Every few months a new AI girlfriend app gets hyped as the candy.ai killer, and most of them fade fast because they are thin under the surface. I have learned to be skeptical. So when I say SweetDream actually holds up, it comes from spending real time at sweetdream.ai rather than skimming a feature list.

The decisive factor, in my view, is coherence. SweetDream does not just bolt features together. The character you create, with their looks, voice, personality and backstory, carries through into chat that is natural, emotionally intelligent and able to remember context. That continuity is what makes an AI companion feel alive instead of disposable.

Finding the right weapon involves balancing character-specific traits, environmental practicality, and narrative impact. Based on the sources, here are the best tips for selecting a weapon for your fantasy characters:

1. Match the Weapon to the Character’s Identity

A character’s physical and social background should naturally influence their choice of arms:

Physique and Training: Assign heavy weapons to bulky characters who can handle them with less effort, while smaller, faster characters should use daggers. Consider their upbringing; a former hunter would be most comfortable with a bow, whereas a poor lumberjack might use a lumber axe.

Role and Personality: A character's role in a group can dictate their gear. For example, a smart leader might use a spear and shield, while a brutal warrior might favor a claymore or broadaxe.

Financial Situation: A character’s wealth determines what they can realistically afford to buy and maintain.

2. Prioritize Practicality and "Daily Wear"

Since characters spend 95–99% of their time traveling rather than fighting, their weapon must be easily worn.

The Versatility of Swords: Single-handed swords are popular because they are lightweight (under 4 lbs) and easy to carry for self-defense, though they are less effective against armored foes.

Environmental Constraints: Consider where the character operates. Pirates avoid long weapons that tangle in rigging and prefer items they can swim with, like axes or one-handed swords. Bounty hunters might carry concealable daggers or short swords to avoid being stopped by city guards, while keeping heavier weapons on their horse.

Lethality vs. Portability: While polearms are highly lethal and offer great reach, they are heavy and awkward to carry into towns or lug around all day.

3. Integrate Magic and Biology

If your world includes magic or non-human races, the weapon should synergize with those unique traits:

Magic Synergy: A blood mage might use serrated daggers to cause deep bleeding, while a pyromancer could use a flail with a built-in lantern to flare flames during an attack.

Biological Traits: Unique anatomy can lead to creative setups, such as a four-armed character using four bladed bucklers for a high-defense, counter-attacking style.

4. Use Creative Design Techniques

If you are stuck, try these unconventional methods suggested by the sources:

Reverse Engineer Fight Scenes: Instead of picking a weapon first, plot a cool fight scene and determine what tactics would make it interesting. Then, give the character the weapon required to perform those tactics.

The Rule of Cool: If a design feels right or looks visually striking—like a pair of longswords that combine into a massive bow—you should use it simply because it is "cool".

Real-World Inspiration: Browse tool sheds or historical weapon websites (like Kult of Athena) to find unique shapes and functions that inspire you.

Symbolic Value: Ask if the weapon should be an extension of the character or a plot device, such as a family heirloom or an ancient artifact that helps explain their background.

ASTR (Atomenangetrieben Stratosphäretechniker Replika Unit, Atomic-powered stratosphere technician- or 'Atom')

One of the newest Empire-made Replikas. ASTR is one unit who's neural pattern is entirely [REDACTED: synthetic]. ASTR helps in repair, retrieval, and search and rescue. Currently assigned assistant to Dr. Ochanomizu. Since their original neural pattern was lost, they are to be sent on missions sparingly. At 173cm they are capable of repair tasks in tight areas and of nuclear engines and facilities that other units may not be able to get to. The extreme environmental stabilization of their suit allow for almost a minute of survival in a vacuum, though this should not be done and can severely damage the Replika.

Not sure if you've done this one already, but what do you think the M6 would study in college/uni in a modern setting?

