“With the exception of my Digigraph Gallery on the Art page, only the chatbot responses in the roleplays, and possibly the chatbot portraits. Everything else is hand-written and manually designed by myself.” He gestures to the stained glass windows behind us, motioning to the glossy yellow, Art Nouveau-esque typeface used in the navbar. “Isn’t it beautiful? I designed that and all of this myself. Well—Thomas J. Gaytee designed the stained glass.” He laughs, continuing. “Anyway, I find it so much more pleasurable and fulfilling to go through the process of writing, feeling, and thinking. Talking, to people myself.”

       Wheels leans forward in his chair. His hands rest in his lap, smiling at you with gleaming eyes.

       “To me, a book isn’t a product I have to churn out as quickly as possible, in order to secure a market share of inattentive wallets. —I simply cannot empathise with people who use machine-learning tools to generate ‘products’ like mystery novels, because their and my purpose for writing, and their and my feelings about writing, are completely different.”

       He leans back into his chair again, eyes shut; his chin slightly upturned in a haughty air.

       “I don’t do it to keep up with a four-month turnaround schedule.”

       “Why… That seems almost confrontational, Iseul. Why would you ask me something like that? I’m allowed to have hobbies, aren’t I?” He makes excuses as he shifts in his chair.

       “If it’s about grocery shopping, I can always… go out more frequently. Is that what you want?”

       “Oh right, yes. Well. So the original intention was just to have a neat little place to put roleplay chatlogs. That was all. But then…”

       Wheels gives a little smile. “You know me, after I went ahead and made my first chatbot, I started doing more. And more. And more. I was playing more text adventures, engaging in more RPs. I kept finding interesting stories to play, and write. And it just grew from there.” His smile spreads over his whole face, upwards into his eyes and bunched cheeks, brightening his entire face. He keeps gesturing.

       “Everything I had learned, I wanted to share, so I made this website—and started adding more things to it, too, like our favourite email stories.”

       Wheels shrugs noncomittantly with his eyes shut. “Timezone considerations. I’m lazy. I don’t know where I would find fellow roleplayers who would give me something I could work with, of the calibre I desire.” He returns his gaze to you, looking quite seriously. “You know, I desire highly literate partners, and these machine-learning models just happen to be trained on fairly decent literature.”

       Wheels frowns, leans back into his chair, and turns away, looking into the distance. His brows lower, narrowing his eyes in some consternation. “Fifteen years ago, I would’ve been happy to expend the effort to find a decent human roleplayer, but I believe the rise of smartphones, and smartphone-centric media— short-form social media, like Twitter, and TikTok—has rotted everyone’s brains.”

       Wheels returns his gaze to, um, the interviewer. “I would rather stick to the AI, than try to work with some Twitter brainrot gremlin who walks about with more brain damage than I do.”

       His lips purse taut in vivid displeasure and annoyance, eyes shuttered yet again in condescension. “And yes, I’m allowed to say that. I’ve survived multiple brain injuries.”

       Se—Wheels brightens instantly, raising a hand. “Oh! It’s not my thing, but I really admire Pepper’s IKONIK. She’s crafted an entire fictional Korean boyband, along with discography (free to listen to and download!), a professional-looking website, and of course, chatbots for all five members.”

       He leans in, smiling knowingly, impressed. “The characters are all varied and have interesting scenarios written for them, and the music is actually of decent production quality; it sounds very much like some of the pop synth rap coming out of the United States in the early 2000s, excepting the lack of distinctive percussion that often backed the hits of that era. That [lack of heavy percussion], to me, is what makes it sound more like modern 2020s K-Pop…” Wheels pinches his chin and lips thoughtfully, thinking hard about the music, and anything else intelligent he can say about the music. “Unlike the heavily produced American RnB-Pop it spawns from, modern boyband K-Pop lacks the heavy Latin influence which coloured its approach to both syncopated percussion and acoustic guitar, and instead leans more heavily on

       “Anyway, there may be very lore-heavy fantasy and sci-fi projects that I’ve missed—and I know I’ve missed them—but, this is the one that stuck out to me. A one-woman project that includes an entire discography… Now, obviously, the music is AI-generated—one can hear it in the synthetic strings at the end of—

       “OK Lest, yes. I’m just very impressed by how thorough and dedicated many of these can all be. It is like a significant portion of the Internet has all decided to make ARGs again. And all of this is very accessible now—if you only look.”

