#and the eroticism of the machine of course

[lesbica-virtual]

how it feels to try to play ultrakill when you have zero experience with 1st person shooter games and the nervous system of a chihuahua

[mothgirlpanties]

I've seen yall talking about the eroticism of the machine and I think it's time for my two cents;

A printer, is not a brat. She is a good girl. She is trying her best. Sometimes (most of the time), her best isn't enough.

You send a document to print. She looks at you, embarrassed. Something is wrong with the drum unit, the tiny display reads. So you pop open her plastic casing and pull out the drum unit.

Nothing appears wrong with it.

You blow off a few specks of dust, carefully slip it back into place, and close the casing once more. She beeps happily, the pages begin to run through her, and you both carry on with your work.

That's how it happened the first dozen times, anyways.

Now, it looks more like this:

You send a document to print. She turns to you, face as red as her indicator lights. You sigh and pop open her casing, not even bothering to read the display.

You jiggle her drum unit roughly; you already know nothing is wrong with it. She makes a breathless little noise and reaches out, putting a hand on your shoulder to steady herself.

Every move you make is practiced, in a rough and careless way. You handle her with exactly enough force not to break her.

She was built for this, anyways. The entire point of her design was easy access, easy service. She was built for your hands to root around in, because everyone knew this was always going to happen.

And of course it's not her fault. But this is the third time in as many hours and if things take much longer you'll miss your next break.

You judge her drum unit has had enough jostling for the time being, and unceremoniously slam her casing shut again.

You keep your hand on it as you look up at her; it's not quite a threat, and if her heavy breathing and wide eyes are any indication, she took it as a promise.

After a long moment, her indicators return to green. The pages begin to run through her, and you both carry on with your work.

But you both know you'll be elbow deep in her a few more times before the day is done

[catboybiologist]

Hi! I'm Sierra. Time for a pinned post refresh.

Otherwise known as CatboyBiologist, or @hi-sierra (my SFW blog [this one is SFW too, but less so]). This page is remaining active, but if you want to find me somewhere else, I use the same username on reddit, Instagram, co-host, and tech.lgbt. This is me:

Trans woman, PhD student in molecular biology, boymoder, shitposter, freediver, hot girl on your phone, hiker, rambler (this post included), tgirl tummy tuesday supplier and enjoyer, former femboy, bane of bioessentialist fuckwads who try to use biology to validate biogotry, flaming bisexual, 196 nanocelebrity… whatever was the first thing that brought you to my blog, I hope it’s enough to get you to stay! I post selfies, hornyposts (minors and people who are averse to that be warned), stuff about the ocean, posts about my growing sense of wanderlust, my adorable lil tortoise, tutorials for transfemmes and GNC people, rambles about science, documentation of my own transition, rambles about transness, rambles about the eroticism of programming a machine to feel arousal, rambles about nature, and random shitposts. Please send me pictures of cute animals in your life!

If you wanna support my science career and my transition, consider dropping a tip here! PhD salaries are notorious for being negotiated to be exactly the cost of living…. And then forgotten about for years as inflation drops that below minimum wage. So I’m always a little strapped for cash. Anything helps!

Links to some of my tutorials and relevant resources under the cut:

I'm tracking my transition, and some people have said they found this helpful! This spreadsheet is generally updated monthly:

Usually, I write a little journal to go with it when it updates- you can find that under the #trans journal on my blog.

If you're interested in checking out some of the things I'm trying to write, here's a post with links to individual stories I'm making:

https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/741010247774306304/writing-consolidation-post?source=share

My femboy guide, written well before I started HRT, but still has relevant info:

A "boyboob" tutorial, aka how to make it look like you have cleavage in an outfit that looks better with it:

A quick and dirty guide to taking better selfies, with a specific emphasis on people who may have stopped hating their body recently due to transition:

And here's a few of my personal favorite little rambles and posts about my transness, in no particular order:

CW for transphobia on this one:

A massive shoutout to @foldingfittedsheets for this amazing art of the lil borgir holding a trans flag:

I adore this so much <3 if you want to support their art, her commissions are open and really sweet!!!!

And of course, a massive shoutout to @whalesharkcat for this lovely pixel art of my tortoise:

I still love this so much, and will continue to into the future <3

For preHRT selfies, search the femboy tag. For post HRT selfies, use the "trans selfie" tag. I've been on HRT since August of 2023, so I'm still very early in the process! Day to day, I present male, but I plan to change that around the 1 year mark.

I guess that's about it! One final note is that I've been alluding to video/podcast style things for a while now. With my aderrall prescription, I've actually put in a lot of research work that might lead to 1-4 of those, so that might actually happen in the near future! No promises of course, life always catches up to you.

And if you liked my previous pinned post better, here it is:

Anyways, if you read this far, thanks for sticking around and bbyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[hi-sierra]

Biologics, chapter 0.5

Hello, hello! I finally have added a significant amount to my story, Biologics, resulting in a total of ~4400 words. Not a whole ton, I know, but unfortunately life gets to ya. It isn't quite where I want it to be to consider a proper chapter one, but I feel like there's enough written for me to post. General warning that this is intended to heavily lean into the theme of "eroticism of the machine", so if that doesn't appeal to you, you've been warned. It does, however, have many general sci fi worldbuilding elements, so I hope it has a somewhat broad appeal!

So yes, if you already read the first snippet, that's going to be mostly a one to one repeat with some grammatical adjustments. Feel free to scroll down until you get to the new stuff. Flow-wise, there just wasn't a good place to break between the two sections.

Look at me rambling. And I wonder why I can't get any of this stuff done. Anyways, here it is!

Biologics

Pappy always said that manufacturing biological transportation was nothing knew. I mean, shit, humanity's been breeding horses for how long? To him, not much was novel about what was going on in the shipyards way out by Neptune when I was a kid.

But Pappy didn't know a lot of things. And he certainly didn't meet Roseanna.

The Federation Navy had experimented with Biologics for decades. The idea was to create self regenerating ships- organic matter that interfaced with the hull, moving new titanium plates and patches into place down to microscopic precision. If you had a living, growing mass interfacing with steel, a ship didn't have to head all the way back to the yards to patch up after every dogfight.

