#Project ROTOR

[shepherdwitchhn]

Happy birthday Teto! To celebrate, I’m excited to share that I took a page out of Miku’s book and I’ve been working on what I’m dubbing Project ROTOR!

A ポケモン and 重音テト crossover project featuring Kasane Teto as Pokemon Trainers themed around all 18 types!

Here on Tumblr, I’ll also be sharing details on the creative process of each piece below the read-more link, starting with this very post, check it out!

It’s time for the first installment of the Teto Trainer Trivia Territory!

With this first post, I wanted to mirror the original Project VOLTAGE announcement with the presence of a stage. At the time of making the original sketch, I had Bocchi the Rock! on the mind, which I’m sure some have noticed given the stage has been loosely modeled after STARRY as seen in the anime.

(There won't always be an accompanying image for these posts, but it felt relevant this time)

In terms of Pokemon selection, it felt like a no-brainer to include either Type: Null or Silvally as the star for this announcement, given their status as a chimera created to mimic Arceus. Teto’s gender being chimera and her conception as a fake Vocaloid for April Fools? A match made in heaven. Choosing between both Pokemon also led me to the decision to include both, as well both UTAU and SynthV Teto, as a celebration of her history, new and old.

One last fun little detail of note, I based UTAU and SV Teto’s poses off of renders of SV and UTAU Teto respectively.

And that wraps up the first day of Project ROTOR! See yall tomorrow with the start of themed trainer Teto’s with Psychic type! (Types won't be in the same order as VOLTAGE after this!)

[rabbotred]

I used the Anthro Survivors mod to improve my Sonic characters mod. Now instead of being custom hair styles, they're custom species in that mod, which allows for their bodies to have textures that match their heads. It also prevents random zombies from spawning in as weird doppelgangers of each character. Still looks goofy as hell but I like that, it's the spirit of mods like these.

[badlydrawnmanic]

something something baby boomer

he hat too big for he gotdamn head

[agentsquirrelsgotrobots]

More wild mafia au!

I am procrastinating on fifteen different projects, including five fics in my drafts and two I need to cross post to ao3. Also, I need to get my stuff off of Google docs.

Dani knew what she was doing.

She was very aware of how men look at her.

How they have always stared, ever since she grew past her awkward phase in middle school and out of training bras.

They stared.

They stared when she was in her pilot gear.

Her EMT uniform.

Her grad gown.

Her prom dress.

Her first bikini, Kade, and his friends hovering protectively around her as she swam with her friends.

Her freshman homecoming dress, Kade later giving the man who stared at her hungrily a black eye after he tried to follow one of her friends home.

So, she always knew she was pretty.

Beautiful.

A knockout.

Drop dead gorgeous.

Worthy of whistles and praise, just for existing for their hungry eyes. A list of men she refused to be alone around unarmed.

She just didn't think that their would be mechanical ones joining that list.

She could feel eyes on her.

That wasn't new. She was the center of attention, after all.

But these eyes were on her butt, and there was no one behind her except....

Except her new robot partner.

Blades.

Well, that wasn't concerning at all.

The secret was out before the end of the day, when Graham set the newest batch of product on fire again and caused Boulder to get high from inhaling the byproduct. Apparently, nuke wasn't too far off chemically from meth.

Who knew.

Once the secret was out, slowly, Blades got a little more forward about his feelings for her.

Apparently, monsterfucking and kink isn't something that's unique to humans.

And, after Blades had commissioned something special for her from Doc Greene, she could see this little crush of his being fun for a little while. His holoform was fully customizable, after all.

She only needed to threaten him once.

She had to dispose of a news reporter that wasn't as bribeable as Huxley, and Blades good cold feet.

She had to reveal the bomb in his subspace, but luckily by then she and him had a couple of quick fucks under their belt, and Blades had fallen for her hook, line, and sinker.

She would die before admitting it was mutual, at least for now.

She was renewing her EMT certification, at least, the online portion, and she could feel Blades appreciating her loosely tied wrap top behind her while he pretended to clean his winch attachments.

"Dani, have I said how lucky I am that you love me?" Blades said, watching how the ties of her shirt swung around as she typed.

"Every day, Blades. Everyday." Dani said, smiling as she passed her certification with flying colors.

[wire-smith-crafts]

IT SPINS! Handmade electric motor! Entirely out of wire! They said it couldn't be done, but I have proven -- it merely shouldn't be done!

Photos don't really capture how ridiculously complicated this thing was to build, so I managed to film myself assembling the components too! Very proud of that.

In total, I've been working on this project on and off for roughly two years. This motor is my third version, though I went through something like seven designs of the commutator section (not counting how many failures it took to build a working example of a given design). I'm very proud of getting this to work at all.

Some close-up photos of all the components:

Six-way commutator. As the motor spins, this delivers electricity to only the correct pair of magnets at a time, leaving the other four off.

Magnet coils. I wound these by hand from very thin insulated wire. The center is a spiral of thicker insulated wire (darker orange) that protects the thin stands from the steel core and then wraps around the outside to hold everything in place.

Spring-loaded arms. These deliver electricity from the stationary frame into the rotating axle. They also have to hinge up out of the way or else there's no room to fit the rotor in place during assembly.

All the components laid out together before assembly.

And the full motor in all its glory!

[rcmclachlan]

Chimney's "inside man" must be an absolute maniac. Who gets a phone call out of the blue, is asked to commandeer a LAFD helicopter and fly it into a Cat-5 hurricane, and says, yeah, sure?

Or, Buck meets their rescue mission's would-be pilot and is extremely normal about it.