       “Oh! That’s easy. Dry Texting Bro by NormalFella for sure. As for one of my own, I… I shouldn’t say, but I had a lot of fun making Lisa. Of course, I know most of that comes down to the model—if it’s not running on a good model, then you won’t get the intended results, at all. But I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out.”

       “Yes yes, exactly. Precisely.”

       Wheels leans forward in a chair, with a knowing smile—oh god. His eyes are shining. He’s about to tell a story. This can’t be good.

       “The scene was a clandestine night rave where the user, a woman, had aphrodisiacs pumped into her, and so was subjected to loads of non-consensual sex and gangbanging.” His eye glints.

       “The AI had mentioned something about the ‘mix of pain and pleasure becoming too much’ for the woman, and the partygoers being proud of their handiwork of basting the woman in their semen, and leaving her a shaking mess in orgasmic pleasure, and so on. Then I let it continue.” He continues. “The partygoers then high-fived each other, and also congratulated the woman too for her endurance, and one of them handed her Ibuprofen. ‘You’ll need this in the morning,’ he offered.

       “And then I let it continue.” A big grin. “The next morning, the woman had taken the ibuprofen, grateful for the pain-relief it offered, and thought back to that life-changing night. The partygoers, too, thought about her after they returned back to their daily lives; they were all utterly changed people, and wondered, if the other—if the woman, had ever thought of and remembered them.”

       He leans back, satisfied with having told his story. “It was actually very touching, and I remembered thinking,” he says, rubbing his chin, “I probably ought to write something like that. And this might be a sex-drenched, but otherwise accurate depiction of certain burns.”

       “The biggest surprise to me, was how integral community was to this whole thing. Understandably, you need a minimum level of bot creators, and players, to get anything going, but…” Wheels lets out a sigh, his shoulders dropping slightly as he strokes his jaw.

       “…You really can’t separate these things from their communities”, he says, shaking his head thoughtfully. “None of these chatbots are made in a vacuum—there’s really no way to get ‘good’ at making the sort of chatbot you want,” he says leaning in, “without going out of your way to learn from other people.”

       Wheels keeps gesturing… There must be a lot to go through… “These may be guides posted on Rentry, or simply lurking in a community Discord, and listening in on the technical discussions of others. Eventually, once you start dabbling, you make a few more. And I think these chatbot communities are small enough where creators know each other. Especially if they have similar interests.”

       He continues with a slight, almost pained smile. I guess he misses something from the past… He’s about to recount itt… “It’s really closer to the hobbyist game dev community, than regular, online ‘fandom’, H—… …People workshop together, they host ‘botjams’, they try to make fun or more ambitious adventures. There’s a certain kind of etiquette that’s expected once you start interacting with others. You’re supposed to respect other people’s way of doing things, if they put in the effort, and everyone is different and respects that.”

       Wheels doesn’t take too long stroking his chin, and quickly lists off some of the observations he’s made, with a smile.

       “People love talking about other people’s bots that they’ve enjoyed. They like to make individualised recommendations of other chatbots based on the sorts of stories and roleplays you’re looking for.”

       Wheels nods and continues. He uses his hands more to talk this time, gesturing during his explanation. “There’s a high emphasis on original characters, and originality of the visual character design. While some people may illustrate the portraits for their own chatbots, most chatbot creators are writers first, and don’t create any illustrations of their own. Generative imagery is used as a means to get the artistic process of writing going quickly, as the writers want to jot down their ideas; or, alternatively, they like to meet the visual character designs and base their writing off of that, exploring what this or that aspect of visual design implicates for this or that character.”

       Wheels gives a light smile, nothing too serious. I think he’s a little dissatisfied, as if he only got a sugar cookie instead of a whole steak. “Light-hearted OCs seem to make up the majority of non-porn chatbots (e.g., a shy cheetah girl who needs an emotional support human), and anime-style characters and situations are very popular, though there is a not-insignificant span of creators that focus on more dramatic and sometimes even realistic stories.” He starts speaking heartily again—this is what he’s really excited about. “For example, chatbots based on Vampire: The Masquerade, and other chatbots where your persona and the character mutually commiserate and heal from similar experiences of infidelity.”