The first generation... worked. With a full time crew, that is. Full time people on deck jabbin the rigid, chitonous matrix full of growth hormones to get them to set just right. Full time onboard bioengineers to compute what signaling cocktail ya need to hit 'em with to get it to grow back right. Skilled onboard technicians to shave back the chitin when it tried to overgrow the titanium, and slap some new cells in to seed the process in heavily damaged areas. Less input material, less time in the yards, but far more manpower. Great for a Federation cruiser on deep space peacekeeping missions. Far too complex for small craft. Right?

Until some bastard put brains in 'em.

Well. A lotta suits would say that they weren't brains. They were a diffuse network of sensory neurons and ganglia, living inside the body of the ship, integrating signals from a skin of alloyed metal and fibrous protein, calculating power draw too and from various components, integrated with the mechanical and electrical components of the ship to precisely manage the "wound healing" process of the vessel. And of course, it just so happened that one of those ganglia was larger and more complex than the rest of them, and it just so happened that the computer interfaces with this ganglia exhibit complex, thinking behaviors on the level of human cognition, and it just so happens that most pilots and navigators reported them developing their own personalities.....

But of course, the Navy didn't want anyone to have some kind of pesky empathy in the way of their operations. And they certainly didn't want anyone side eyeing the rate at which they disposed of the damn things, just to let them suffer and rot. So as far as the official record was concerned, they weren't brains. But I knew different.

Like most people in the belt, I found Rosie on an... unsponsored field trip to the Neptune scrap yards. She wasn't a ship then. She wasn't much of anything. Not much more than a vat with the central ganglia and just barely enough of the stem cells needed to regrow a network. But I took her all the same. Brains were valuable. Few pilots outside the Navy had them back then. Nowadays, a black market for "brain seeds", a cocktail of neuronal stem cells and enough structural stem cells to grow your own into the chassis of your ship, was thriving. The Navy was pumpin' em out, and leaving them to die. It was cruel. Sometimes, being scavenged and resold was a kinder fate. But more often, some nasty piece of work would pick them up eventually, and treat them like just another goddamn ship. They may be vehicles, but they're a livin' being too.

I digress. I'd never do that to Roseanna. I make sure she gets proper care. And for a good, proper, working ship? That includes some good, proper work.

The asteroid we were docked in was one of my usuals- good bars, nice temp quarters, nice views of the rock's orbiting twin, and a spacious hanger for Rosie to rest in. The chassis I had imprinted Roseanna to was a 40-meter light skipper, with some adjustments for handling deep space trips, as well as some... personal touches. It was pretty much the smallest thing you could actually use to live in and work for long periods of time, but it got the job done. The angular design made the entire ship look like a wedge, or the blade of a bulky dagger. It didn't hurt that each bottom edge was fortified with a sharpened titanium blade, turning the entire sides of the ship into axe-like rams.

Those would probably come in handy today.

I approached Roseanna on the catwalk above her, marveling her alloyed scales. I could almost see her shudder in anticipation as my footsteps vibrated through the air above her. I took the steps down, and hit the trigger to open her top hatch.

When the news got out of the Navy scuffling with a rebelling mining station, an electric air raced across the station. Some went about their day as normal. Some resigned themselves to picking at the leftovers after the dust had settled. And some, like me, knew that they could get the finest pickings.

I slipped into the pilot's seat like it was an old boot.

"Welcome, Captain Victoria."

Rosie could talk, but more often than not, she chose not to. But she understood me just fine. Most of our communication took place using her three prerecorded lines- her welcome statement, affirmative, and negative- as well as a tiny screen showing a small, emoticon face. Many pilots chose to give their ships an elaborate render, but Rosie preferred it this way. It was the first face I gave her, from somewhere out of the scrap heaps, and she refused any offer I made to upgrade. Hell, she even had a hi-res screen for external cameras and comms, but she refused to interface directly with it. Secretly, I was overjoyed. To me, the little pixelated screen was her face. That was her voice. And it was beautiful to see her true self through them.

I brushed my hands across her paneling. Across the switches, the hydraulic controls for the plasma fuel, the steering, the boosts, the comms channels. The thing with Biologics was that you were still the pilot. For whatever reason, they hadn't quite gotten to the point where the brains could take over their own piloting. My personal opinion was just that their personalities lacked the ambition to. Cuz they certainly could take over some ships functions directly, and had the skill to do complex mechanical and electrical tasks. The Navy never let 'em drive, though, and most pilots didn't even know they could give them the ability to control any of the ships functions directly. But with a little help, a little bit of solid engineering, and a pilot that knew their ship... well, you could do a lot. And me and Rosie? We knew each other well. Over the years, I'd added some nice things for her, and she loved using them to help me out.

As my fingers touched the brushed aluminum controls, rimmed with chitinous layers affixing them to the ship, I could feel the walls around me holding their invisible breath. "Do you know what we're doing today, Rosie?"

Her tiny panel flickered on.

[...?]

"We got a scrap run."

[ ^_^]

[ :) ]

[ ^_^ ]

Her panel flicked between various expressions of excitement. My finger quivered on the main power, holding for a moment before flicking it on. The primary electronics of the ship hummed to life, and the parts Rosie controlled pulsed with it. My hands moved across the main functional panels- main hydraulic plasma valve, exhaust ports open, and finally, flicking the switch the start the plasma burner.

My hands gripped the steering. The hanger's airlock doors opened in front of me. My neck length hair started to float as the station's gravity shut off. I hit the switch to unlatch from the supports above. For a moment, we hang there. The dull crackle of the idling plasma burner is the only sound that resonates through Rosie's hull.

Go time. I punch the boost.

The station shakes. Rosie was never a subtle one.

The mechanics are deafened.

The crowd of spectators are deafened.

The other pilots in the hanger are deafened.

But me? The vibrations of Rosie's hull shuddering under me was the sweetest symphony my ears ever had the pleasure of hearing. As we shot out of that hanger, I found myself involuntarily humming a high note, harmonizing with the sweet rumble of my baby's acceleration as we shoot out into the inky, black expanse of space. The twin asteroids shot by us as we disappeared, leaving only the faint blue plasma trail from our engines.

My hand is firm on the boost, weathered hands tightly gripping the bar of the accelerator. I remember installing this thing in her- it was an aftermarket adjustment, not included in the usual light skipper chassis. Gently stripping away the back of her chassis, caressing her insides as I rooted the paneling, firmly attaching the tanks and burners on her insides... these hands had taken great pleasure in that. Bested only, of course, by the first time I had felt the thing roar to life.

