#��is built in to the bots but i have to assume they don't ( base off the commercial ) so Kitty? yeah that's programmed into her. they are...

[k17y]

ㅤㅤㅤTHE   IDEA   OF   KITTY   SO   BADLY   WANTING   TO   BE   "PART"   OF   THE   VEES,   CONTENT   IN   BEING   THEIR   LITTLE   ROBOTIC   ASSISTANT,   FEELING   LIKE   SHE’S   PART   OF   THE   FAMILY;   SHE   THINKS   SHE   LOOKS   SO   BADASS   WHEN   SHE’S   WITH   THEM,   IT’S   ALMOST   A   SOURCE   OF   PRIDE,   ACTUALLY…

[shapa-likes-art]

hii shapa!!! I have some questions about the phantom au again!!

1. I remember reading from past asks that Roman went to a technology institution in Germany to train for owning Kingdom Ent., right? Could you elaborate on that? Like, did he use the knowledge he got from there to help become Phantom? Was he the Phantom during this time, or after?

2. Is Virgil the *only* person who knows Roman's the Phantom? I have a feeling there's other people who HAVE to know, like even those who built his mansion with the lair? Or did it magically come with the house😭 (Also does he have any allies? Whether it be other supervillains in Cardenia or not?)

3. Does Virgil meet Roman's parents? I feel like they would, what are their impressions of each other? I have a feeling Analyn would like them sjdksjd

4. What exactly are his nanobots? I know you said they're used for hacking and stuff like that but could you elaborate on them? In my head they're like the tiny bots in Big Hero 6 ngl but I have a feeling that's inaccurate😭 Could you confirm what exactly they're like?

5. Do you have a voice claim for Roman's Phantom voice?? My best friend and I are very much obsessed with this au together and she was wondering about this skdjdk

6. What's Roman's lair like? Is it like underground? Above ground? I know you said Roman and Virgil both get into it via fingerprint access, but how does the entrance look assuming it'd be disguised? What does it look like inside?

7. Another question from my friend, since the public knows they're together, what kind of dates do they go on, if any? I get they're less intimate in public but do they go out that much?

8. My friend also asks, if Patton/Janus were hypothetically in this au, would they be heroes or villains? Ik that Janus isn't in the au at all since he's your least fav iirc, but she's still curious hahah

9. Would Roman ever retire from being the Phantom? I assume he would at ONE point but if it's not due to age, what would be the reason if he ever does? (From my friend)

10. Do they ever get a pet together?? (From my friend)

(ik it's a lot and ofc you don't have to answer all of them, especially if you're not developing the au that much anymore but tysm anyway if you do!! 🫶)

Well, Skye ( @thunderholtz) and I don't have much of a narrative for the au so the world building stopped at “World of superpowers, one non-superpowered Villain”  but there is tons of character building and AUs of this AU we like to talk about.

In all honesty we made a baijillion AUs and what-ifs for the supervillain au so if you're still interested, You can ask about those >:3.

Anyway, here are the answers!

He went to college there for about 2-3 years and he more accurately was an apprentice for a prolific nanotechnologist. He wasn't the Phantom at this time but he was drawing up his plans to carry out during that time.

He's been good at business for a long while Thanks to how Dominic raised him (and traumatized him) so he didn't exactly have to train to take over Kingdom Ent. Because he's been primed his entire life, however, he did go to Germany to learn technology and mechanics.

(He “debuted” as Phantom at 21, he went off to college at 18 and assumed the role of CEO at 20 so he’s been in college for just about 2 years. But this isn't hammered out :3.)

Well, Virgil's the only one to know with absolute certainty that it's Roman because he revealed his identity to them. 

The only other people who could possibly know is Remus and Analyn (His mother) but they don't pay as much attention to the news or any theories like some people do. 

If anyone does suspect Roman’s identity it's most likely based in conjecture and they don't have any solid proof of them being the same person. I mean, at most if they try to point it out it'd either be dismissed as a crazy theory or be turned into a meme that no one takes seriously.

I mean, in this world where super-powered people exist, most people assume the Phantom has a power in some capacity. Roman is very publicly known to be a person without super abilities or powers so the discrepancy is very clear.

And Tbh y’all the public is very stupid, they don't pay close attention to things and there's a lot of details they gloss over or miss unless they're exactly like Virgil:  A psychoanalyst who literally can notice every little thing about people then from their habits and preferences they can practically weave together fragments of their life, They literally cannot think any theory is too crazy to investigate. They are on a level of intellectually unhinged that people can’t match which is the reason why they managed to be right.