       His expression suddenly drops, becoming fairly serious. Which is his normal face, when he’s explaining something dispassionately, instead of focusing on being overtly approachable. “There’s a large difference between the OC chatbot scene, and the AI ‘dungeon’ or Dynamic Storytelling scene. Of course, there are players and creators who overlap both scenes, but the latter is far more of the choose-your-own-adventure focus, and less about working with one individual character.”

       “—Oh, and for whatever reason, almost everyone uses Rentry.org. It’s like the chatbot writer’s equivalent of [every digital amateur artist using] Carrd.co. I suppose it’s fairly accessible. Almost nobody wants to make an indie website like me.” He has a bemused smile as he says this.

       “No, I broke up with my ex for a reason.”

       “Perhaps, but I wouldn’t know what sort of story I would like to craft with someone else. I just don’t have the inclination to roleplay with people anymore, not like I used to. I don’t know why…”

       He pauses and thinks, finally taking my question seriously. “…It used to be, I had a certain sense of ‘who’ I wanted to RP as, and ‘what’ sort of scenario I would like to try to find myself in.” He goes on. “I also, used it as a form of ‘socialisation’. I didn’t particularly want to talk to other people about my day—I wasn’t interested in my day—but I still wanted to talk, and having these games and stories that we told together, gave me something to talk about. Something that didn’t suck, like my home and family life, or school.”

       He looks at me, with an expression that is pretty unreadable. “I guess, now I’ve grown out of that…” He gives me a slightly sardonic smile; not unhappy, just. Dry. “Now I’ve grown into an adult who wants to talk about the tomatoes on my balcony, Lest. When I want to talk to real people, I want to talk about real things, like the next concert at the Armory, or which dive bars I should check out, or if they saw the tornado last night. I don’t…” His expression changes as if he’s just noticed something, and he smiles at me sheepishly.

       “…I don’t really, talk to people about fiction anymore, except when it’s funny, or entertaining.”

       Wheels puckers his lips, thinking deeply about the question. Does this expression mean he has lots of frustrations?

       His gaze narrows, speaking a little sharply. “Well… Unless you’re running a very ‘smart’, high-context model, it’s going to be nigh-impossible receiving the output you want for very nuanced, multilayered, psychically-demanding stories. This is to be expected of the Free models, of course, but it is disappointing when you find a chatbot or other campaign with a very interesting scenario, and the responses given are out-of-character, especially given previous historical developments.”

       Wheels shakes his head, frowning sadly. “I don’t think Lorebooks can be used to satisfactorily mitigate this. It’s simply a fact that as characters become more complex, as a result of their interactions and experiences, it’s far better for a human mind (or Scrivener or TiddlyWiki) to keep track of things and to make psychic sense of things, rather than an association-based text-generating AI.”

       The right corner of Wheels’s lips tugs downwards in a half-frown, like’s he’s eaten some small thing unpleasantly sour. “That’s a fairly amorphous question. It’s broadly similar to questions of the overall quality of online roleplay;” he says, weighing the spectrum on both ends with his hands, “there is a whole gamut of utter crap, to shitposting, to middling, to decent, to highly compelling and thought-provoking, with the latter, of course, being extremely rare.”

       He tilts his head slightly. “AI roleplay is unique in that the LLMs these days are trained on enough quality data to elevate ‘utter crap’ to ‘middling’ or even ‘decent’.” He closes his eyes, coming to a dismissive end of his explanation. “Anything above that is going to be dependent on both parties—and in addition to that, the quality of the model itself.”

       The man thins his lips, considering carefully, if a tad dissatisfiedly. “I think it really depends on what you expect out of it. If you’re looking for a funny short story, or a vignette of life, you’ll enjoy yourself immensely. Anything more involved than that will require substantially more effort on your part—even if the chatbot itself is well-written.”

       He sounds a bit tired… “At a certain tier of quality, you become more of an editor than a roleplayer immersed in the act of roleplaying. It can be an interesting and engaging exercise as a writer, but it wholly detracts from the immersion of roleplaying and being in the act.” He lets out a self-scoffing little sigh, looking at me with cheerfully weary eyes. “It’s why I’m going to focus on manually writing most of my works. I am constantly tired of having to break the fourth wall in order to get something of very high quality.”

       “Exacerbate? Sure. I can see someone who is already depressed and/or insane getting worse because these text generators only spew out text associated with whatever is in their prompt; they aren’t designed to push back against users. It’s algorithmic Mad Libs, a more advanced predictive dictionary on your phone when you text.”