And what a feeling it was. Rosie's entire chassis, biological and mechanical, shuddering under my grasp. The grip of my calloused hands on the boost controls, tight and sweaty around the ridged grip of the horizontal bar. The noises she made, as if to shout in glee and wild abandon at being unchained and let loose into the eternal field of space, as she was made to do. The gentle touch of her skin on my back, my body pressed in contact with the small fraction of hers that was my seat. I glanced down at her face panel.

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

My humming gave way to a chuckle, and then a wholehearted, exhilarated laugh. Someone was enjoying herself. The flickering faces on her panel reminded me of the happily panting station dogs back on Mars.

But as much as I would like this to just be a joyride, I had promised Rosie a scrap run. And the pickings were looking good. I glanced down at the nav. I was intentionally headed at a slightly indirect angle- Rosie's boost was her main attractive feature (both as a ship, and as a working partner), and the extra leeway I had in travel time let me strategize a bit more. I doubted we would be the first people there, but I figured we could get in before the main rush. The only trouble was darting in and grabbing something right from under the noses of the first locusts. The scrap field in question included a disabled heavy mining freighter, a goliath of the ship larger than some of the asteroids it made supply runs between. I assumed that most other scavengers would be approaching directly from our station, and the other stations in its proximity. With Rosie's boost, we could overshoot, hook around, and put the freighter in between us and the guns of the more violent craft. Rosie has no long range weapons of any kind- not only would they slow down her miraculous speed, but she didn't like them. I tried installing a small plasma cannon once, and she expressed immense distaste. Maybe they were too brutish for her, or maybe she didn't like the way they felt inside her, burdening her with pressure from the inside that didn't befit the delicate touches I usually graced her with. Rosie loved speed, precision, elegance, and stealth above all else. It's just the kind of ship she was.

That's not to say she was a pacifist, or defenseless. Quite the contrary. She just prefers a more... personal touch.

The navicom beeped at me. We'd reached the point where we needed to make that hook. My bare feet gently swept across the titanium flooring to the steering pedals. My right hand delicately gripped the steering joystick, while my left eased its grip on the boost accelerator.

"Ready for this, darling?"

[ >:) ]

I slammed the steering to the left, and Rosie gleefully complied. The wide bank of the turn as we rotated and soared through the sea of stars twisted my body in its inertia, compressing me further into her. As the angle straightened out to the proper heading, I punched the boost again, and Rosie roared forward.

Slowly, our target came into sight. Damn. This thing had taken some serious damage. Mining freighters typically weren't heavily armored- their only job was to get material from point A to B- but this one had clearly been through some serious modifications. Modifications that now lay in ruin. Titanium plating was scattered in a field around the core of the freighter. I couldn't quite tell what was stuff left behind by the battle, and what was the result of shoddy craftmanship- but it didn't matter. What did matter was that the entire thing had been split almost in half, and the scattered cargo that was leaking out. Cargo that most likely included half the weapon supplies of this little rebel faction. Would fetch a pretty penny, to the right buyer. And hell, if it was just gonna sit here unclaimed...

Ah shit. It wasn't gonna sit here unclaimed. Despite my best efforts, it looks like we weren't the first ones here. A larger scavenger gang had already arrived, and it looks like it was one of the ones I knew- Augustus and his lot. Most likely, they'd be after the weapons intact, one more thing to use to shakedown the scattered independent stations I always flitted between. He would not be happy to see me n Rosie here. What he called his "fleet" was a single, mid-sized carrier ship, about half the size of the freighter we were looting, and the dozen or so scout fighters and strip mining crafts he had looted from the Navy and various corps, and one Biologic that he called his. I respect that part, to be honest. What I don't respect is him immediately turning around and using that charge every goddamn station his ever-increasing "protection fees". Not to mention my personal disdain for the way he treated his ship. Didn't even give her a damn name. I digress. But any chance to loot something from under that slimebag's nose was a win in my book. I knew he wasn't gonna make it easy, though.

Welp. That's what our positioning was for. The side facing us was the main starboard face, and like the rest of the ship, it was peppered in small holes and gashes. Seems like the main damage had happened from the other side, and a few cables and scaffolds on the starboard just barely kept the two rear cargo compartments clinging to the front.

"Alright Rosie, time to creep it in slow. Be quiet, now, don't want them picking up a plasma surge"

[ :| ]

Ha. That was her "my lips are sealed" face. She's having fun with this already.

I cut the booster, coasting closer and closer to the bust open vessel. I eased the reverse thrusters ever so slightly, my fingers gently stroking the dual brake levers, lightly teasing at them to wait until we were as close as I thought we could be without attracted attention.......... before slamming both sides back towards me. For just one, crucial moment.

The goal here was to approximately match the speed and trajectory of a floating piece of titanium plating. Rosie's frontal blades were essentially that, anyways, so all they would see is a somewhat more angular piece of rubble. Hopefully they hadn't seen that same piece of rubble screaming out of travel speed, but I was cautious enough with my distances that I didn't think that was a problem. And they hadn't seen me yet. Once we were close enough to the freighter itself, we were blocked from their raw sightline, and Rosie was running quiet enough to not tip off any of their energy sensors.

But there was still no guarantee. Rosie, however, had no shortage of tricks. Something that she and I had developed together was a nice little bit of snooping. Well cared for and well trained, a Biologic brain had the problem solving of a human, and the computational power of a machine. But them together, and you've got a perfect decoder. And I happened to know that Augustus used an encrypted local frequency to keep his

"Alright Rosie, thinkin you can eavesdrop a little?"

Affirmative.

[...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[..!]

:D

My comms crackled to life. "...7 heavy cannons in center-front portside bay, 3 replacement fighter hatchs...."

The comms crackled back and forth, with each pilot giving updates to what they were finding in their own little segment that they were slicing apart. Occasionally, I saw Augustus or the fighters flick between the slicing ships, overseeing their progress on the port bays. Good. Let them focus on the other side for now. Slowly, the fleet was overshadowed by the freighter. We made it. I released my breath- shit, didn't realize I was holding it- and took a better look at what we were dealing with. It looked as if the scattered debris field had mostly been the remnants of the hull, as well as light weapons for small craft and even infantry. They would fetch some small change, sure, but Rosie's cargo capacity was small. Packing efficiency was the name of the game. I saw the gash that it had all been flooding out of on this side- the entire freighter was covered in them- and peered inside. And ho boy, did my heart flutter.