Buck looks down and—they're still shaking hands. Jesus fucking Christ. If he thought he had the time, he'd crawl into the 480-gallon tank on the airbus and drown himself, but instead he wheezes out a laugh and lets go. "You know, I was reading up about rotorcraft flight mechanics on the way here, and throttling is… important. Throttling maintains engine power to keep the rotor speed within limits. Throttling is good." "Throttling is what I'm gonna do to you if you don't shut up and let the nice man steal a helicopter for us," Chim adds.

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Chevrolet Corvette XP-897 GT Two-Rotor Concept, 1973. Presented at the IAA in Frankfurt 50 years ago this week, a prototype for a rotary-powered mid-engined Corvette that had been made by Pininfarina. The concept had been built over the platform of a Porsche 914 and fitted with a 2-rotor version of GM’s Wankel engine. The project went no further as General Motors abandoned their rotary engine program and it would be another 46 years before a mid-engine Corvette would go on sale

[osakanone]

"How realistic are mecha, really?": They aren't, but not for the reason you're thinking of or the one adjacent to it. Trust me.

Crossposted from reddit, since people seemed to like it. Like in the thread, I am very happy to answer questions about any esoteric weirdness.

Hold my beer. Again

They're not becoming a possibility. Yes. I know. This sucks. But stick around. Its not for the reasons you think. Well it is, but it also isn't. You'll see.

The robot needs the technology more than the technology needs a robot.

the technologies which the robot needs will improve and alter the doctrine of every other platform

This creates a doctrinal lock-in where the potential functional space for them to exist is unmet -- that they are so far ahead, that nothing new can emerge that isn't just other platforms becoming more generalized (eg, a post-stall recovery aircraft, or a helicopter with high impact landing-gear and a rigid rotor/jet engine design to act as a surface-fighter -- a tank which walks or manoeuvres like a robot is just flat out of the question: Tanks are made to be simple-as-fuck boxes which tank hits, and shoot and acquire asap and rumours of their deaths as a doctrinal weapon are exaggerated by recent events where obsolete weapons which aren't maintained properly who's crews aren't adequately trained were fighting very clever civilians with drones)

What you consider "realistic" (5th/6th) is just as if not more unrealistic than other gens purely because of their smaller size and very bizarre relationship with the environment -- they're just both too big, and too small to make sense, sitting in a size niche which is just very weird

If such a vehicle does exist, its going to be defined by its functions rather than a humanoid appearance

we know this because specialized platforms tend to beat specialized platforms historically until specialized platforms mature and become generalized

thus, the closest you're probably going to get is some weird variation of DARPA's Ground X Vehicle Project meeting with Gravity Industry' style mobility in limited cases, hybridized with smaller robots and wingsuits, which mix manoeuvring operation styles, with some rocker-boogie mechanism elements for terrain handling: It won't be humanoid, whatever it is.

This is assuming you can magically solve the square-cube law of volume-mass which is partially negatable with certain custom topologies exceeding graphene but actually manufacturing them would be miserable work probably not even be something you can make without microgravity

Energy flat out isn't solvable with what we know about right now. Nothing with that energy density can exist that isn't going to simultaneously make for an incredible fragile, dangerous and problematic source of power given the forces involved. Cooling is also a horrifyingly unsolvable problem on this scale, as is radiation management: You can't just dump molten tungsten in emergency cooling mode - you'll not only proceed to alert everybody who has even the vaguest IRST capacity to your position, but you'll also probably set fire to the environment and cook off your own ammunition. *

Motors aren't well suited to the tasks of such bodies (its like trying to make a slingshot out of dental floss), and we don't have an effective way to turn electricity into a form of motion which corresponds with the shock absorbing and motion control qualities which are actually desirable yet

Even if we did, the actual means of ensuring it doesn't fragment every time it moves don't exist. Every time an A10C fires its main gun, the fuel lines micro-fracture and have to be replaced after it lands. Metal, when you subject it to high physical forces ends up feeling and behaving closer to how you would think of glass. You'd need a material capable of repairing itself too, atop the quasicrystalline property which again, just isn't doable, let alone simultaneously.

So in terms of our mindset going into this?

Its... Probably not happening barring a very, VERY extreme change to how we understand physics to function, or some really kick ass (and actually entirely possible) changes in how engineering achieves outcomes (which could happen if the greatest threat to the mecha didn't exist)

Combat is moving towards information dominance. 

That's drone swarms, and role modularized long range travel, and the idea of fighter beyond-visual-range combat extending out to infared search and track systems which are networked to one another, which we're already seeing in singleton weapons and their mounting strategies even on the personal scale, which DARPA is currently investigating which everybody wants to mate with the gravity industries gear for boarding ops so the most likely avenue is to scale up from people, rather than scale down from vehicles as the development pathway -- but there's probably going to be multiple pathways with competing niches once the technology becomes cheap enough.

Costing

Ultimately its down to "how much money do I have to spend to defeat something more expensive than myself?" -- because our current structure of war is defined by cost, and by making the other guys surrender by using economic, and military violence (private, and publicly funded) instead of convincing them that we (NATO members, etc) have good opinions purely because of the natural benefits of "doing as we say" (which we see with basically any conflict in the last 70 years, which are usually feigned as ideological but pretty much always about disrupting market competition, dominating markets, or controlling a pressure position in another country to achieve those two things).

This isn't because they're particularly excellent weapons, but because they're cheap relative to the strength they offer, and how we define cheap is very different to how we defined cheap 100 years ago -- both in good, and terrible ways (such is the way of history).

Mecha are kinda the ultimate boondoggle. They are very very expensive, and just don't make sense.

They're cool as hell, yes.

