I Am So Happy Someone Commissioned Me To Draw Cool-looking Enkidu And Gudako

one of the greatest tragedies in life is that you will always be loved more than you will ever know. someone in class finds your presence inviting and warm, even if you’ve only ever exchanged a few words with them—maybe none at all. someone on the street loves your smile and it gets them down the next few streets. someone you used to be friends with still wishes to fondly call your name. someone you used to be friends with five years ago would give anything to be in the same room as you today. someone who regularly comes into work is disappointed when you aren’t there to brighten their day. someone missed you today. someone noticed you were gone. someone loves you when you’re there; someone loves you when you’re nowhere to be found at all. you think you have always disappeared when you’re no longer in the picture, but you’ve never left the frame.

a comic about meeting your younger self :)

Thank you for reading :)

The Servants probably blame themselves when the protag doesn’t get out of a battle unscathed, huh

How about some hcs with Hans and Shakespeare having a master that's also writer.

Hans Christen Andersen and William Shakespeare + Master Who Writes!

Hamlet was the bane of my existence. End of story, literally.

Being writers themselves, Hans and Shakespeare are often found in Chaldea’s library and archive reading and studying written material from eras beyond their lifetimes.

One day, during their usual perusing, they stumbled upon you sitting quietly in a corner desk, pen and paper in hand. Of course, they cannot help but become curious about what you are writing.

You tried to hide your materials at first, after all, you were just a novice writer and now two of the most prolific and well-respected authors in the literary canon were now asking to read your manuscript. Having them read your writing would bring you nothing but unadulterated embarrassment at the difference in your abilities.

But after finally prying your current project away from your hands, rather than loosely skimming through the jumble of words, they immediately began discussing the thoughts and ideas you put into each sentence, giving suggestions as to how you could better convey your ideas. 

Shakespeare, however tried to turn every single one of your projects, whether it be historical-fiction, romance, sci-fi, always tried to twist it into a bizarre tragedy.

Sure, the writing was beautiful and deeply symbolic, but you just could not see any reason for you to end a bildungsroman story with a grand, Stephen King-esque end…interesting enough, but not really what you had in mind…

Sometimes you ask them about their past works’ and give hypotheses as to why they wrote a character in a specific way, or why they used a specific setting.

When you asked Shakespeare about what his inspiration for writing Hamlet, and whether if Hamlet was truly mad, he just laughed and commented that sometimes analyzing too deeply answers nothing.

Just for fun, you, Shakespeare, and Hans sometimes writes stories of the servants in Chaldea.

You and Hans co-penned Gilgamesh’s New Clothes, a parody of his own work, and it was all fun and games until KoGil got his hands on the manuscript and carelessly showed it to his older counterparts.

Thus ensuing a pair of VERY angry Gilgamesh’s threatening to destroy Chaldea with Enuma Elish until you and Hans pitifully watched the manuscript burn in the incinerator.

Good thing you wrote an extra copy…right?

I’ve always struggled with social anxiety and self-confidence in different areas. It waxes and wanes in amplitude, but it’s always there. This affects my ability to do research as I struggle to do things like use the phone, send emails asking people to do things in a timely fashion, and finish work due to perfectionism.  It was really bad a couple of years ago, during my PhD. We had official annual meetings with a member of staff to check on progress back then, which were a good idea but terrified the students. I always had mine with a member of faculty a lot of people are scared of. I’m not sure why, maybe because their courses were very difficult and they was a strict marker? I’d heard they’d mellowed over the years so maybe, like a fear of the dark, students’ wariness passed down the generations.  Whatever the reason, I’d never been scared of them, and always saw them as a fair mind when it came to assessing my progress. I wouldn’t believe myself or my friends mostly, but I’d trust them to tell the truth. On my last meeting they knew I wasn’t very well. I always cried in these meetings through stress/lifting of stress, so true to form the box of tissues were ready and they offered me a fruit tea. I had the summer fruits. It was really sweet and calming, and I didn’t need the tissues that year. We spoke at length about why I was struggling within myself when my work seemed perfectly fine, even really good in places. And we got talking about anxiety when not at work. Turns out both of us have similar social anxiety problems! We both struggle to go in a shop with no or few other customers, because we hate being watched by staff. It’s really specific but I bet it’s common haha. We both hate using the phone, even ordering take away is difficult! Maybe this is why I wasn’t scared of them?  At any rate, it was great to know I wasn’t alone, here was a full professor with the same problems I have, still doing science! But, I asked, how do you do it? How did you get this high up the ladder and not quit, or not take it out on yourself? How are you not anxious all the time? Oh, I am anxious, they said. I was really bad for years. Wouldn’t use the phone at all. But then I was made Head of Department.  That’s terrifying! What did you do? Well I was still anxious, about using the phone for example. But I realised, the Head of Department uses the phone to call people to get things sorted quickly. And at the moment, I’m Head of Department. That’s the hat I’m wearing. The Head of Department picks up the phone and the Head of Department speaks to people to Get Things Done. That’s a role I’m performing, that’s all, and people expect me to be the Head of Department. And it helped, and now I can use the phone because I’m used to it.  Hearing them say that was a bit of an epiphany. They weren’t saying “just suck it up”, it’s a complete reframing of the interaction. 

YOU might not like using the telephone to ask so-and-so to do something, but Scientist-In-Charge-Of-Making-This-Thing-Work DOES call Collaborators to remind them, and then Collaborators can respond that they forgot, or they have it scheduled in for next week, because it’s their role to do something. 

