. Wut?
In the end, I think I'm just a purist. SCP-1471 is a well-thought-out horror concept, and seeing fans taking liberties with it and changing it into something else bothers me.
That's all for now.

On the matter of the star wars campaign, it's cancelled. I was reminded what happens every time I try to run a campaign. The players do something unexpected and I can't adapt. Hell, why bother if it's just going to crash and burn anyway.
Sorry to you, Cats, for any disappointment. I hope that I didn't get your hopes up.
That's it from this old vulpine.

...and what I'm thinking about is running a Star Wars campaign. This would have the very basic plot of go-to-outworld-and-kick-the-imperials-off-it-with-native-help. Must happen all the time in the rebellion/resistance, right? I'm sure it's the sort of mission the high command types must assign to those who've proven themselves after a mission or two and think they're ready for the big time.
This means of course that I have a lot of worldbuilding to do. While it's easiest to do the single-biome-planet thing--this being pretty much a standard trope of Star Wars, in fact--I'm not sure I should do that.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....gleBiomePlanet
The campaign might take an unexpected turn, based on the players' actions, and I should be ready. Assuming I actually do have any players other than Zo, of course. She might be able to bring in a friend or two. For that matter, Cats, if you're reading this, you are invited.
The problem then becomes, which biome? What are the locals like? What's their architecture look like?
I'm leaning towards snake-like natives. Snake head, human-like torso with two arms, no legs, and big slithering tail. There are, in fact, at least two canon Star Wars races like that. I think. I should do more research.
For those players who are less interested in the natives, a number of human settlements on the planet would also be helpful. The locals and the natives not getting along is somewhat cliche, but it works. Think of Naboo with it's human and gungan populations. The largest human settlement is, in fact, the base of the Imperials. They think that they've conquered the planet because they hold the largest settlement and are getting lip service from the others. The snake-folk are disdainful nonhumans in the eyes of the Imperials, and beneath their notice.
With this established, the biome remains. I'm mostly going for either desert or...hell, I don't know.
In the case of the desert, the natives would have the kind of architecture I've seen in mexican-esque buildings here in Oklahoma City. Tall, thin, pyramidial buildings, with slit-like openings near the peak that serve as windows. This arrangement is surprisingly functional. The openings are well above the hot sands, let out the warm air inside (war air rises, you know), let in the light (which refects off of and is diffused by the whitewashed inner walls), and lets in any breezes. I'm thinking that they would also be arrow slits in case of an attack, and can be shuttered as well. This would also be useful in case the natives are nocturnal like many desert species. Sleep while the light shines in, then up at sunset and ready to do your thing.
The other biomes are more of a question. I'm not sure I'm going to go with snakefolk for the natives, in fact. This whole thing is still up in the air.
So, this is more of my stereotypical ramblings, in the end. See you folks!

All right, since both my original account and the replacement one seem to be inaccessible these days, I've made a new one. Let's hope this works! Meanwhile, The Foxx is Back!