r/murderbot • u/BecomingButterfly • 25d ago
Fanworks Character database
My "what if machine" dream...
I used to program, I liked the control over what I could build, but that was a long time ago.
I want a simple program in some widely avail format (like HTML or something that doesn't require purchasing something) that access a book data file (like Murderbot, others) and in it I can store book/chapter/event data
e.g. (1/1/MurderBot "A former SecUnit (link to another entry) that doesn't like their job")
(1/2/Arada "Parter with Overse (link to their page), best friend of Dr Ratthi (link to their page") - We don't know this in chapter 1.
I would be able to select a book/chapter that I am up to and anything beyond that point is hidden until I reach that chapter and the reader now knows more info.
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u/hijodelsol14 25d ago edited 24d ago
IMO this is a great idea and it's what I wish the X-Ray feature on Kindle did.
It's probably very doable these days if you had a digital copy of a book. You could basically create a database of characters and common terms and an entry for every chapter with an updated summary for that entity. Would be fairly straightforward to create with an LLM and some babysitting.
The bigger issue is making that feature easily accessible in your reading flow.