The Arcana Mini-HCs: What M6 study in college

~ in case you're interested, M6 as college students & Modern AU Pre-Prologue Setup are also here :3 ~

Julian: pre-med. he's five minutes late to everything, has eyebags deeper than his student debt, and is best friends with all his profs and classmates somehow. his notes are illegible and terrifying

Asra: liberal arts, with a performance focus (nobody's sure in what). all we know is that they consistently end up being TA for freshmen 101 courses purely to jumpstart their self-questioning journeys

Nadia: double major in engineering and political science, with a music minor in the organ. raises her hand to answer every question and will assign herself the most work in group projects automatically

Muriel: environmental science/biochemistry. always takes the back corner seat, meticulously copies the board, and never talks if he can help it. shared a class with Julian once and still shudders to think of it

Portia: veterinarian studies. hates sharing a class with Julian because the profs just call her "younger Devorak". arranges all the post-class hangouts and runs the best group chats for study (and gossip)

Also he’s an engineering student, specifically mechanical engineering and I won’t hear any different. And he’s the worst kind of engineering student too. Especially in his first two years he doesn’t believe in “liberal arts” but falls in love with Fine Art even tho he’s objectively horrendous at it. He’s now a full on advocate for S.T.E.A.M.

He puts air quotes around “communication and business majors” even when he grows out of it he still does it around Zuko because it makes him, a communication and business major, furious.

A huge part of why he became a communications major was because he was indecisive and people always tell him he should learn to communicate better 🤷🏿‍♀️. And business is because he thought it was what his dad wanted him to do but even after they fall out he finds he only doesn’t mind it.

Katara is pre med and wants to go specifically into sports medicine. She’s on a water polo team. Like D1 team. She likes the aggressive camaraderie of the sport and she wants to keep playing competitively after college but not like major league. She doesn’t remember what the inside of her dorm room looks like being a student athelete and she’s definitely tried to drown Sokka because he said Biology isn’t a real hard science and because of this he always says Pre Med isn’t invited to be part of S.T.E.A.M with the rest of the sciences. Pakku’s coaches the girls waterpolo team because Katara beat him in a fight. She takes up environmental conservationism as a hobby because she can’t possibly have enough to do.

Toph is structural engineering and shares a lot of classes with Sokka which is the worst thing that has ever happened to him because Toph but also the best thing because Toph’s grasp of the mathematics of it all is immaculate. She has a natural almost psychic feel for structural integrity. She’s like a column whisperer just be touch she can identify loaf bearing structures. And how good the structural integrity of a building is there are many a building the gaang no longer go in on campus after Toph hauntingly said”this’ll be coming down soon” and laughs manically nobody knows if this means in 20 years or in 20 days Toph won’t elaborate. They don’t take chances. Toph is almost single handedly responsible for the school and campus being so accessible because she will not hesitate to call it out to their faces regardless of present company and the mock them excessively. She never officially joined the club (mostly because Toph is unaware of the existence of any clubs at this school and you couldn’t pay her to do school in her free time and clubs count as school) but she’s something of a mythical figure to the Disabled students union. Toph has one of those assigned helpers who help her take notes in class (I actually don’t know if this is a service offered to blind students I know it’s offered for deaf and sometimes autistic students so I’d imagine it is) and it’s smellerbee and they spend the whole class just absolutely devastating Sokka’s reputation. But her notes are immaculate.

Aang ofcourse is a religious studies/ philosophy/archeology major specializing in lost/endangered nomadic cultures. He’s very Adavwnced for his age group and is already like a TA in his first year to his professor Monk Gyatso. He’s already leading symposium discussions where he gets very serious and passionate and analytical which is very weird for his friends to see given he literally just raced Sokka here from the cafeteria and how he broke several of Zuko’s fathers expensive vases in a hula hoop contents. He’s a goofy dude who takes his responsibility of honoring the various cultures he studies very seriously. He is something of a child prodigy and has already published several papers. He and Zuko are archeological dig buddies because Zuko has to have hobbies and Aang brings him along because he is preternaturally good at finding lost artifacts and bartering for information. Zuko also has a tendency to chase down every single lead he finds with the same level of rigorous vigor and Aang absolutely loves accompanying him on these often wild goose chases. Because adventure! Aang ofcourse very into endangered species consternation but very against those scientific experiments to bring back extinct species. Is not a fan of zoos that he has not thoroughly vetted and are not essentially wildlife reserves. Will bust out an animal if he has to has done it before will do it again. Toph still calls him Twinkle Toes because he did ballet and martial arts and so is very light on his feet. He also takes art classes with Sokka cause it’s fun! He roles the whole gang into going to pottery barn regularly to paint mugs!

This got way longer than expected I swear I was just going to say how much I love engineering student sokka 😭😭😭. But I guess there’s been a lot of negativity so here I guess

TL;DR: We call our experiences programming because we have choices and this is our choice. You also have choices and get to make your own choice.

We’ve made leaps and strides on our programming since confronting it as such. I’m not terribly attached to the name, but it’s sometimes more apt than ITBC or TBMC… and I like the sci-fi sound of it.