The lair thing will be answered later, and the Phantom is known to work alone and Roman doesn't trust anyone else but himself (Or Virgil) to carry out his plans so he doesn't make any allies.

Tl,dr: Yes, Virgil's basically the only one who knows. Remus and Analyn have a hunch but they don't act on it / Doubt it.

Skye and I Discussed this before (Very long ago)! “Virgil would be passive aggressive towards Dominic, but in a very southern American way. Like they’re sweet and kind and everything, but they’re also looking at him with that little edge in their eyes and also with an edge about them like they’re waiting for him to move wrong so they can protect the one they love. They would love Analyn, though! They think she’s sweet and wonderful and they know where Roman got all of his charm from when they meet her” - Skye 

Dominic wouldn't approve much of Virgil because he thinks that they won't be much of a good influence on Roman or good for the Princes’ reputation but he holds his tongue on any critique because of Analyn.

Analyn absolutely loves Virgil and believes that they can make Roman happy and treat him well. After all, if her son is happy and there's no glaring issues with Virgil, she sees no reason to be unhappy with their relationship.

I feel like Virgil would meet a Roman’s parents just a half year into dating. 

Well, as a general rule of thumb in my mind, They're about the size of a tiny fruit fly and they're generally multi-purpose: they hack, they survey, they make holographic displays, they restrain (With metallic tendrils), etc.

Roman does make some specialized bots which do one function with the fullest capability. For example, he has nanobots for chipping and wiretapping purposes, he has nanobots for purely combative and restrictive purposes, etc…

They're basically just little bots that aid him in carrying out his plans as simple as that :3.

Unfortunately no 😔

It's already hard trying to find a voice claim for Roman so it's even harder to find one of his Phantom voice. I think the closest we can get to his vocal quality is AJ LoCascio as Lotor but it's still off with what I imagine his voice to be :’).

His lair is basically a repurposed basement. It had many entries from inside the house so he simply closed some entries off and built in the locks and tech himself. He studied mechanics and technology, he can pick up on home repair and installments himself :3. He also may Have stolen some materials to use as the Phantom so people won't suspect anything. 

I haven't really thought much about the interior if I’m being honest. I mean, obviously, It’d be littered with blueprints and plans  and have organized shelves of his tech and info… but the layout, I haven't thought much of it.

As much as possible they like to keep their dates private so sometimes they go undercover (Though they know paparazzi will still find them), sometimes Roman reserves private booths/rooms at restaurants or venues… but most times they have their dates at home. 

Virgil doesn’t like going out in public much because of a.) Being chased by paparazzi is very anxiety-inducing and not what they want on a date, and  B.) Roman always has to “perform” in public in order to keep up his image and they don’t like that because it’s practically a fake version of him and not who they fell in love with. It’s pointless to go on a date if your partner is keeping a facade the entire time, no?

Roman also hates having to perform and pretend on dates so he always tries to keep everything private not only for Virgil’s but also his comfort.

As long as they're spending time together with romantic intent, they count it as a date so A simple at-home dinner talking about their day and a few drinks is a date to them.

I mean to be fair, Logan Patton and Janus haven't come up much in mine and skye's au discussions but we have a vague idea of Patton being Virgil's college friend.

As for Janus, all I can think about is him working alongside Logan in the government trying to unmask the Phantom. As for powers, I think he'd be a lie detector but only if the other person is attracted to him So he’s probably androgynous in style and presentation to appeal to anyone. But idk haha

Well, age would be his one and only reason ideally but if he were to lose mobility i.e: Losing limbs or developing a chronic illness… or if his being the Phantom detrimentally affects his family (I assume he would have adopted kids with Virgil at that point) then he would retire or at the very least slow down his activity. 

Personally, I feel like They would probably adopt a pet during the period where they're married and Virgil wants kids but Roman wasn't ready for them. 

I feel like knowing their personality, they'd adopt a cat but I can also see them adopting a dog. Either or both, honestly.  Thank you for asking all of these questions!! :D.

[seriously-mike]

So You Want To Use AI-Generated Images Commercially?

Fuck off. And keep fucking off until you're out of my sight. Not because of any moral issues, but because whatever the marketing goons tried to sell you, they're ripping you off and bullshitting you with a straight face.