Heavy cannons.

Jump-graded travel boosters.

Raw, precious metals.

And, hidden in the back corner, seemingly bolted into the wall.... a brain.

We'd hit jackpot, and potentially rescued a poor ship from abandonment, or worse.

"Alright Rosie. Time to get to work."

Affirmative.

And here was another lil something that made Rosie special- her manipulation arms . She always preferred that delicate touch, and wanted to interact with the world in a tactile, real way. So we worked on it. Together. I was tired of taking spacewalks to grab small pieces of scrap, or using the entire goddamn cargo bay on a piece that only had a tiny core, or scraps of precious metals inside. So we needed something that could pluck apart our finds. Do some light disassembly in the field, extract what was valuable, and load it in with the most packing efficiency possible. So I gave her arms- snake like appendages, coiled up in her cargo bay, with thousands of points of articulation. At first, I tried to make some kind of control system that I could use from the cockpit. But Rosie had a different idea. At her urged, I jacked them directly into the same sensory and motor systems that let her grip onto, position, and repair her hull. And by god, it worked.

When I showed her off the first time, no one had ever seen anything like it. Because there was nothing like it. A ship taking real mechanical control, over something so precise and delicate, was something that only a deeply intelligent, deeply skilled ship, with complex decision making and tactile movement could do.

And I was goddamn proud of her.

Every time she deployed them, I watched awe. Rosie gave a face of determination, and sinuous, metallic, tentacle-like appendages slid out in a bundle from the cargo bay opening on her underside. Each one was headed off by a different attachment- a precision laser cutter, a simple three-pointed grabbing claw, a drill, a tiny buzzsaw, camera that let me see what was going on, and more. Each one could be swapped out, depending on the task at hand. With eight of them slithering out from her cargo bay, though, there was usually something for everything. They extended out as a single bouquet, down through the hole of the cargo compartment, and split apart once inside. Each arm got to work.

Her observation monitor flickered on, giving me a view from the camera arm. I would've liked to get the brain out first, but two heavy cannons and a booster blocking the way anyways. We'd cut through that, picking off the energy cores and precious metals in the circuits as we go, and work our way towards the back. Rosie seemed to like the plan as well. My only job was to watch the comms, and watch the sensors.

I watched the camera as the petite tools of the arms excised and picked apart the titanium shell of the first heavy cannon. Her tools- the delicate 'fingers' of her arms- picked, pulled, tugged, and gently gripped every necessary notch, every joined titanium plate that needed to be undone, ever scrap of precious material. Firm, yet precise. Strong, yet never breaking or mishandling a single piece of cargo. As Rosie worked, my eyes darted across the energy sensors. I could see blips firing off as the ships on the other side of the freighter as the slicing ships worked and flitted between their stations from the other side. The comms crackled with their reports to Augustus- they seemed to be moving back and forth to the main carrier to drop off their hauls. It seemed like they had a lot to go through- we'd have plenty of time.

On the camera view, I could see a grabbing claw retracting back through the cargo bay. The first cannon had the back section cleanly excised from the massive barrel and chassis, leaving a path for the tools to get to the booster. The precious energy cell was sliding its way back into Rosie's cargo bay. God damn. She was quick with that. The laser cutter and saw were already making short work of the booster, too. We'd get to the brain in no time.

The chatter on the other line continued. We were still safe, but Augustus' crew had made more progress than I had hoped. Once the slicers had picked apart the port, they'd loop around to the starboard. We had to grab what we could as fast as we can- but I knew neither me or Rosie was gonna leave without that brain. Rosie gracefully sliced the fuel cell and ignition from the plasma burner, leaving the bracketing and vents behind. The second heavy cannon was soon to follow. Each cut through each piece had left a winding path towards the back of the chamber, allowing a physical path to what I had seen just barely poking through: a container for a genuine ship's brain. Rosie slid her camera arm in for a closer look.

The brain was bolted into the chassis of the ship, as well as some containers of growth factor. Seemed like the intent was to grow her in to this freighter. That was certainly an ambitious task, but if they knew what they were doing, it would be well worth it. A self-repairing, intelligent hauler as large as this one would be the heart and soul of resistance movements everywhere, supplying every backwater mining station or moon that longed to be free. Unfortunately, the brave and principled can still be stupid, and these chucklefucks had no idea what they were doing. Slapped in a random cargo bay, desperately trying to get growth out from there with no proper imprinting guidance... shame. If they'd've found me before running into the Navy, I might've helped them out. But at least now, we could give her a better life. I knew a lot of good, caring pilots that would take loving care of a fine ship like her.

From what I could tell, we were still safe from Augustus. Based on what I was hearing on the comms, each slicer was working on its last cargo hold subsection, and after that, they'd be poking around this side. We had to get this brain and get out.

Tenderly, her claw arm gripped the top of the brain's chamber, as her other fingers started working on the rivets. A saw would bust through part of the titanium bracket holding the chamber down, and when it got too close to the container itself, laser cutters took over, delicately slicing off each affixation point one by one. Rosie worked in a clockwise direction, first working down the three riveting points on the right, sawing off the bottom bracket, and then working up the rivets on the left.

C'mon Rosie. You got this. Just need the top plate....

"Finishing up there, slicer 5T?"

Shit. That was Augustus on the comms.

"Sure thing boss. Just gotta get this load to central. Mind if someone takes a peek on the other side for parasites before I get there?"

Shit.

"Sure thing. Fighter 3A, get your ass in gear and make a full pass of the ship."

An energy spike pinged on my sensor panels as the fighter revved up a booster.

"Gotcha boss. Starting at aft segment."

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit

We still had a sliver of time before we were seen. They'd wanna get a good pass everywhere- there were ships far stealthier than us out there. But it was minutes at most. We had to finish up.

"Rosie, how're we doing there? You done?"

Negative.

[ ;( ]

"Fuck. Rosie, we gotta get outta here."

Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative.