But they don't make sense.

DISCLAIMER: If you're prone to depression, are dealing with a lot right now, or don't want your day ruining, you should stop reading NOW. What comes next is a psychosocial hazard and could be very bad for your mental health. LAST CHANCE . . .

The "real" reasons

If conflict some how became a meritocracy of leading by excellence rather than intimidation, and about human outcomes instead of cost outcomes, then things could change, but we don't live in that world.

Remember, violence exists to end human conflict (not to be confused with military conflict, which violence is the primary instrument of): Human conflict is when two parties oppose one another and communicate about what their goals and intentions are. Violence happens when communication stops. Communication stops, because parties cannot come to terms, or because nobody wants to be reasonable because the inherent request is unreasonable to the interests of the other party.

I'd love to say physics is the greatest threat, or maybe our concept of conflict but its not: * Its economics.

The concept of private-equity (not to be confused with venture-capital investment) is kiiiind of the dominant economic system on the face of the planet which dictates the interest of every nuclear power's actions against every non-nuclear power) is functionally dissolved, and investment models as we know them magically become better regulated OR a better economic system comes along which totally undermines private equity.

Its an economic finger-trap where most of the money that would be reinvested into people and technologies to push the world forward ends up getting swallowed up.

It also has private armies) and simulates the economy and political events in order to control them for maximum profitability. Yeah.)

We already live in Armored Core, folks.

And that economic system knows that if it gave free agents like ravens any kind of military power, it would functionally undermine itself, which is why it will never happen.

Private equity benefits from not having technology change, because its primary goal is wealth extraction. It leads to the collapse of every business you've ever seen go under, its why products undergo enshittification, which is coming for everything.

Its why the housing crisis happened, why the banking collapse happened, and its why there's an incentive to continue industrializing diseases like insulin instead of curing them.

tl;dr:

The one thing AC gets super wrong is you can either have the depressing relatable low-saturation late-stage hyper-capitalist dystopia where life is cheap on planet earth and everything terrible about South Korea times a thousand covers the whole world, and you need to have your own organs brought from you and leased back to you to lock you in to a lifetime of debt the same way everything else works...

OR

you can have the robot;

You can't have both.

e: I'd pick the robot any day

--

Apologies for any inaccuracies, I haven't edited this and I threw the original together in the space of around 40 minutes. Questions very welcome: I enjoy giving long detailed and substantiated answers.

If you enjoyed this, please consider reading my other work on the theoretical design factors of mecha, their control systems, and my fictional writing in mechposting.

[newtkelly]

Hey! China Syndrome for the title asks please!! I do love a 70’s disaster movie - which is just as well at the moment 😆

so this is my current big writing project that i just kicked off, it’s an homage to a wonderful 70s disaster movie that i highly recommend, the china syndrome.

in essence, this is a tommy kinard & taylor kelly side quest in three acts, with a bucktommy relationship study mixed in (of course). i’m really excited about it! i’ve been developing it for a while and really just started to get it down on paper, and it’s been cool to fall back into something this consuming. also have to mention that i am the slowest writer ever so… it’ll get here when it gets here lol.

anyway here is a snippet!

Tommy hates being still.

There was a lot of that at the 118, back in the day. Entire shifts spent spit-shining the same shit over and over, hearing and telling the same inane jokes from and with the same douchebags, the same old orders barked by the same old dog day in, day out, nights with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling in the bunk room, time dragging like wet slugs, Tommy waiting for something, anything to knock him up onto his feet. Eventually, as it always did, the klaxon would sound, and suddenly Tommy would have a reason to come back for his next shift.


There was a lot of waiting around in the army, too. Stale, static, stagnant until it wasn’t. He liked it loud—helped to pass the time. Kept the wrong kinds of thoughts away, too.

He’s learned to like quiet, but only when it’s on his terms. Absolutely nothing wrong with a simple, stripped-down, quiet night in, a game on the television, low and nostalgic, the homey smell of garlic and onions caramelizing affectionately in the kitchen, the uncomplicated presence of red wine and companionship. Personal quiet is great—especially lately.

But not at work. Not on the job. It’s been one of the most appealing things about working as a pilot for these past seven years. Tommy’s always moving—whether he’s flying upstate to suppress brush fire or whizzing across town for an emergency transport, like the rotors of his aircraft, he is in constant motion. An LAFD albatross. By the time stillness usually even has the opportunity to settle over him like a fog, it’s cherished.

Now, Tommy’s days are never dull and they never look quite the same, and today is a particularly pertinent example of that truth. A special assignment from high up is on the docket. In the Captain’s office at Harbor, where clean air and sunlight spill through the floor to ceiling windows in a seemingly constant reminder of the 217’s greater thematic purpose, Tommy shakes the hand of the LAFD’s Deputy Chief Commander of Emergency Operations.

“Chief Douglas, it’s an honor.”

[anhed-nia]

R.O.T.O.R. -- AGAIN!

Even ripoffs can be beautiful.

I am writing about R.O.T.O.R., neither for the first time nor the last, because something new strikes me about this startling movie every time I see it. Its amazing premise, which amply rips off THE TERMINATOR and JUDGE DREDD (but not ROBOCOP, oddly, which began shooting after R.O.T.OR., also in Dallas) provides fertile ground for all sorts of useful interpretation. This time I was most struck by the fact that R.O.T.O.R. is all about jobs and going to work.