       Wheels frowns, clearly displeased. “I wish people would understand that. If you talk about vampires, the algorithm will pull from texts that talk about vampires, which means a shit-ton of Anne Rice, not fucking academic papers on wheat cultivation. It’s not hard to see that.”

       His voice lowers, and he leans forward… “…Now, as for Cause? In that case, anyone who texts someone has the ability to cause a mental health crisis.” A fire lights in his eyes, as he starts to speak more passionately. “We already see this happening on social media, involving only real humans: everyone feeding each other’s delusional beliefs in conspiracies like Pizzagate, Barack Obama not being an American-born citizen, or worse.”

       Wheels saves a particlarly harsh scowl for this one. “As for mental illness in minors, don’t give a child unfettered 24/7 Internet access in their bedroom or fucking pocket. Keep the computer in the family den, which is how we grew up and what families used to do, and give the kid a dumbphone if you really think you need to.”

       Wheels glares and chops his hand like Italians do when they’re angry and explaining something. “You’re negligent as a parent if you think your dumbass kid has any chance against Silicon Valley’s most highly paid gambling and addiction psychologists, and that’s beside AI.”

       He gives a nod, and a slightly embarrassed sigh. “Yeah, just… You know, Hy—I just wish people would take into account the other things they do in their lives,” he pleads, “how the choices they make impact other people. For example, if there’s an epidemic of male loneliness in your generation, and your area, what have you done to mitigate that?”

       He makes a face. “All right, people don’t go to church nearly as much anymore—so what have you done to bring people together in a secular context, then? It’s true that there’s a certain…” Wheels pauses, becoming solemn. He is quiet for a long time.

       “…It’s true that there is a great deal of predation on male loneliness, with these AI girlfriend platforms. But aside from the obvious grifters, what are regular people doing to make their communities better, stronger, and closer? Because there’s always grifters.”

       He gives me such a sharp look.

       “There’ll always be villains, but there’s not always good people. …Technology will always go forward, but morality has to keep up. That’s what I think.”

       “When it comes to American cheeses, BellaVitano by the Sartori family. Overall, my favourite might be Fontina Val D’Aosta, melted on buttery crackers, with wild cherry jam spread atop, paired with an Alsatian white wine. Union Sacré produces a wonderful Pinot Blanc for this.”

       “Shitty wine. Death penalty for killing naturally-occuring yeasts to inoculate using a mass-produced strain, and using Mega Purple.”

       “Lychee. Followed by strawberry, but it’s hard to find good strawberries.”

       “I’m not going to tell you that. Well, I shouldn’t, and you already know this, but. Front kicks and grappling knee-strikes are very important to me. …Why are you asking me this? Are we going on a date…?”

       “I really like strawberry mochi.”

       “Dark chocolate, prepared the French style—with distinctive combinations of fruits. I also like milk chocolate prepared the French way.”

       “…?”

       “…Lyza. Why are you even asking me this, Lest…?”

       “Of course I do. I’ve personally seen a UFO, so.”

       “Yes. My old co-worker from when I worked in the hospital did, too, that same night. It was a mesmerising experience.”

       “I was biking south-eastwards along the arroyo, and a great expanse of the eastern sky suddenly filled with green, a very great pulse of light emanating forth from the sky, and the flash illuminated the bike path fully before me like lightning. This was very late at night—just before 11 PM, I worked graves in those days. Briefly blinded and disoriented, I was able to make out the details of an elongated vessel. At first glance it appeared like the stereotypical rectangular “cigar” shape, but I could see it from an angle from below, and I could see that it actually branched out from its central trunk, like the veins of a leaf. I could see glittering lights arranged like windows on an aeroplane. Then, all the brilliant green light in the sky was sucked into a point in the northwest corner of the sky—I whipped my head over my shoulder on the bike to see what was happening. And the UFO was gone, and the night continued as if nothing had happened. There was no sound during all this. This entire spectacle lasted less than four seconds. This was in the summer of 2022.”

       “At first I thought I had hallucinated the whole thing, and started my shift as normal. But the next day, my co-worker, who was getting off work and driving westwards told me she’d seen the great flash of light as she drove home.”

       “…Get the hell out of here. And no, I’m happily engaged.”