Rosie-speak for "I know, I know, I know"

My eyes were fixed to the scanner and my cockpit windows for a visual, but I spared one moment to check Rosie's cam. She was finishing sawing through the top bracket. Just a little more....

"Aft clear, moving to starboard cargo bays."

The brain snapped off of the hull, and Rosie's claws were zipping it back to her cargo bay. I revved the engines into standby. The arms tenderly guided it through the path we had cleared, and out through the hole in the hull. We might be able to barely slip away without them knowing.....

I looked up through the cockpit, just as the dinged-up, formerly Navy fighter showed itself from behind a piece of debris. It froze for a moment, and then lined its nose to face me. Cannon ports shifted open, and slowly took aim.

"Well shit, Augustus, you're gonna wanna see this. Get your ass over here, I'm switching to public comms."

I heard slight fuzz as he switched his channel.

"Alright, leech, I'll keep this simple. You have thirty seconds to relinquish your haul before you join the debris."

For a single, cold moment, I swear I made eye contact with him through our cockpits.

[erisgivesmeflowers]

the thing my brain likes about cars is very similar to the thing i like about mechs except we of course tend to view them as mundane parts of our lives, this gives them a more humble and earthy appeal to me rather than the typical flashy and badass mecha reputations. I love grimy shitboxes. my ex girl used to have to shove a screwdriver into her gear shift if she wanted to start the car and it made me so crazy for her.

there is something romantic about heavy machinery, the eroticism of all of the little mechanical functions singing and dancing together for a shared purpose, acting as a tool for a skilled pilot. the way that the human interfacing with the tool can start to sense it as an extension of their body, the intimacy of that relationship and emotional connection, and how it relates to the concept of using a machine to fight, work, or race.

something cars have specifically that really makes my neurons implode is that they are forbidden from touching each other. perfect recipe for doomed yuri. sure, this usually results in a dramatic crash, but what if i just scraped up your paint a little? on purpose?

[softness-and-shattering]

Well tumblr refreshed and I cant find the link again yay me.

Someone shared the Isabel Fall Attack Helicopter story. I dont think I was on twitter when it was published and people drive her off the platform, I only vaguely know the details. Id never read the story before today, to the best of my knowledge.

Y'all its brilliant.

Of course it made people uncomfortable, it tries to, that a function of good art. Its also a Do Not Build The Torment Nexus story. Its really incisive and the prose is so specific in shaping the mood and meaning. Its terrifying. The inciting incident of the short story is blowing up a school which the chatacter doesnt regret, but does reflect on.

Its extremely gender + sex fucky, theres some transhumanist/cyborg/eroticism of the machine going on, theres US imperialism, climate change, AI, war, everything including gender in service of the war (thats the torment nexus part).

It is so full of uncomfortable topics and its weird, and its weird all over its not trying to be palatable and marketable its got something to say and its damn well gonna say it well. (Clarification by it I mean the story. Not the writer.)

I dont know if this was the origin of, or in reaction to, the asshole "well I identify as an attack helicopter" line, but its way more than a bit of reactionary writing. The writer has thought deeply about gender and then asked "ok what if I put it in a totally different context" and it rings so true.

This should be taught as a piece about gender, and also as just a really excellent piece of writing. Im sorry you were bullied off the internet Ms Fall, no one deserves that and you certainly didnt.

I intend to look more into what happened and see if she's written anything since.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

top ten first watches of 2023?

I assume you mean films, right? Anyway, top 10 in no particular order.

Crash was a long time coming, but it took a podcast I used to listen to weekly to finally get to this Cronenberg classic. Bodily modifications? Violent eroticism? Body as a machine? Death & eroticism? It has it all and much more.

For those of you in your 20s and 30s (or even older) who feel alienated in the urban landscape, surrounded by crowds whilst feeling lonely and yearning for any type of human connection, this film is for you.

It's no secret that Brian de Palma wanted to be Hitchcock since he was a baby (I assume, but it sure does look so). You can see it in so many movies of his and Body Double is a perfect example. It even has the misogyny down to a T. But it's also really good and I'm a fan of voyeurism in cinema (from a critical position mostly). This is like Rear Window and Vertigo mashed together, but with 80s hair.

Now this was probably the highlight for me this year. Editor by day, sex worker by night, Kathleen Turner is a force in this film, alongside Anthony Perkins, the perverted priest. But if that is not enough to do the trick, the cinematography and that anal sex scene might do the trick 😉

Who knew Joan Crawford had such a big issue with wire hangers? Not me, but I sure found out in that crazy scene that has one of the most memorable meltdowns in cinema. Every shot of Faye Dunaway screams "I want that Oscar, god damn it!"

Fedora is the late 70s version of Sunset Boulevard and it has the same director. Not as good as that classic, but my god, the clothes! I'd watch it again just for the clothes, particularly that white suit Fedora is wearing in the garden of her villa when she receives that honorary Oscar.

I don't think there's any Paul Schrader film that I didn't like. It wouldn't make sense to call him underrated, but he's better than others from that 1970s gang (cough *de Palma* cough). In Hardcore, a father finds out his daughter went to Los Angeles and started acting in porn. He gets the confirmation when he actually sees her in one film in some shady movie theater. It's a weird and very uncomfortable scene and by comparison, not much, knowing how it will unfold later.

Of course Madonna is always in control of her image and what she allows to be seen or how she comes across. But that doesn't mean there's nothing genuine there, on the contrary. And the camera captures that. The backstage, the everyday conversations, the relationship with the dancers. Real people with real emotions and the more darker parts are allowed to slip in through the cracks. On top of that, it has footage from her tour in 90-91, a reminder of how Madonna is one of the best performers out there, making me wish there'd be a time machine so I can see her live during that time.

For anyone who is a fan of Sex and The City, how about a late 1930s version? Fast pace dialogue, outfits to die for and a cast made almost entirely of women.

The second Cronenberg on the 2023 list. I watched M. Butterfly after seeing Madame Butterfly at the opera. The film is slightly different and it deals with some of my favorite themes in fiction and media lately: gender identities, criticism of colonialism, orientalist fantasies that obscure realities and so much more.