The story concerns "police scientist" Captain Coldyron (cold-iron) who has invented the Robotic Officer Tactical Operations Research/Reserve, a T-800 type of android made out of a "self-teaching alloy" that can kick anybody's ass. Coldyron resigns in a huff when his boss conspires with local politicians to rush the lawbot to market, and the project races forward dysfunctionally until R.O.T.O.R. inevitably busts lose and starts killing people for minor mischief. Coldyron hooks up with the robot's coauthor Dr. Steel (female bodybuilder Jayne Smith who is like something out of Crying Freeman, which I mean as the highest compliment) to hunt their creation down and destroy it.

Coldyron is played by Richard Gesswein, who was also created in a lab.

That might sound pretty action-packed, but in execution R.O.T.O.R. is heavily focused on the drudgery of daily life. Enormous amounts of time are spent walking through parking lots, traversing the atria of hotels, finding parking, being seated in restaurants, and most of all, spending hours and hours at work, making countless phone calls. You have never seen so many people on the phone in a movie in your entire life. There's work phones, home phones, payphones, and even CB radios. At times it feels as if you may never see more than one person on the same set again. On the phones, people say things to each other that have already been said earlier in the movie if not earlier in the same scene, if not earlier in the same monologue. In the scene where Coldyron learns that R.O.T.O.R. has gone rogue, he delivers this incredible screed during one of THREE calls that he makes in a row:

"Its last program was prime directive... Prime directive to our ROTOR unit is judge and execute. It stops felons, judges the crime, and executes sentence. Justice served, COD. You call the Senator and you tell him ROTOR walked through a busload of nuns to get to a jaywalker, with malice towards no one. It won't stop. It wasn't ready. Its brain functions are incomplete. It can't think twice, can't reason, can't change its prime directive. It's like a chainsaw set on frappe..."

It begins to feel as if he will never stop reiterating whatever he (and others) just said, and this is not the only such example.

Most of these calls, like all of the activity in the movie, are focused on jobs. Coldyron calls his girlfriend first thing in the morning to tell her that he is getting ready for work, and to ask her if she is also getting ready to go to work at her own job. He promises that "if you're a good girl and go to work" then he will grill steaks at her house later. When he goes out to buy charcoal for the reward steaks he stumbles upon two creeps robbing the store and trying to take a hostage--a woman who stops the crime with several karate kicks, to whom he says "Hey lady, you want a job?" Meanwhile at the police robot lab, a scientist slaves away while complaining about the impossible new R.O.T.O.R. deadline as the comic relief security bot whines, sighs, and says "One of these days I'm gonna quit this job!" (Later on he actually does) Once R.O.T.O.R. has escaped we meet the Linda Hamilton of this movie (Margaret Trigg), who is having a vicious fight in the car with her fiance because she wants to get a job; the fiance wants to forgo the "barbaric ritual" of the wedding and just be automatically married to a woman who will not embarrass him by getting a job. Finally he concedes, "Elope with me tonight and I'll help you get a job after the honeymoon," but it's too late for all that because he's speeding and about to get killed by R.O.T.O.R.

For extra job-related realism there is workplace harassment in the form of a guy who tries to fuck his colleague by describing ancient execution methods and who calls her a white supremacist for turning him down (he says he's Native American, she says he's not, I don't know the right answer because this is the actor's only credit--and actually he's uncredited for the role, though he is acknowledged for composing the movie's primitive synth soundtrack which I kind of enjoy). It's also worth mentioning that the comedy droid is a real robot with a job, according to iMDB (sadly there is not a wealth of info on this movie):

"Willard the Robot is played by APD2, a robot purchased in 1986 by the police department of the Town of Addison, a northern suburb of Dallas, for $17,750 (approximately $41,000 in 2018 dollars). APD2/Willard performed public relations duties and was tapped to lead the Christmas parade in Addison that year. His contributions to actual law enforcement and his subsequent whereabouts are unknown. "As quoted from 'theoldrobots' website; 'Officer Willi from 1985 - This 21st Century Robotics robot was operated by remote control, showed videos about public safety, and was used in teaching important safety topics such as stranger awareness, traffic safety, and much more..'"

Coldyron is actually a very good prototype of the modern tech mogul who has way too much time on his hands and whose existence is mainly composed of heroic fantasies about himself, whether he is molding the future face of law enforcement, or dicking around on his enormous ranch where he lamely practices his lasso technique on tree stumps before blowing them up with dynamite. At the office he demands "hydrogenated wheat germ and dessicated liver" which boosts his handball game, and I thought, jesus christ I think I've worked for this guy. Coldyron is *I think* the hero of this movie but I'm never sure how much you're really supposed to like him; when his girlfriend sends him out for charcoal so he can cook her reward steaks, he goes to a mini mart and just starts looking for trouble, harassing minorities and flashing his gun. It's like, this is the reason there are loitering laws, but naturally they don't apply when you're a rich cop.

Someone please make these stickers!

The best way to understand R.O.T.O.R. is through the knowledge that director and co-writer Cullen Blaine worked on a variety of popular cartoon shows during what they call "the dark age of animation". First of all, there are scenes in this movie whose aesthetic, humor, and internal logic only begin to make sense if you imagine them taking place in an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--and actually much if not all of the dialog was dubbed by a whole other cast due to problems with getting the stars back for ADR, creating a whole other layer of literal cartoonishness. But the period in which Cullen Blaine created R.O.T.O.R. and designed many children's shows was dominated by what's called "limited animation" which I almost don't even have to describe. It's all in the name, the goal was to do things as cheaply as possible while turning out dozens of episodes per season. Part of the problem was, as with all things, Ronald Reagan, whose deregulation activities defanged measures to make sure children's programming was not just a steady stream of hard sell marketing. Under Reagan, the requirement for some portion of programs to be educational became so easy to meet and manipulate that animation studios were compelled to crank out zillions of Trojan horse toy ads with glib moral declarations tacked on. (I think I understand this correctly, I'm sure @bogleech has better material on the subject) Animators are a historically abused lot with a sad history of failed strikes, and I'm just extrapolating here, but I bet it's reasonable to guess that R.O.T.O.R. reflects the filmmaker's experiences in the grueling cartoon mines. The brutal sacrifice of quality to speed, the hostile work environments, and the endless, redundant calls and meetings, all smack of a script by someone who has had a very bad job.

