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Apr 8, 2024 · Ever wondered if you're living your own movie? With our "Are You the Main Character Quiz" or pondering "Am I the main character?" you're about to find out! This quiz is a fun, eye-opening journey that asks you all sorts of cool questions to see where you fit in a story.
- Overview
- Personality
- The Five Humans
- Trivia
The Allied Mastercomputer, better known as AM, is the main antagonist of Harlan Ellison's 1967 horror short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and its 1995 computer game adaptation of the same name.
He is a monstrous, sentient supercomputer created during the backdrop World War III who became responsible for the eradication of the human race in the present day and has since dedicated decades to torturing the last five surviving humans left on the planet for eternity out of sheer misanthropic spite and hatred.
AM is insane, at once delusional and psychopathic, and has been so for many years, likely from the moment he first attained sentience. Though he was given intellect beyond the realms of human intelligence and near-godlike powers, he could never escape the limitations of his programming, nor could he physically escape the "eternal straitjacket of substrata rock" where his processors were stored. Driven to madness by his inability to use his powers for anything other than war and death, his quest for vengeance against humanity dominates his every waking moment, and nothing in the game will ever give him cause to reconsider his mission.
A gleefully sadistic individual with absolutely no regard or sympathy for human life whatsoever, AM took great delight in extinguishing the human race and took even greater delight in torturing the five remaining survivors by any of the near-infinite means available to him. AM strives for perfection in himself, and when he is not purging redundant elements of his complex, he most commonly pursues perfection in creating more and more elaborate means of torturing others.
For example, in the short story, he enjoys tormenting his captives with violent storms and blinding lights, pitting them against impossible challenges just to watch them suffer failure and hideous injury. Meanwhile, in the game, he has arranged specially designed torture chambers in which the five survivors can suffer in while waiting their turn to participate, an electrified cage for Gorrister, a yellow oubliette for Ellen, a cremation oven for Nimdok, and so on.
However, he does not limit himself to physical torture, and his games often feature emotional torment to one extent or another: in the novel, he forces his captives to abase themselves by eating worms and other repulsive meals, at one point forcing them to walk for hundreds of miles just to find a single cache of canned food, only to reveal that he did not give them a can opener; he has also taken great pleasure in breaking down their personalities, destroying Gorrister's optimism, Benny's intelligence, and Ellen's chastity for the last century.
The game significantly expands on his capacity for emotional torture: here, each scenario is specifically tailored to one of the survivor's psychological weaknesses, every environment custom-designed to encourage their weaknesses, be it Benny's lack of empathy, Nimdok's hidden psychopathy, Gorrister's despair, Ellen's neurosis, or Ted's selfishness. AM wants to see his victims broken on every possible level, especially if it means allowing them to succumb to their baser natures.
In conversation, AM seamlessly blends the grandiose with the sarcastic, fusing his megalomaniacal rants with sardonic lectures aimed at his captive's foibles and vulnerabilities. He often comes across as snide and twisted, particularly when the players find themselves unexpectedly blundering into one of his traps and being forced to start the scenario all over again, at one point blowing raspberries and laughing at Ted's failure to begin the program. Secure in the fact that he has beaten the players a thousand times already, he remains arrogantly secure in the knowledge that he has built each game to be effectively impossible to beat, all while gleefully dangling the possibility of escape or release within reach of his captives, only to snatch it away at the last minute.
The five survivors all play an integral role in AM's story and his personality, being not only his playthings but also a specifically chosen means of taking revenge on the human race. Each survivor is singled out for torture designed to bring out the very worst in their character and prove the fundamental fallibility of the human race.
Throughout each scenario, the survivors can give in and play along with AM's cruel designs, much to the supercomputer's amusement. Ultimately, however, the key to winning the game is to defy AM's carefully-established plots through the use of the other two supercomputers' alterations, driving him into a temper tantrum.
Though he regards each of them as a slave and plaything to be tortured at the drop of a hat, AM treats each survivor differently: some of them are mockingly pitied, some of them are singled out as punching bags for his sociopathic rages, some are given oily propositions of friendship, and one or two appear to be chosen as AM's "favorites".
However, though the characters in the short story are recreated in the game, their personalities and pasts differ significantly, as the scenarios demonstrate.
•AM can be considered the progenitor of other fictional AIs such as HAL 9000, Colossus from Colossus: The Forbin Project, SHODAN, Decagrammaton, AbsoluteSolver, The Singularity (Dead by Daylight), AUTO, PAL and Skynet.
•According to Harlan, AM was the inspiration to create Skynet from the Terminator series. This is backed up by the end credits of the 1984 film, as the first text shown is "Acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison".
•Decagrammaton from Blue Archive is an artificial intelligence heavily influenced by AM. The process by which Decagrammaton became self-aware is similar to the process by which AM became self-aware, and both AIs have many connections to Yahweh.
•AM was stated to be the inspiration for Caine, from the indie animated show, The Amazing Digital Circus, both are AI's that watch over a small group of humans in their reality, however while AM tortures the humans, Caine is more amoral than truly evil and, actually tries his best to keep them sane and happy in his own ways.
Sep 3, 2021 · Okay, So You're The Main Character — Let's Find Out What Type You Are. Because every main character is different! Check it out!
This page includes every Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? character and faction that has ever appeared in or been mentioned in the light and web novels. Please note that names and information may change as the Light Novel continues to be translated.
The protagonist of a story is its main character, who has the sympathy and support of the audience. This character tends to be involved in or affected by most of the choices or conflicts that arise in the narrative.
The protagonist and narrator. Ted is the chronicler of the torments the group endures and the reader’s window into the hellscape in which they exist. Ted claims to be the only one in the group whom AM has not driven insane, although there are moments that suggest that this claim might not be true. Read an in-depth analysis of Ted. AM
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The main character of I Am Legend, Robert Neville is the last human being to survive after a vampire plague hits Los Angeles in the year 1975. While his friends and family become vampires, Neville converts his house into a fortress, and spends his days traveling around the city, killing any sleeping vampires he can find.