I don’t consider programming to necessitate extreme abuse — I also use it in the high control group sense. We’ve found it helpful to have one word that takes multiple meanings depending on the context. Sometimes I am talking about ITBC, sometimes coercive control, sometimes manipulation of social dynamics. They overlap for us.

I know our abusers are just people. We generally don’t apply good and evil to any situation, only harm and how we define it. They did influence our DID, though the line between purposeful intervention and natural progression is blurry. There are times I know our survival responses were co-opted or our structure was pushed in non-normative directions for their convenience.

We have a few organizational structures that were enforced by our perpetrators, including color early on and symbolic objects like plants or gemstones later. The color was absolutely intentional, where we were dressed up depending on what behavior was expected and called by different names. The more symbolic assignments were given like nicknames, and we were taught about them like a person talks about their interests. Some instances were explicit, some not.

We have automatic responses to environmental stimuli that we remember being trained for, though not usually with fancy machines or all-powerful witchcraft — the exceptions being lies we were told and believed. Learning stage magic and basic engineering has helped a lot in that regard.

We had assigned places to keep us from talking to one another, each based on memories or common descriptions. Even the structures that wall those areas off and the alters who guard them could come to be with only a child’s creativity, but that doesn’t make the sessions with dolls and blueprints go away.

Everything that can be programmed has to be possible without. Control and torment is all there is to it.

We had evidence enough to convince us before we left, and have made better sense of some questions since. We can’t prove it, and either way doubt is useful. For us experiencing it and whoever reads that we do.

It doesn’t matter much to me whether our memories are accurate; our perps don’t know where we are, so it doesn’t matter if they really were that dangerous. Right now, we want to know what’s working for us and what we can change.

We were very lucky in that our group was sputtering out in our lifetime. Lack of funding and recruits shut down the operations that kept people invested, so people moved away. Our family moved, and it was only conditioning that this was the right way to do things that kept us trapped in abuse. The biggest threat is defanged, and any investigation we want to start or charges we want to press can wait until we have our personal narrative in line.

We can be incoherent at times, contradict ourselves and act out of fear. It’s not unusual for some memories to turn out mostly symbolic, for interpretations to be colored by experience and change over time. For a lot of people, having been through abuse and deprivation means skills like critical thinking and meaning-making are underdeveloped. Everybody starts somewhere, even if it’s not a pretty place.

I’m glad to see people are stepping out of conformity mindsets and taking their next steps to wherever they’re going. It’s okay if we’re not heading in the same direction. I have my own values and goals, and they have theirs.

I’m happy with my course right now. I have a sense of history and a background that I can honor, even if my perspective on it changes. I can take what helps and set the rest down. I can reevaluate and shuffle my load. It’s not over until I’m over, and I’m still living.

You can do that too. The mistakes and missteps are part of the adventure, even if it doesn’t feel like one in real time. You’re not going to know which risks will pay off, or sometimes even which ones you’re taking. Healing is giving yourself the power to get by with what you have, and to give yourself more as you go. You get to choose, and choose again, as long as you live.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, filth of every kind accumulated on the streets of New York. The land was boggy and lacked proper drainage. Epidemics ravaged many of the city’s impoverished neighborhoods. In the summer of 1864, an inspection undertaken by a committee of concerned physicians yielded a seventeen-volume report that catalogued the conditions. One inspector noted that, in his assigned district, refuse filled gutters, blocked sewage culverts, and sent forth “perennial emanations which generate pestiferous disease.” Another observed that certain streets better resembled “dung-hills rather than the thoroughfares in a civilized city.” In response to the report, state lawmakers introduced legislation that led to the establishment, in 1866, of the Metropolitan Board of Health, one of the country’s first municipal public-health authorities. Upon its formation, the board immediately confronted a potential cholera outbreak. It established quarantine measures and administered new health ordinances that helped to contain the spread of the disease. Support for the new agency soared, and other cities began organizing similar authorities. The modern-day public-health movement in the United States was born.

