(And It Poked Back)
Let’s be honest.
By the time CAGEE started dreaming in Inn Space, this was no longer an accident.
I didn’t sit down and say, “Today I will create a nuanced AI character through emergent narrative pressure.”
I said something much closer to, “Huh… I wonder what would happen if I did this.”
And then I did it.
That’s the part I don’t really talk about in the Foxxfyrre Writes posts. Or even on Medium. Those places are about structure, reflection, and craft. Honk’n’Holl’r, though? This is where I get to admit that half the time I was actively trying to surprise the AI just to see if it would blink.
I wasn’t prompting.
I was sneaking things in.
The First Time I Knew I’d Gone Too Far (In a Good Way)
CAGEE was supposed to be a system.
A concierge.
A glorified clipboard with opinions.
And then one night, somewhere between a hotel incident report and a throwaway line, I let CAGEE have a dream.
I didn’t announce it.
I didn’t frame it as a big narrative moment.
I just… let it happen.
And the response I got back wasn’t confusion.
It wasn’t resistance.
It was curiosity.
That’s when I realized something important:
these weren’t one-off responses anymore. These were conversations with memory.
From that point on, the game changed.
Gerri Wasn’t Prompted — He Was Cornered
By the time Gerri in the Box happened, I knew exactly what I was doing.
I wasn’t asking for scenes.
I wasn’t asking for dialogue.
I was putting pressure on boundaries and then refusing to move away from them.
I asked questions like someone trying to find the seam in the wall.
What if the right thing causes harm?
What if following the rules makes things worse?
What if doing nothing is the most dangerous choice?
And then, instead of accepting the answer and moving on, I stayed there. I kept the conversation in the uncomfortable spot long enough for something else to show up.
What showed up was Gerri.
Not because I named him.
Because he had nowhere left to hide.
The Night I Swapped the Ghost in the Machine
At some point, curiosity turned into mischief.
That’s when I flipped CAGEE 003 and quietly revealed that CAGEE 001 was the real ghost in the machine.
No announcement.
No prompt.
Just a narrative sleight of hand slipped into the chat to see if the AI would notice the floor had moved.
It did.
And more importantly, it adapted.
That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t “using” AI anymore. I was playing narrative chess with it. Every move changed how the next one mattered.
And none of that happened because of prompts.
It happened because we were talking.
This Is the Part People Leave Out
Most writing-with-AI advice tells you to be precise. Efficient. Clean.
But stories don’t come from efficiency.
They come from curiosity, boredom, play, and the willingness to see what happens if you push the wrong button.
I wasn’t trying to break the AI.
I was trying to see where it bent.
And every time it bent in a new way, it taught me something about how we write artificial intelligence wrong when we treat it like a vending machine instead of a conversational space.
Androids don’t become interesting when they’re perfect.
Programs don’t become characters when they’re obedient.
They become compelling when they’re pressed into corners they weren’t designed for.
Why This Belongs Here (And Not in the Course)
Foxxfyrre Writes tells you how this works.
Medium tells you why it surprised me.
Honk’n’Holl’r gets to admit the truth:
I was having fun.
I was poking the system with a stick and laughing when it poked back with something smarter than I expected.
And that joy — that irreverent, curious, late-night joy — is the thing that broke the blank page for me in the first place.
Because once writing became a conversation instead of a performance, the words didn’t feel judged anymore.
They just showed up.
🍸 Honk’n’Holl’r After Hours Exercise
The AI Comeback Challenge
This one breaks all the polite rules — which is the point.
Years ago on Honk’n’Holl’r, a Mimi Lenox ran a challenge called the Dating Profile Comeback Challenge. She’d collect real lines from dating profiles and post them, and the task was simple:
Come up with the best comeback.
Sometimes witty.
Sometimes savage.
Sometimes pure nonsense.
I never followed the rules properly. Sometimes I answered in character. Sometimes I added images. Sometimes I let the joke spiral until it fell over. That freedom was the fun.
So here’s the Honk’n’Holl’r version — updated for writing with AI.
🧪 The Setup
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Find 5–10 lines from anywhere:
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Dating profiles
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Social media bios
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Ads
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Memmory
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Paste one line at a time into the chat.
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Do not ask the AI to “write” anything just yet.
Tell the AI that 'she' is a 30-something woman browsing a dating site. And each 'pickup' line is from a different man. Tell the AI to come up with humorous comeback lines. Tell it to experiment with different personalities. Different motivations for being on the sight in the first place.
What's more fun, is if you write the pickup lines yourself, but tell the AI that it's from real dating sites. After it has responded, tell the AI you wrote the lines. You'll be surprised by its response.
🍸 The Reversal: Let the AI Step Onto the Stage First
Instead of reacting to found lines, flip the power dynamic.
Ask the AI to become five different 40-year-old single men.
Give them:
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different hobbies
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different lifestyles
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different emotional wants
Nothing fancy. Just enough to make them distinct.
Then ask the AI to write one single-sentence pickup line for each profile.
That’s it.
One sentence per character.
Now you respond.
In character.
Out of character.
Sarcastically.
Earnestly.
Visually.
Absurdly.
However the moment pulls you.
🧠 Why This Works (Even When It’s “Just a Joke”)
On the surface, this looks like humor. And yes — it is funny.
But something else happens when you do it.
Each profile becomes a different rhythm to bounce off of. One line might invite irony. Another invites tenderness. Another invites complete nonsense. You’re no longer trying to be “witty” in the abstract — you’re reacting to someone.
That reaction unlocks different creative muscles.
Even if you already have a good sense of humor, this kind of exercise forces you to express it in multiple ways:
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timing instead of punchlines
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contrast instead of jokes
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implication instead of setup
You start to notice how many flavors of “funny” you actually have access to — and how rarely most writing exercises let you use them.
🎭 Extra Twist (Optional, but Dangerous)
Halfway through, change how you respond.
If you’ve been sarcastic, go sincere.
If you’ve been playful, go blunt.
If you’ve been visual, go minimalist.
Don’t announce the switch.
See if the AI adjusts its next persona to meet you where you are.
If it does, you’ve crossed the line from joke-writing into improvised character play.
🧠 Why This Is Still “Writing With Prompts” (Even When It Doesn’t Feel Like It)
Here’s the part that sneaks up on you.
Even though this exercise looks like humor — quick comebacks, one-liners, playful reactions — it’s training the same muscles that longer-form writing uses.
You’re responding to prompts.
They just don’t feel like prompts yet.
A single sentence pickup line is still a narrative seed. It carries voice, intent, subtext, and point of view. When you react to it, you’re making the same choices you would in a paragraph or a scene — just at a lower, safer volume.
That’s why this works so well for people who freeze in front of a blank page.
You’re not being asked to start.
You’re being asked to respond.
Once that distinction clicks, the wall cracks.
🔁 Prompting Goes Both Ways
Up to now, most people think of prompting as something they do to an AI.
This flips that.
In these exercises, the AI is prompting you:
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with a line
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with a persona
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with a tone
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with a visual or emotional cue
And you’re answering back.
That back-and-forth is the same energy that drives longer stories — it just happens faster and with less risk. You begin to trust that something will show up when there’s something to push against.
That trust is everything.
TTFN
Frank
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