[floatingcatacombs]

Patlabor is On Lock

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 3

While Gundam is the most recognizable mecha anime I got into this year, most of my time was really spent working my way through the Patlabor franchise, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites. I’ve always loved the quiet moments in mecha shows, which makes sense considering I started with Macross and live for the bridge bunny gossip and off-duty downtown hangouts. Patlabor is built with this downtime at its core, operating with more of a slice of life mentality than anything else.

A lovable cast is crucial for making this work. Thankfully, Noa Izumi is a wonderful and unique protagonist, a scrappy soft butch who’s in it for the eroticism of the machine. The first Patlabor opening is a love letter from Noa to her mecha, and I get it! The AV-98 Ingram is an iconic design, with its asymmetric bunny ear antennae and shoulder lights and comically oversized revolver that requires the right hand to pop out in order to draw, exposing the arm wiring in the process. This is a show clearly written by first-generation mecha otaku, and plenty of time is dedicated to showing how the Labors have to be transported and recharged, how the movement software depends on reinforcement learning, showing off corporate model revisions, and of course repairs in the hangar.

Going back to the human characters, Noa’s work partner Asuma is clearly the more passive one within their dynamic, and it’s sweet to see that played out sincerely. And then there’s Kanuka Clancy, the stern weirdo badass from New York who’s constantly swearing and dropping one-liners in English. She’s the obvious breakthrough character of the show, and also the perfect opposites-attract pairing for Noa if you’re the kind of person whose yuri meter went off the charts during their drinking contest episode. Most of Patlabor’s cast seem fairly one-note at first, and one of the great tricks of the show is giving them just a little bit more depth than you would expect. Pretty much everyone, even the most jokey characters, eventually get a standalone episode or two that further sketches them out and offers real interiority. Captain Goto is another fan-favorite, and it’s definitely his mixture of laziness and wicked perceptiveness that does it, plus his main character billing in the movies.

SV2 may be a law enforcement unit, but this really isn’t a police procedural at the end of the day. These guys are the bum department out in the sticks who everyone hates, and the upside of that is that SV2 gets stuck with the oddest of jobs instead of cop work. Sometimes that’s dealing with a runaway military prototype, other times it’s arguing with the insurance company. The best kind of episodes are the ones that take almost entirely on base as everyone tries to solve a problem of their own making, like an Ingram falling into the sea or the mechanics getting into a fight with the only restaurant that delivers to them.

A main plot does eventually emerge, with a shadowy company developing a mysterious jet-black Labor piloted by a child who is the girlish boy to Noa Izumi’s boyish girl. The Griffon is sleek and curvy and has superiority in the water and air – it’s a machine designed to defeat Ingrams, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Yoji Shinkawa looked here when designing Metal Gear RAY. Automation is a fundamental ideological enemy of mecha – faceless mass production and artificial intelligence mean an end to the era of personal combat. Even Patlabor, a warless series, dips its toes into this idea in the later episodes, with Noa and the mechanics alike worrying that the neural networks in their new Labor models will make them redundant.

Overall, this show is hilarious and sweet and clearly loved by an older generation of otaku. So why didn’t I hear about it earlier? Partly it’s on me for not hanging out with the right mecha fans online for a while. But if I had to guess, it’s also because Patlabor is one of those works that’s straightforwardly, unobjectionably good in a way where it already says everything there is to be said about it. You can have near-infinite arguments about Zeon ideology or mobile suit powerscaling online, but there’s only so many times you can say “yeah, Noa Izumi, love that girl” precisely because everyone agrees. It can also be hard to pitch things by their vibes in a genre known for adrenaline and intrigue. Patlabor’s vibes, for the record, are immaculate.

I'm probably gonna be chasing the high of cel-era sunsets forever

Mecha’s also a bit looked down upon from the outside. Anything that makes it into the larger conversation has to be understood as “elevated” or a “genre deconstruction”, even if the very first Mobile Suit Gundam is already about Amuro’s trauma and PTSD from being made into a child soldier. This elevation is actually happening to the second Patlabor movie as we speak - it’s becoming increasingly discussed as a major component of Mamoru Oshii’s filmography, divorced from its source series and instead compared to his subsequent Ghost in the Shell movie. Funnily enough, Oshii’s contributions to the Patlabor TV show are actually the more lighthearted gag episodes.

A lot of recent Patlabor retrospectives have drawn attention to the artist’s collective Headgear, established and owned by the series creators so they would be able to retain the rights for the franchise. This structure is fairly unique for the anime industry and probably only makes sense for established creatives, but it does seem to have worked out great for them, providing financial stability and strong creative control over the franchise. This allowed Patlabor to thrive in the relative wasteland of late 80s TV anime, a time when even Gundam had fled to the OVA market.

That being said, it does take Patlabor switching back to OVAs to truly spread its wings. The New Files are a conclusion and continuation of the TV series that are willing to move at their own pace, resulting in some dramatic and surprisingly thoughtful stories. It’s genuinely touching to watch Goto and Nagumo try and fail to communicate their feelings for one another in a very restrained episode as thick with long-stewing emotions as it is empty space. Of course, the very next episode has half the cast get stuck in the sewer labyrinth underneath their base and there’s a bunch of Wizardry references. Oh, Oshii.

The Patlabor movies fully lean into this melancholy and uncertainty, and it’s a welcome evolution for the series. The first movie still ends with an all-out action set piece in a half-built mecha factory that stands in for the Tower of Babel, but the second one stays serious the whole time through, going as far as pivoting to a more realistic artsyle. It’s a challenging film. The politics are all-encompassing but fairly straightforward, as Oshii effectively infodumps a presentation on the postwar history of the JSDF throughout. Instead, what the makes the movie so difficult is its willingness to face the end of an era – the Cold War is over, the bubble economy has popped, and the former members of SV2 have all gone their separate ways. The conditions that have created Patlabor, both internal and external to the show, have dissipated. And the movie makes it clear by having the military stage a raid on SV2’s headquarters, tearing their Labors to shreds with gunfire in a beautifully animated act of desecration.

After watching her be a lovable mecha dweeb for 50 episodes, it hurts a bit to hear Noa Izumi say that she doesn’t want to be that girl obsessed with robots for the rest of her life! These characters are growing in such a way that will remove them from the focus of the narrative, and it’s a movie about letting go just as much as it is about looking towards an uncertain personal and national future. I love Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso, but the fact that Oshii put this out just one year later paints a delicious contrast between the two directors with regards to escapism versus reality with regards to militarism. There's some great interviews from the era where they're just taking potshots at each other about all this.