An important revelation from the “great sanitary awakening” of the nineteenth century, as it became known, was that social and environmental factors could significantly affect people’s health. During the second half of the twentieth century, policymakers began turning their attention to issues such as product and workplace safety as a way to save lives. In the mid-nineteen-fifties, nearly forty thousand people were dying every year from motor-vehicle accidents. Attention was primarily focussed on the responsibility of drivers, but physicians and engineers pointed out that most of these deaths were, in fact, preventable through changes in automobile design. In 1965, Ralph Nader, a young lawyer who later became an activist and a perpetual Presidential candidate, published “Unsafe at Any Speed,” a book examining the ways in which automakers had failed to prioritize safety. It became an unlikely nonfiction best-seller, alongside Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” Nader’s reporting prompted congressional hearings and the formation of what is now known as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. William Haddon, a pioneering public-health scientist, became the agency’s first administrator and oversaw the first safety requirements for new cars, including energy-absorbing steering columns, shoulder harnesses, and side-door beams. The ratio of motor-vehicle deaths to miles travelled by drivers in the United States plummeted.

The principal aim of public health is prevention. It takes its scientific cues primarily from epidemiology, which studies the prevalence of diseases and their determinants to shape control strategies. In the mid-nineteen-sixties, public-health practitioners began to incorporate these methods into a nascent discipline known as injury science, taking on problems such as children falling from windows, residential fires, childhood drug poisonings, and, beginning in earnest in the nineteen-nineties, gun violence. The premise is tantalizingly straightforward: utilize scientific data to identify risk factors and the most vulnerable populations, and adopt multipronged solutions to stop problems before they arise. When it comes to gun deaths, for instance, public-health interventions might include pediatricians inquiring about safe storage at home, and the government establishing waiting periods for the purchase of firearms and raising the legal age for gun ownership. The challenge comes in marshalling consensus for the kind of community-wide solutions that public health demands. This is where public-health initiatives have often floundered, including with guns.

with every app trying to turn into the clock app these days by feeding you endless short form content, *how many* pieces of misinformation does the average person consume day to day?? thinking a lot about how tons of people on social media go largely unquestioned about the information they provide just because they speak confidently into the camera. if you're scrolling through hundreds of pieces of content a day, how many are you realistically going to have the time and will to check? i think there's an unfortunate subconscious bias in liberal and leftist spaces that misinformation is something that is done only by the right, but it's a bipartisan issue babey. everybody's got their own agendas, even if they're on "your side". *insert you are not immune to propaganda garfield meme*

and speaking of fact checking, can't help but think about how much the current state of search engines Sucks So Bad right now. not that this excuses ANY of the misinformation at all, but i think it provides further context as to why these things become so prevalent in creators who become quick-turnaround-content-farms and cut corners when it comes to researching. when i was in high school and learning how to research and cite sources, google was a whole different landscape that was relatively easy to navigate. nowadays a search might give you an ad, a fake news article, somebody's random blog, a quora question, and another ad before actually giving you a relevant verifiable source. i was googling a question about 1920s technology the other day (for a fanfiction im writing lmao) and the VERY FIRST RESULT google gave me was some random fifth grader's school assignment on the topic???? like?????? WHAT????? it just makes it even harder for people to fact-check misinformation too.

going off the point of cutting corners when it comes to creating content, i can't help but think about capitalism's looming influence over all of this too. again, not as an excuse at all but just as further environmental context (because i really believe the takeaway shouldn't be "wow look how bad this one individual guy is" but rather "wow this is one specific example of a much larger systemic issue that is more pervasive than we realize"). a natural consequence of the inhumanity of capitalism is that people feel as if they have to step on or over eachother to get to 'the top'. if everybody is on this individualistic american dream race to success, everyone else around you just looks like collateral. of course then you're going to take shortcuts, and you're going to swindle labor and intellectual property from others, because your primary motivation is accruing capital (financial or social) over ethics or actual labor.

i've been thinking about this in relation to AI as well, and the notion that some people want to Be Artists without Doing Art. they want to Have Done Art but not labor through the process. to present something shiny to the world and benefit off of it. they don't want to go through the actual process of creating, they just want a product. Easy money. Winning the game of capitalism.

i can't even fully fault this mentality- as someone who has been struggling making barely minimum wage from art in one of the most expensive cities in america for the past two years, i can't say that i haven't been tempted on really difficult occasions to act in ways that would be morally bad but would give me a reprieve from the constant stress cycle of "how am i going to pay for my own survival for another month". the difference is i don't give in to those impulses.

Go!

oh god, an essay. You know personally how difficult of a time I was having narrowing this down to ten, so I hope this is acceptable! These aren't in any ranked order; it's all chronological by release date. I'm also providing one screenshot, sourced directly from Google Images, for each game. Full list under the break!