YOU might be scared of going into that shop, but a Potential Customer does go into shops and look around. Potential Customer might be asked by Sales Rep whether they need help, and Potential Customer can say just browsing. Sales Rep may watch Potential Customer browse, but that’s okay, because they’re waiting to perform their role. And when Potential Customer leaves the shop, they aren’t that role anymore, back to self. Interaction done. 

YOU might not want to email that person to ask them for a reference, BUT a Final Year Student DOES send the email, because part of their role is to get a reference at the end. And the person receiving the email also has a role, and that is Someone Who Sometimes Gets Reference Requests, that they can response Yes or No to. Then Final Year Student can get their reference about Final Year Student or can move on to someone else. Interaction over. Slate clean. Sometimes we get so caught up we forget that many of the things we do are divorced from our own self, and we worry about judgements from other people. But in a lot of our interactions, especially at work or school, we have a set of roles and rules. When it’s getting really hard for me to do things like email, phone, or go somewhere, it helps me to think of that Professor’s first day as Head of Department, them sitting there with that weight of responsibility and internally screaming as they pick up the phone the first time, because that’s what Head of Departments do. If they can do it and normalise it, I know I can too. One day! :) 

would you like a nice glass of

Something I don't think we talk enough about in discussions surrounding AI is the loss of perseverance.

I have a friend who works in education and he told me about how he was working with a small group of HS students to develop a new school sports chant. This was a very daunting task for the group, in large part because many had learning disabilities related to reading and writing, so coming up with a catchy, hard-hitting, probably rhyming, poetry-esque piece of collaborative writing felt like something outside of their skill range. But it wasn't! I knew that, he knew that, and he worked damn hard to convince the kids of that too. Even if the end result was terrible (by someone else's standards), we knew they had it in them to complete the piece and feel super proud of their creation.

Fast-forward a few days and he reports back that yes they have a chant now... but it's 99% AI. It was made by Chat-GPT. Once the kids realized they could just ask the bot to do the hard thing for them - and do it "better" than they (supposedly) ever could - that's the only route they were willing to take. It was either use Chat-GPT or don't do it at all. And I was just so devastated to hear this because Jesus Christ, struggling is important. Of course most 14-18 year olds aren't going to see the merit of that, let alone understand why that process (attempting something new and challenging) is more valuable than the end result (a "good" chant), but as adults we all have a responsibility to coach them through that messy process. Except that's become damn near impossible with an Instantly Do The Thing app in everyone's pocket. Yes, AI is fucking awful because of plagiarism and misinformation and the environmental impact, but it's also keeping people - particularly young people - from developing perseverance. It's not just important that you learn to write your own stuff because of intellectual agency, but because writing is hard and it's crucial that you learn how to persevere through doing hard things.

Write a shitty poem. Write an essay where half the textual 'evidence' doesn't track. Write an awkward as fuck email with an equally embarrassing typo. Every time you do you're not just developing that particular skill, you're also learning that you did something badly and the world didn't end. You can get through things! You can get through challenging things! Not everything in life has to be perfect but you know what? You'll only improve at the challenging stuff if you do a whole lot of it badly first. The ability to say, "I didn't think I could do that but I did it anyway. It's not great, but I did it," is SO IMPORTANT for developing confidence across the board, not just in these specific tasks.

Idk I'm just really worried about kids having to grow up in a world where (for a variety of reasons beyond just AI) they're not given the chance to struggle through new and challenging things like we used to.

Hello! May I request Enkidu from fgo x fem!master reader who tries hard to convince them that they're a human - not just a doll or a weapon, but a person - and they are so worthy of love (and please love yourself and let me love you already)? From whose perspective is totally up to your inspiration. Fluff or hurt/comfort both work

Hi, hi, this took like a super duper long time, sorry for that! I'm not very sure if this is what you wanted, but here goes nothing.

Masterpost

Human or weapon?

Enkidu is a weapon, nothing but a weapon. He knows and has accepted that a long time ago. He has no likes nor dislikes, no dreams nor hopes. It does not change even when the Babylonia Empire no longer stands, when the Mesopotamia gods are no more.

Even so, the Master that summoned him is so very kind. She constantly looks for him, asking for his likes and dislikes. When he retorts that he is a weapon, that he has no uses for likes and dislikes, she merely smiles.

His Master says that since he has no likes nor dislikes, they should find some for him instead so she brings him what she likes and watches his reaction. When she starts to run out of things that she likes, he is both grateful and not.

He is determined not to succumb, to remain the weapon that he is and will always be and yet, he fails. The gods would laugh at him if they can see him now, a weapon of the gods, and yet he falls to a single human’s determination.

He continues to repeat that he has no likes nor dislikes, but he cannot help but wonder who he is trying to convince, his Master or himself? Surely himself, because he likes the way his Master smiles, brighter than the sun, he likes it when she laughs, for it is more melodious than a harp, he likes it when she looks for him, trying to get him to try something new in her never-ending quest to get him to finally admit that he likes something.

He dislikes it when she is not by his side, when she spends time with people that aren’t him, when she graces her smile to someone that isn’t him, when she laughs in the company of people that aren’t him. He dislikes it when she is sad, the days that her smiles and laughter does not come as easily as they usually do.

Maybe one day, he will finally confess that to her that she has changed him, for because of her, he now has likes and dislikes.