Articles
Articles
Guides, comparisons, and deep dives on running your own models and getting the most out of mi·do·na. New pieces as we write them.
Models & data
- Slop, measured: why AI prose sounds like AIShivers down spines, not just X but Y... the words your model overuses have been counted. What the Slop Score measures, and what a storyteller can do about it.Slop
- Why guardrails flatten your story (even the tame ones)Mid-scene refusals, villains who apologize, the lecture tax... how assistant-tuned safety breaks fiction, why 'uncensored' isn't the answer, and what actually is.Guardrails
- What roleplayers actually runOpenRouter publishes real usage data for roleplay. The July 2026 numbers say something loud: the models winning are open-weight... the kind you can run yourself.Rankings
For the love of story
- Someone's always onlineFor everyone who misses AIM, ICQ, and IRC: the door-creak sound, the away message as an art form, and what that intimacy has to do with AI characters.Chat nostalgia
- Turn to page 47... foreverFor everyone who read choose your own adventure books with three fingers holding old pages: what those branches promised, and what infinite branching feels like.CYOA
- The characters write backFor fanfic writers and readers: what AUs, ship dynamics, and 2am comment threads have in common with AI storytelling... and where the two honestly differ.Fan fiction
- For everyone whose RP partner vanished mid-threadFor forum roleplayers and play-by-post veterans: post orders, godmodding, the ghosted thread... and a story partner who never disappears.Forum RP
- If you love interactive fiction, read this honestlyFor the IF crowd: parser games, Twine, agency debates... what midona respectfully is not, and what an IF player will genuinely like about it anyway.Interactive fiction
- You are standing in an open fieldFor MUD veterans and text adventure players: parsers, MUSHes, the imagination-first interface, and why AI storytelling is this lineage's next room.Text adventures
- A GM who never gets tiredFor tabletop players and solo RPG journalers: oracles, GM emulators, the scheduling boss fight, and what an AI cast changes about playing alone.Tabletop
- You've read every route. Now what?For visual novel players: what routes, flags, and bad ends taught us about story... and what happens when the branches stop being finite.Visual novels
- The writers' room in your browsermidona as a writing partner: hear a character's voice before you write it, pressure-test a scene, rubber-duck the plot hole... and keep the prose yours.Writing partner
Depiction isn't endorsement
- Hana Yori Dango is not bad art... it's a bad relationship.Doumyouji Tsukasa is one of shoujo's great characters, and Hana Yori Dango is a great story. Neither of those facts makes the central relationship anything but toxic, start to finish.Hana Yori Dango
- The manic pixie dream girl was a person the whole timeA critic coined it in 2007, apologized for it in 2014... and everyone missed the third act: 'quirky' was always code, and half these dream girls just have ADHD.MPDG
- Mary Sue, Gary Stu, and the crime of wanting to be greatThe term began as a ten-paragraph Star Trek parody in 1973. It became a weapon aimed at girls. The Gary Stus... Bond, Batman, every action lead... never caught a bullet.Mary Sue
- Ramona Flowers has the haircut, not the disorderThe most cited manic pixie dream girl of her decade is actually the trope's autopsy. The hair, the rollerblades, the subspace delivery route... and then a woman with a documented history who wants out of the room.Scott Pilgrim
- Seven exes, seven lessons, all of them wrongRamona Flowers' evil exes are not a boss rush. They're a curriculum. Each one taught her that some part of love is a trick... and by the seventh she had a complete education in why nobody can be trusted.Scott Pilgrim
- Nega-Scott is a nice guy. Run the inversion.Scott Pilgrim dates a high schooler he doesn't like, then becomes the obsessed one for a woman who lets him fight her baggage. The story tells you exactly what he is... in one joke almost everyone misses.Scott Pilgrim
- The tsundere is a slot machine (and you are the pigeon)The archetype is a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule with a face... the psychology of why it hooks, who ran it across five decades of manga, and why it's still fun once you can name the machine.Tsundere
- Two unreliable narrators, datingEverything Scott knows about Ramona's past is her version. Everything he could tell her about his is edited. The evil exes keep showing up to correct the record, and neither of them is listening.Scott Pilgrim
- The yandere: same devotion, different cameraLove with the brakes cut... why the obsession archetype thrills, who runs it (Yuno to Joe Goldberg to the boombox guy), and the genre trick that hid half of them in romance.Yandere
Runner shootouts
- koboldcpp vs LM Studio: two friendly doors, different roomsThe roleplay community's single-file favorite against the polished desktop app. Model discovery, sampler depth, CORS, and which friendly runner fits your stories.Shootout
- llama.cpp vs koboldcpp: the engine and its roleplay childkoboldcpp is built on llama.cpp, so what are you actually choosing? Launcher against flags, bundled UI against none, and where each shines under mi·do·na.Shootout
- llama.cpp vs LM Studio: the two ends of the spectrumMaximum control against maximum comfort. Flags and GGUFs against a guided model browser, and which end of the spectrum your mi·do·na setup belongs on.Shootout
- Ollama vs koboldcpp: which local runner fits your story?The tidy terminal workflow against the roleplay community's favorite. Ports, samplers, context handling, and the honest truth... you can't really pick wrong.Shootout
- Ollama vs llama.cpp: the wrapper or the engine?One wraps the other. Convenience against control: model pulls, server flags, CORS, and which one a storyteller should actually run under mi·do·na.Shootout
- Ollama vs LM Studio: terminal or desktop app?The two gentlest on-ramps to local models, compared: CLI pulls against a GUI model browser, one env var against one toggle, and who should pick which.Shootout
Runners
More on the way - model deep dives, the case for local, and why privacy matters.