"We've all got plenty of time to figure out what this means to each one of us," Coldyron sagely concludes at the end of his misadventure. Obviously I am still working on what it means to me, since this is the fourth or fifth time I've seen this movie and (at least?) the second time I'm writing about it. I will say that while the film I have just described sounds intolerably boring--I mean, a whole movie about rat race drudgery with the fewest and least convincing action sequences ever--but believe me, it is not boring. R.O.T.O.R. is constantly surprising and fascinating, with weirdly vivid imagery and pages and pages of the strangest dialog you will hear anywhere. Just watch the movie and let it shock you. You'll have plenty of time to figure out what it means to you later.

[lonestarflight]

The Ingenuity Rover's Helicopter, nicknamed Ginny, is broken and alone

"In this most recent photo of Ingenuity, the dual-rotor 'copter can be seen motionless on a sandy dune in the background, as a barren, rocky Mars landscape fills the foreground.

The photo was taken on Feb. 4, 2024, at 1:05 p.m. local mean solar time, a little over two weeks since it suffered its mission-ending damage.

NASA and JPL's Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars as seen by the Perseverance rover's Mastcam-Z camera on Feb. 4, 2024.

Ingenuity suffered damage to its rotors during a flight on Jan. 18 as it made a landing on a featureless, "bland" patch of sandy Martian landscape. The helicopter usually makes use of landscape features such as rocks to help it navigate, but its 72nd flight found the drone without visual cues.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is still analyzing the damage to Ingenuity's blades, but regardless of what JPL finds, the helicopter's mission has officially come to an end now that it's no longer capable of flight.

Ingenuity landed alongside its robotic companion, the Perseverance rover, on Feb. 18, 2021. When it took to the Martian skies in April 2021, Ingenuity made history by conducting the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet.

The Ingenuity-Perseverance duo has been exploring an area known as Jezero Crater ever since, discovering signs of ancient bodies of water on the Red Planet that may have once harbored life billions of years ago. Ingenuity served as a scout for Perseverance, identifying areas of interest for the rover to explore.

In recent weeks as NASA and JPL have been coming to terms with the end of Ingenuity's groundbreaking mission, agency leaders have praised the helicopter and the teams behind it.

'We couldn't be prouder or happier with how our little baby has done,' said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity Project Manager at JPL, during a livestreamed tribute to the helicopter on Jan. 31. 'It's been the mission of a lifetime for all of us. And I wanted to say thank you to all of the people here that gave their weekends, their late nights. All the engineers, the aerodynamic scientists, the technicians who hand-crafted this aircraft.'

Tiffany Morgan, NASA's Mars Exploration Program Deputy Director, added that Ingenuity leaves behind a legacy that could pave the way for future aerial missions on other worlds.

This image, which shows the shadow of a damaged rotor on NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity, was taken after its 72nd and final flight on Jan. 18, 2024 on the Red Planet.

'The NASA JPL team didn't just demonstrate the technology, they demonstrated an approach that if we use in the future will really help us to explore other planets and be as awe-inspiring, as amazing, as Ingenuity has been,' Morgan said during the livestream.

NASA is already developing another drone destined for another world, the nuclear-powered Dragonfly, to someday explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The agency expects Dragonfly to launch no earlier than 2028."

[shepherdwitchhn]

Ground Type Trainer Teto & Excadrill 

Read more for today’s Teto Trainer Trivia Territory below:

Today’s illustration was an interesting one. On the one hand, Excadrill was a Pokemon I knew I needed to include from the jump. Twindrill Teto with a literal drill Pokemon was a simple connection to make. On the other hand, this was one of the last designs I ended up settling with because I struggled to come up with something that felt distinct from Miku and didn’t have too much overlap with another one of my Teto designs (wink wink, nudge nudge) while still feeling like a ‘ground’ trainer to me.

What I settled on came as the result of a simple thought, what if she was just a guy who likes digging holes? And so my Ground Teto was born. As you can see I was also inspired by Teto as seen in the Liar Dancer MV, while also adding some additional flair to the design to show what someone might wear to protect themselves from dirt or harsh sunlight. The Groudon pattern t-shirt and Clodsire face-mask were also fun details to add. And that’s the gist of it!

Next week, check back for Bug Type Trainer Teto!

[of-tatooine]

where it truly lies. | chapter i - prologue

revelations came early to the youngling, if only he knew.

From the very moment the twin suns’ pink and orange hues illuminated your face, a young Anakin knew.

It was the kind of feeling that lit a gentle fire within the soul, the origins of which unbeknownst to the wandering yet growing minds of children. The kind of feeling so grand it engulfed his very being from within. A sentiment, sense of belonging and excitement he did not yet know how to describe, but oh, could he feel it.

It made his heart falter, skip a small beat. It made his baby blues sparkle internally, rays reflecting out into the world of chaos around him with a fresh breath of happiness. His hands were just a bit faster, just a tiny bit more nimble as he worked with spare droid parts at his master’s shop.

He knew.

Just like he knew he would see the suns rise again. That he would see his mother that night with open arms and heart, beckoning him in to share a meal.