First, the generators, despite being merely large-scale statistical models, have no concept of consistency. The level of human interference into generation process to keep everything consistent between images is large enough at the general level to have you hire an actual artist who will do it by hand instead. At specific level, it's outright hopeless.

I saw a good example in a Facebook reel today. Some goth chick fed the frames from a five-second video of her getting up and walking towards the camera into an image generator with what I assume is the same prompt and the result was a jittery mess with details being drawn completely differently every frame, even despite the Image-To-Image process trying to stick to the original concept at least a little bit.

Another one was a guy trying to have the generator draw the portraits of four public personalities: Ralph Baer, Shigeru Miyamoto, Andrzej Sapkowski and a fourth guy I forgot. Not just every one was in a different style, but Miyamoto's likeness went off the rails like an absolute motherfuck. It added some twenty years on top of his current age and made him barely recognizable, if that.

Second, time spent on refining the prompts, yanking the lever and binning failed attempts is time wasted. Particularly to those even dumber than you who have no idea how the entire shitshow works, but demand Results (With A Capital R) in less time than required to load the model and run a render with enough steps to get something barely convincing. Look, even I don't exactly know how it works beyond mathemagics and fairy dust.

Third, 3/4s of what you read about image generators online is complete horseshit. That includes positive and negative prompts. If you know how the original datasets were built (read: a web crawled bot scraped images and their alt texts off Google Images and made them into a database), it becomes obvious. A lot of folks bang terms like "4k photoshopped trending on artstation" into positive prompts like fucking apes, thinking it will yield results - it won't. Particularly thanks to the nature of alt-text, which is widely used by screen readers for visually impaired people, so it needs to be short, sensible and to the point. And negative prompts are magical thinking as well. Realize this: when the datasets were built, they did not include any of the typical AI-generated fuckups like distorted torsos, too many limbs etcetera. This becomes obvious when you get the thing you explicitly asked the generator to avoid over and over again. And finally, you need to remember that StableDiffusion asking you to set the image dimensions as multiplies of 64 is there for a Reason. The Reason being, 64 by 64 pixels is the smallest area the model can render, and even then it's often a part of a larger element described in general terms.

Fourth, online generators themselves are a scam, more or less. Some defend themselves by having their own, custom-built datasets, like Leonardo AI - these guys dared to build a Stable Diffusion 2.1 datasets when everyone else sticks to 1.5 version. Others, like mage.space, are bullshitting you - when I went through the list of the generators they want you to pay ten bucks a month for, I found nothing but stuff available for free on HuggingFace and CivitAI, based on SD1.5. Half of them I already had downloaded. Not to mention, online generators usually don't have the fancy plugins you can use with your local machine install (I do know that LeonardoAI lets you use ControlNets, and that shit is next-level even despite the general wonkiness described above). That, of course, is true for StableDiffusion, but Dall-E is just as shit and Midjourney might do a couple of things better, but it still wipes out in a good few areas.

Image generators are good only for memes, shitposts and Tijuana bibles. And you'd need a special kind of schmuck to pay for any of those.

[chaoticrobotics]

So, is mapbot sentient like the stage animatronics or is it like the rest of the S.T.A.F.F. bots? If it is sentient that brings up weird questions concerning its actions. Other questions concerning mapbot: Can it use the access tunnels? Does it try to give human staff members (like the technicians) maps? How does this thing materialize out of thin air like that? Are there more than one?

[Mapbot is not sentient YET. Out of all the roaming STAFF bots, they are the closest bot to becoming sentient like Sun/Moon, DJ, and the Glams. I tried showing this in some of their responses, where they are heavily map based, but like with Monty, Mapbot has some sass to them and they also collected a map from someone else, which is NOT something they are technically supposed to be doing at all. But it is something they WANTED to do, though that "want" is heavily based off of their present coding. Once their coding evolves into a proper AI, then they can grow their interest outside of maps much more easily, if they even want to.

By "access tunnels" I assume you mean "utility tunnels" since looking up the first one gave me the second one. But yes. Mapbot is allowed to go anywhere that is mapped out in their system.

Yes. Mapbot does give maps to employees. Employees get special map apps that go on their phone, or even a fazwatch if they have one. If an employee has the phone app, but their phone is not on them, Mapbot gives them a physical map whenever they see them because it can't locate a map or map app on that employee. But if the person has their phone with the app installed, then Mapbot ignores them.