[guiltiest-gear]

And then bonus guy, Interfacing:

I wanted something very machine-like in appearance, but also kinda mirroring the look of Endurance, something something the divinity of flesh versus the divinity of the machine. The pale blueish-purple is the same colour as the veins of Endurance (literally, I colour-picked from the Endurance image) while the cables coming out the top are roughly the same colour as the hearts of Endurance (thus invoking a vein-like imagery as well, and that's before even looking at the twisting cables you can see in the machine), and the static being kinda red-tinged as well

Now that's very interesting what Interfacing is interpreted as...

Now of course the easiest thing to say is something something eroticism of the machine, but in all seriousness, I really do enjoy the design and the art as a whole

It's always good shit to have art in my inbox

[atthebell]

QRE YOU WATCHING COVENANT sorry i just watched it a week ago and it's genuinely the funniest movie ive ever seen. and of course like everything im thinking who's who qsmp-wise but. anyway just saw ur post about davidcest and i forgot it happened it took me totally off guard

okay you know what's funny is my comment about david on walter action wasn't even about the kiss i hadn't gotten there yet it was just about them talking in the most insane homoerotic way possible and i was like okay this is a wild direction to go

i honestly cannot fathom trying to map qsmp characters onto this i don't think it works at all but power to you on that my only input is that whatever is cucurucho is dead dead very dead by the end

it is a really funny movie i think michael fassbender is kind of insane and the entire movie is wild bc like i said it's way more space disaster than sci-fi horror and feels very out of left field in terms of themes (the whole creation thing, the questions of faith vs. science vs. faith in science etc. etc.) but i also think the same was the case with prometheus-- scott was going for something very different with these, which he talked about a lot, making them more centered on the issue of the androids and their place in humanity in this universe and the philosophical implications of them and with the act of creating life generally. and in fairness that latter thing is literally a huge part of the entire series that's why every movie is obsessed with the alien reproductive cycle and how it mirrors the human one, the ship is called mother (or father, in resurrection, but i wont get into all my issues with that movie here), there are like. crazy amounts of pregnant people even aside from xenomorph embryos, the whole design of the aliens coming from h. r. giger, whose whole thing was the eroticism of bodies and machines and combinations of the two. like it makes sense to do a spin-off/prequel series where you talk about the nature of life and tampering with life and where androids lie within that but it is a crazy set of movies and tonally very different to the original especially, even with the stuff with ash.

i know scott didn't direct romulus and that it involves the xenomorphs way more again so i'm interested to see how it ties in with the rest of the series i'm hoping to see it this week and will report back posthaste

[zomcomfaggot]

finally made an nsft sideblog so I can be unabashedly horny

I'm zomb!!! haiii!!! I'm puppyyy n i eat ppl arfarfarf

that's not my real name but probably a good idea to keep my actual identity away from this meow

they/it but whatever:3c

sexuality is whatever, if u stumbled upon this I'm probably attracted to u

send me horny asks, objectify me, send me unsolicited nudes/lewds

maybe I'll post selfies one day:3 if I do the tag is #zompics

sub+switch!!! I'll do anything 2 please u

if i don't like u, u'll be blocked w/o warning

I'm traumatized n I act like it!! don't expect me to be moral by usual standards, average problematic trannyfaggot

I'm not gonna list everythin Wrong With Me but I'll post abt it so do with it what u will meow

DMs r always open!!! send me unsolicited dickpics n tell me u r deepest darkest desires

I'm not gonna block u if u don't have ur age in ur bio. I respect the privacy. but minors dni n if I find one following me ur blocked without question

fetishes/content warnings

most of the usual tumblr tranny content, that means feet, piss, pits, sweat, musk, tummy, body hair, that kind of thing.

I can sexualize anything about anyone. I loooove fat ppl n skinny ppl alike n I looove biting n hitting n stabbing n cutting n blood n bondage n bdsm n so on, I can n will fetishize autism

I lovelovelove the eroticism of the machine 1 time I got so horny I had to take a break while building a pc bc I got so horny i couldn't think

I looove gore n necro n cannibalism n rape n incest n just a little bit of beast [all in fiction n roleplay of course hehe whatever will get ppl not 2 yell at me:3] n i will not judge u no matter how hard or weird ur fetish iz, I love u freaks!!!

no I don't think paraphiles r part of the lgbtq+ community I'm jus a freak who wants 2 be killed fucked n eaten - I also don't think paraphiles r morally incorrect either

turn-offs

misgendering as fetish, scat, farts, and diapers is literally it I think, idk I'll update later if something comes to mind

[thornshadowwolf]

(same oc ask anon) i looked at your tag for your retrostatic thing and you have some sus things tagged if i may say ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) so are they like, robots? or just one of them?

Ahahaha yeah. Some... uh, er, interesting things tagged. Don't really know what to say about that like you saw the posts. (For those who haven't: it's "eroticism of the machine" and cybersex kinda stuff).

They're not robots exactly (at least none yet) but the majority of the characters are from a kind of... technology dimension? So there are two (relevant) dimensions in the story, one of which is actually the Retrostatic and the other of which is unnamed but is a more normal realistic earth-like dimension (tho there are still differences). Most of the characters so far are from the Retrostatic because that's where most of the story takes place. And in that dimension everyone is in some way related to technology (usually they just. Are. some piece if technology. But not always; at times it's more complex than that). 1-800-CASH-NOW is a TV/radio demon I guess (I usually follow that up with a bunch if question marks cuz it's not super well defined), The Operator is a telephone, BaitHook_Fix.txt.bin is a piece of malware... loverboy is from the normal dimension so he's just an anthro wolf (the other dimension is populated by anthropomorphic cartoon animals). A lot of characters don't have names yet (especially if they're gonna be side or background characters) but there's also a gun, a car, a two dimensional insect, a... thing that has old gramophone music play around it... a worm with a zipper... two... flamingo jackalope unicorn snakes... it's a very loose and undefined dimension. Like that's what it's supposed to be not just "I haven't figured it out yet" (tho there is some of that too). But that does make it hard for me to build characters for it since there aren't any guidelines for me to fall back on. I just kinda have to try stuff until something works. Both in terms of design and lore.