Like he knew, from the bottom of his heart, that he would be free one day, his family slaves to no one.

If only you knew.

A merely nine year old boy, albeit an exceptionally wise one, but just a little boy, knew he loved you.

How could he? How could a small boy know about love, let alone feel it?

That must have been love, right? The kind he heard whispers and stories of on the streets of Tatooine. The feeling that made all the beautiful things in this world appear - hugs, kisses on the cheek. Blue skies shining back at him. The sparkles on his red and orange speeder. The gentle beeping sounds of a functioning droid.

A dreamland full of water and beautiful trees adorned in all shades of green, the ones that existed in the better half of his dreams.

Love was happiness to him. The kind that made him laugh and smile even after being exhausted all day. Ever since you beamed into the shop looking for some scrap sensors to fix your passion project, it had been nothing but happiness when you were around, so much so that he lately did not mind his master’s ordering around.

He wanted nothing more to understand that little gentle light within him, to make sure it never disappeared from his life.

He wanted to find a way to keep the twin suns from setting. That would make it daylight forever, allowing you to stay with him.

That would convince your parents to let you stay out with him just a bit longer. Anakin was very confident that he could make that work, even if it took him forever.

He would not let go.

The gentle hum of buzzing machinery and a certain girl whispering a shallow profanity after a series of mechanical thuds took him out of his thoughts and back to reality of the desert.

Back to the sand that kept hitting his skin no matter how much he covered.

“Do you have it yet?”

“Almost,” came your voice from a bit afar in the scrapyard, knee deep in all the spare parts, screws, scrapped metal of all sorts around Watto’s shop. His master being gone to the outpost to scour for his necessities meant a certain relief, finally being able to work on something a bit more fun. A few more broken rotors and springs thrown out from the pile followed by an “aha!”, you quipped in excitement to the newly discovered part.

The slightly rusty body of the partially disassembled protocol droid stared at him, waiting to be granted life. With a clear intention in mind, the little Anakin had worked on the droid whenever his master’s watchful eyes were not all over him, and sometimes overtime after he was dismissed. Working on the manmade creature also gave him an excuse to tinker with you.

He had worked hard to dig for spare parts in the vast scrapyard, his talented fingers tightening each bolt and screw that connected the limbs together, the network of wires originating from the motherboard to each corner of the machine to grant energy to the droid when all parts were tied together.

Up until then, he had been missing the servomotor, if not the most crucial part of it all. He had been searching for it for the better half of a week now, and had requested your assistance as a second pair of eyes and hands.

How else was the protocol droid supposed to move to help protect his mother, if not for the motor?

The smile stretching your lips was contagious as your running legs carried you  towards a waiting blond boy, clutching the motor tightly in your small hands as you skipped occasionally to avoid the leftover parts, sand flying around under your boots with each stride taken. An excitement ran through Anakin, as he readied the metal opening to, almost ceremoniously, tie the missing piece altogether.

“Let’s do this.”

Sounds of metal clinks, wires strapped to their place, a few huffs following the cutter as the motor clicked into it’s place. The moment he had been waiting for for a while now, as he made sure to securely attach all the mechanical limbs and double check the circuits. With his heart thumping and you crouching next to him, he hit the switch.

He shot a smile mixed in with a laugh, catching your eyes with the biggest joy when he heard the whirl, focusing back when the droid’s eyes lit up a calm yellow, head turning with a screeching sound - but moving nonetheless.

The two little troublemakers found themselves laughing with content, celebrating their creation. Now, his mother had someone to help protect her against the heat, even if it required a bit more maintenance, polish and oil.

Your eyes found Anakin’s light blue ones, partially shaded under the fabric of the tent, yet the sparkles in them were enough to light the galaxy.

“You will do great things, Ani.”

The words flowed out as if they were the most natural. You always had meant everything you said to him, it made him believe that yes, one day, he would indeed do great things.

To that, he responded with a wide smile, laced with a child’s innocence and pure hope.

While he believed your words, he found himself only hoping for them to become true if it meant seeing you smile.

[badlydrawnmanic]

i was gonna make another joke at antoine’s expense then i remembered rotor existed and also bullied him but then i realized he’s hard to stylize on the spot so here he is i guess and he vaguely looks like a purple version of chandlo bugsnax

two things: i love his big doofy flipper hands and whiskers. he also has a :3 mouth so that’s good. anyway why did they make him buff post-sgw

actually no three things why did he just continually look older and older in the comics like he never really felt like he was meant to be a sonic character but something about his first redesign felt off, then they gave him a jacket like chuck’s and little old man glasses and took away his Cool Backwards Hat and like

rotor deserves to be part of the cool kids club like him and the rest of the freedom fighters are supposed to be the same age give or take a year or two (except tails) right

[sgt-tombstone]

43 definitely caught my eye.

(Don't mind gore, it can be fun. But. No dying ppl plz.)