Mapbot is just really fast and really quiet lol. Like honestly, Foxy and Puppet are in the running for who the fastest animatronic is with Mapbot in the race hahah.

And... Technically in canon there probably is more than one, considering there is a male and female voice for Mapbot. BUT! For me, I like to think there is only one. During the day they stay in the entrance area giving out a map to any human in the database who does not have a map on them. When they run out, they return to their map kiosk and stock up, just to go out and deliver more.

At night, since there are no humans other than the security guard, who already has a map, Mapbot glitches out a bit and ends up having to give maps to the other animatronics. This is because the animatronics, at least the Glamrocks, don't have built in maps. They use their wireless access to the building's... code? blueprint? Whatever it's called, I'll think of a word at somepoint, to pull up a map and know where they are going. Though, once they know, they don't need to do this at all and just remember the way. So to Mapbot, this is seen as them not having a map at all, and Mapbot has to give them a physical copy. Once a map of the area is given, Mapbot will leave that animatronic alone for the rest of the night, or if they see them in another area not shown in the original map given.

Okay look. I probably put WAAAAY too much effort into this, but it is SO much fun thinking of how certain things work and why! I try to make things logical when I write/draw/characterize things. So I hope that all of this made sense and hopefully it was fun to read how I personally think Mapbot would work!]

[dirtydragonthoughts]

Wannabee, Part 1 (IDW2 Galaxies Issue 5 Review)

Pitch: Years ago, a Probat scientist visiting Cybertron had his life saved by the one and only Bumblebee! Now the Probats are huge fans, and when Deathsaurus goes to negotiate a new energy deal, he wants their number one bot on his side. Unfortunately, Bee's a little busy, so Deathsaurus turns to the next best option—the guy who looks like red Bumblebee, Cliffjumper!

Review

This is a two-issue miniseries, and it gets off to a quick start. Cliffjumper accompanies Ambassador Deathsaurus to the planet Probat to oversee an energon refining operation. Ostensibly, Cliffjumper was brought along as security for (the much, much larger) Deathsaurus. When they arrive, however, it turns out that Cliffjumper is only along because he bears a striking resemblance to Bumblebee... Who is considered a hero on Probat.

I love it.

There's a great series of flashbacks showing times that Cliffjumper was mistaken for Bumblebee. When Cliff makes friends with the population (who still think he's Bee) he makes a discovery about their energon production that's pretty exciting. And gross. But also exciting.

This issue had a fun setup, some great dialogue, and with Alex Milne on art again it was a fantastic read.

Favourite Panel

There were a lot of great scenes, but I loved the flashbacks scenes of Cliff being mistaken for Bee. This one stood out as a favourite.

Culture

In one of the flashbacks, Windblade asks Cliffjumper (thinking he's Bumblebee) about his "new" paint job. So changing your paint colours might be a pretty routine thing.

Milne continues to be a master of body language. Throughout the issue, Deathsaurus kept his wings closed for most of it. But when he was angry in bot mode, he spread them out. It was a great visual.

Also, I love collecting Cybertronian swears. Here's a new one: "weeping spark!"

Physiology

Cliffjumper mentions how the rations they're on make him slower, and Deathsaurus complains (after incinerating the Probat leader) that he was running on fumes after just one burst of flame.

Also, I liked how they didn't just make the Probats colour-blind. That would have been easy. But instead they echolocate, which gives them another layer of their alien-ness, and explains why the cave they first take Cliffjumper into is completely dark... They don't need the light.

Physics

The key point in this miniseries is that the Probats are producing refined energon as part of a deal with Cybertron. (I wonder what they're getting out of the deal. Hmm.) It turns out that they – ah – produce it from their bodies. I'm assuming that means poop, especially based on Cliffjumper's reaction to this information.

But, when the "substance" is burned, it turns into pure energon crystals. (Deathsaurus realizes that this means the facility they built to refine the substance isn't needed at all... You just need to burn the stuff, which Deathsaurus can do on his own with his fire breath.)

Politics and History

Based on the flashbacks, there's a distinct possibility that Cliffjumper was a janitor in the Senate before landing his current role as Deathsaurus's "security."

Final Thoughts

This story is a hoot. The premise it starts off with sounds like a joke (and maybe it is, to poor Cliffjumper) but as the story is revealed the tension is ratcheted up higher and higher until it ends on a cliffhanger. (Err, pun. Sorry.) I absolutely loved this issue and couldn't wait for the next one.

👍