43. A bloody kiss

So I’m somewhat shamefully plugging my MCD fic, Funeral Blues, because the idea that keeps swirling around in my head is an expansion of one of the flashbacks BUT I know you said no dying, so this snippet won’t have any MCD, I promise! It can be read as a complete stand-alone scene, separate from the rest of the fic entirely!

~~~~~~~~

The mission had gone to shit, because of course it had. That seemed to be the 141’s entire MO: make a plan, then have it thrown out the window hours or even minutes later, because the intel had been bad, or their targets had moved, or there were more defenses than expected. The consistency of it all would’ve made Ghost laugh if the result of this particular mission going to shit hadn’t been… this.

This, of course, being Johnny, laid out on his back in the middle of the helicopter, combat medics swarming like flies, prodding with various needles and tubes and instruments, all while trying not to slip on the copious amounts of blood seeping from… everywhere, honestly. Some of it was Ghost’s, undoubtedly, but the vast majority of the slick blood coating the metal floor was Soap’s, rapidly cooling in the chilled air.

His eyes were open, which was a good sign. He was still conscious, his heart rate not steady, but strong enough. He was breathing, and that’s what Ghost forced himself to focus on. Not the indentation of Johnny’s skin as the IV needle punctured, injecting unknown substances directly into his veins. Not the white dressing that instantly stained red where it was pressed against the gunshot wound in Johnny’s thigh. Not the blood running in rivulets across Johnny’s face from the gash to his temple, forcing him to squint one eye and lick his lips in a vain attempt to keep his own blood from dripping into his open, gasping mouth.

Ghost couldn’t look at any of it. The needle reminded him of Roba, of the drugs he’d been injected with against his will, despite knowing that these combat medics would rather die than lose a soldier; they didn’t know Soap, but that was the nature of their work. The blood-stained cloth reminded him of his family, laid out under the Christmas tree, thin sheet draped over their corpses, soaked in viscera and gore, red blooming like flowers where gravity pulled white to red. The rivulets of blood reminded him of Las Almas, of the gunshot wound that had nearly taken Johnny from him the first time, before he’d even known him; Ghost might’ve been able to handle it then, but it’d kill him now.

Instead, he focused on Johnny’s eyes. Bright blue, wide, alert, and trained directly on Ghost. They were upside down, because Johnny’s head was cradled in the divot of Ghost’s crossed legs, the sides of his face supported by Ghost’s gloved hands, his thumbs moving subconsciously in soothing arcs over Johnny’s cheeks, smearing the blood even further. It was everywhere, seeping from everywhere, staining both of them and everything around them gruesome, grim red, but Ghost only had eyes for the flash of blue in the midst of it all.

There was fear in those eyes. Anyone else would’ve missed it; Johnny was too well-trained to let his terror shine through, too eager to please to display anything that could disappoint a superior officer, too warm-hearted to project anything less than confident assuredness to the men around him. But Ghost wasn’t just anyone, and he didn’t miss it. He didn’t miss the way Johnny’s gaze clung to Ghost’s own like a lifeline, the way his breath hitched on every other inhale, the way his fingers twitched against the cold metal floor, like he was desperately stopping himself from touching something he shouldn’t.

Ghost’s mask was pulled up partially because in their rush to exfil, no one had given him a headset, so he’d had to rely on the medics’ ability to read his lips as his shouted report was drowned out by the helicopter rotors. Not that they’d really needed his help; it had been obvious what was wrong with Johnny. The two of them had limped their way towards the helicopter from the tree line, exposed on all sides and reliant on the air patrol to cover them as Ghost nearly carried Soap to the RV point. Blood had soaked the entire leg of his fatigues from the knee down, and his tac vest was coated in mud and blood too; Ghost’s arm around his torso had been the only thing keeping him upright by the time they made it to the safety of the medics’ waiting arms.

He wasn’t stable yet; the kind of blood loss that he’d suffered would need a transfusion or two eventually, but the medics weren’t looking so concerned anymore, and Ghost found it within himself to take a deep breath.

Johnny finally reached up, his arm moving slowly, lethargically, like every twitch of the muscles was a monumental effort, and Ghost watched as his fingertips brushed against his blood-stained forehead, probing at the scabbing gash. Normally, he’d slap the sergeant’s hand away, would growl at him to leave it well enough alone, because that’s how shit gets infected, but he also knew the deep-seated need to self-analyze. His eyes never left Johnny’s fingers as they shifted lower, following the blood trail to his own lips, meeting the tip of his tongue as it peeked out, tasting his own blood. His mouth moved, silent in the roaring air, but Ghost knew what Johnny’s lips looked like when they wrapped around his name, and he could hear it perfectly in his mind’s eye.

Soap’s arm was on the move again, stretching up, impossibly high, until the warmth of his palm met Ghost’s jaw, smearing red across his skin, hot like a brand, straight from the source, and Ghost’s breath caught in his chest. He saw Johnny’s eyes dilate, blue swallowed by black, fear overtaken by…

“I’ve got you, Johnny,” Ghost rumbled, knowing that the sound would be stolen but that Johnny would understand anyway. He always did, somehow.

A tear pooled on Johnny’s lash line before spilling over, racing down his temple, mixing with the blood smeared over Johnny’s skin before soaking into the cloth of Ghost’s glove, and he could almost convince himself that he could feel it against his skin, damp and warm and so full of life.

Johnny’s hand curled, cupping the back of Ghost’s neck, resisting the tug of gravity pulling his arm down like dead weight, except… No, Johnny was definitely the one pulling. Pulling Ghost down, closer, urging him to lean over him, to—

Their lips met, blood slick and offset, the upside down angle making any real kiss impossible, but it was enough. More than enough. Never enough. Ghost cradled Johnny impossibly closer, ignoring the medics’ warning sounds as he maneuvered Johnny’s body, but he’d never do anything to hurt him. Something this perfect couldn’t possibly hurt, not when he had Johnny’s lips on his, Johnny’s hands on him, Johnny’s love pouring into his mouth like too shelf bourbon, intoxicating and burning and addictive all at once.

They separated when they couldn’t breathe anymore, but neither of them went far. Ghost’s lungs were burning, his back already making its displeasure at the harsh angle known, his hips and knees aching at the stretch of folding himself damn near in half, but a direct order from Price himself couldn’t have urged him any further from Johnny, and Johnny evidently felt the same, his fingers tangling in the fabric at the back of Ghost’s neck.

“Ghost,” he said, breath brushing against Ghost’s blood-smeared lips, and Ghost brought one arm down to curl around Johnny’s torso, pulling him slightly upright and slotting their bodies together, back-to-chest.

“I’ve got you, Johnny,” he whispered into Soap’s ear, and he wasn’t sure who he was comforting. All he knew was that, when the helicopter touched down back at base, Johnny was still in his arms, still breathing, still holding on, and he thought that maybe, he could have this.

[valkresdarkside]

Ok more blade breeding au oneshot bc my new project won't let me draw lewds for a while (fuck animation istg) tw: rape, mindbreak

Blade gritted his teeth as the aphrodisiac started taking effect on his body. The pain on his rotor and landing gear slowly became numb, and his rear started getting wet in heat.

The Owner smirked as he explored Blade's shivering frame with his tentacles, causing Blade to bit his lower lip to hold back his moans. His valve cover was being teased, rubbed by the wet, slimy tentacles. His panels opened up involuntarily to the assault, revealing his soaked folds.

"H-haa..." Blade moaned as some smaller tentacles crept their way into his valve. It felt...weird. The tentacles effortlessly explored his walls, finding the sensitive nodes and tugged on them. His mind screamed, telling him to escape, but the lack of rotor blades and landing gears gave him no choice but to stay in his spot, letting the tentacles turn him into a shivering and moaning mess.

Then he cried out, eyes shot open, as a thick tentacle rammed its way into his folds without any warning.

"Hm, hm, this is perfect," the Owner hummed as he drove closer to observe Blade's rear. "Now let's see if you can handle more than this."

Blade screamed as more of the thick tentacles forced their ways into him. He had never felt so vulnerable. He couldn't even squirm nor roll away an inch. Verbal responses and his shaking body were the only things he could manage as the tentacles laid claim on his body.

"S-stop thiiiis...." he begged. The tentacles had spread his insides wider than what he thought was possible. The aphrodisiac actually worked and turned the pain into pleasure, and Blade got scared by the thought. He wasn't an object! He wasn't supposed to feel this way! But his body disobeyed him as his moans got higher in pitch, climax getting closer.

He didn't even realize that the Owner had already parked himself in front of him, smirking mischievously. He stopped as Blade was about to reach his peak and withdrew his tentacles, making the helo whine to the sudden emptiness in his tunnels.

"Raven," the Owner called to the tanker, "now's the time for your reward."

The KC-767 smirked and rolled closer. He parked himself right above Blade, towering the much smaller helo.

Blade heard the sounds of panels clicking and shifting. No, no, no, please don't, he begged silently as he felt a huge shaft's tip pressing against his valve, rubbing it with precum.

The Owner chuckled seeing Blade's pleading stare. No more angry stare, no more growls nor threats. Just a helpless helo that had already learned his place, and soon would be turned into a breeding stock.

"I want his tank's cover destroyed."

"Consider it done, my liege," the tanker smirked, positioning himself.

"No, no, no, please don't, it won't fi—mmmf!" Blade's pleads were silenced by a tentacle shoving itself into his mouth, pumping a huge amount of aphrodisiac into his throat. Blade gagged on the tentacle as Raven started pushing his shaft into his swollen valve, making his eye roll back from the pain-turned-pleasure.

Raven didn't take his time to let Blade adjust. He straight up plowed his member into the poor helo's depth, spreading it wide and cracked his outer panels. The tentacles kept Blade in his spot, preventing his body from getting stuck to, nor getting dragged by the huge spike.

Blade could only whimper with the tentacles in his throat, gagged sounds released themselves from his throat. He felt full. He felt impaled.

"I wanted to make your first products to look as similar to you as possible, but..." the Owner pulled the tentacle out of Blade's mouth, "seeing how you'd endure a huge Boeing's baby would be fun to see."

Blade's eyes shut themselves from both the pleasure and fear. He was scared of what other atrocious stuff they'd do to him, what they were turning himself into, and the fact that he was starting to enjoy the rough intercourses.

Raven was pounding his secondary tank's lid mercilessly, turning Blade into a moaning mess below his fuselage.

"S-slow dooownnnn.... Haa... I-I'm gonna break...." Blade pleaded, the pleasure was too much for him.

"That's the point, slut," Raven growled. "I'm gonna break your mind and body. Breeding stocks don't get to think nor speak, after all~"

Raven slammed his shaft, causing Blade's tank to break, letting the huge member break into his secondary tank.

Blade screamed. Even with the aphrodisiac, it hurt. But it hurt so good. He got overwhelmed by the mixture of pain and pleasure as he hit orgasm, exploding from both his shaft and valve. His eyes rolled back as Raven kept pounding into him even as he cummed, triggering every single sensitive nodes. It was all too much. Too much.

Then he stopped thinking and let himself be overtaken by pleasure.

Raven hit his climax not long after that, filling Blade's secondary tank with his seed, causing the helo's fuselage to bulge from the huge amount of semen. The tanker pulled its shaft out, causing his cum to flow out of Blade's swollen valve.

The Owner used a tentacle to plug his valve with a magnetic dildo, preventing more semen from dripping out. It'd be a waste, and he needed this helo pregnant.

He smirked at Blade's empty gaze, eyelids half open, his face had no signs of resistance left. They had successfully broken the fire chief's mind, turning him into a perfect breeding stock with nothing but sexual pleasure in his mind.

"Connect him to the machines. I want the product to be delivered within a month."

"Yes, sir!" Several forklifts and tugs saluted before they lifted Blade's spent body onto a trailer and took him away.