Not directly related to what you asked, but the main characters are 1-800- and loverboy. 1-800- is a celebrity gameshow / radio show host who is the cause of the whole timeline alternate universe mess (not on purpose, it just has that effect on the world) and different versions of it keep slipping into each other's places. It's got this red-string-of-fate thing going on with loverboy (I usually call them "fate-tied") who is literally just some rando that basically gets isekai-ed into the Retrostatic. Due to that 1-800-CASH-NOW has unknowingly been searching for him since forever (time works differently between dimensions). Like 1-800- has this feeling deep within its core that doesn't understand, and it keeps being compelled to do things like pull people into its dimension. It doesn't know why or how it just does these things. And then eventually it finds loverboy and is like "oh I see now this is The Guy" because it was fate the pull of fate trying to get them together. But that exacerbates the whole "space-time dimensional instability" thing. And shit happens. Because the different versions of 1-800- have wildly different goals and ways they are tied to loverboy. Like for some it's romantic, for some it's trying to kill him, for some it's got an unhealthy obsession with him, etc. etc. and many are a mix too. And of course loverboy is thoroughly freaked out. Especially since until now the whole multidimensional spacetime alternate universe thing hasn't affected him. But now he Feels It. So they've got this very weird and fucked up relationship that is full of distrust and confusion (both around each other and themselves).

Anyway that was supposed to be succinct it's just hard to explain. There's actually so much more but this is already long as hell. Thanks for sticking around if you read all this.

[abronzeagegod]

Meet Lyta

Lyta is a coworker of Aeth, they've been working at Tech Support for about two years less than Aeth. She's passionate, a bit loud, and can be a lot, but she's also loyal as hell and deeply into Aeth. (Aeth doesn't know because Aeth is dumb) She's been Aeth's best friend for a number of years at this point, and she's ok with how things are for now. Her flirting style is extremely unsubtle.

Still she's very smart and is a very capable tech support technician. If you need someone to solve a problem with only a soldering iron and a 1/4 a roll of duct tape, call Lyta.

Luck: half way decent

Likes

truly trashy TV: And the Fifth Rose was Black and Real Monsters of the Sea are her top favorites but she will watch some dramas if the mood calls for it (Law Machines is a good one too)

playing Future Myths with Aeth, and making truly insane builds (twenty levels of technomancer, seventeen levels of war engineer, and three levels of moon paladin which any "serious" player would say is extremely dumb and nonoptimal but Lyta makes it work, has fun with it, and constantly does things to upset the "standard meta")

going out into the field and solving problems with whatever she's got on hand

meeting weird people over the course of the job

talking about meeting weird people over the course of the job with Aeth

Aeth

Aeth

She is neutral on:

mimosas, Lyta likes herself a brunch (especially with Aeth) but doesn't get the love of mimosas at brunch

the second season finale of The Third Sun Rises which wasn't good, but she doesn't hate nearly as much as Aeth, and she has learned to not bring it up any more

her apartment, it's fine, better than her last one, but she's just not attached to it, it's not really home, but it'll do

supremely popular modernist artist Orgil, Lyta does get it, she understands the art and the intent behind it, she just doesn't think it's the greatest thing in the world

the board game Encroachment (think Settlers of Catan) which is fun under the right circumstances but the people who are too into it or care way too much they suck the fun out of it, she wants to play it and just have fun and not get too into it or debate strategy

She hates:

her coworker Teddy, he knows what he did

the dark fantasy movie series Highland Court and all the subsequent spin-off, they just didn't really gel with Lyta and that was fine, and then they became the most popular thing in the world and she's very annoyed that it's all people seem to talk about and she's tired of trying to explain that she just thinks all the characters are poorly written and only passably acted so she's start to say that the reason she hates it is because there isn't enough homo-eroticism or socialism.

Millionaire's Row in the Clutches, fuck them millionaires and fuck their terrible houses, modernist architecture is a crime and this minimalist bullshit should be legally allowed to be set on fire

Gin

bugs, she knows that it's not cool to say that when there are various insectoid beings around but the amount of legs and hair they have is deeply unnerving to her

the fact that Aeth seems to be oblivious to the fact that Lyta wants to make out with them so hard

[catboybiologist]

Alright I can't finish this all in one sitting, but here's at least a bit of.... something? A word vomit? A prelude to smut about the eroticism of the machine? For all you robot, mecha, and spaceship fuckers out there. @k1nky-r0b0t-g1rl that means you

Pappy always said that manufacturing biological transportation was nothing knew. I mean, shit, humanity's been breeding horses for how long? To him, not much was novel about what was going on in the shipyards way out by Neptune when I was a kid.

But Pappy didn't know a lot of things. And he certainly didn't meet Roseanna.

The Federation Navy had experimented with biologics for decades. The idea was to create self regenerating ships- something to interface with the hull, move the new titanium plates and particulates into place, have a living, growing mass interfacing with the steel so that the ship didn't have to head all the way back to the yards to patch up after every dogfight.

The first generation... worked. With a full time crew, that is. Full time people on deck jabbin the rigid, chitonous interface with the hull full of growth hormones to get them to set just right. Full time onboard bioengineers to compute what signaling cocktail ya need to hit 'em with to get it to grow back right. Skilled onboard technicians to shave back the chitin when it tried to overgrow the titanium, and slap some new cells in to seed the process in heavily damaged areas. Less input material, less time in the yards, but far more manpower. Great for a Federation cruiser on deep space peacekeeping missions. Far too complex for small craft. Right?

Until some bastard put brains in 'em.

Well. A lotta suits would say that they weren't brains. They were a diffuse network of sensory neurons and ganglia, living inside the body of the ship, integrating signals from a skin of alloyed metal and fibrous protein, calculating power draw too and from various components, and integrating with the mechanical and electrical components of the ship to precisely manage the "wound healing" process of the vessel. And of course, it just so happened that one of those ganglia was larger and more complex than the rest of them, and it just so happened that the computer interfaces with this ganglia exhibit complex, thinking behaviors on the level of human cognition, and it just so happens that most pilots and navigators reported them developing their own personalities.....

But of course, the Navy didn't want anyone to have some kind of pesky empathy in the way of their operations. And they certainly didn't want anyone side eyeing the rate at which they disposed of the damn things, and let them suffer and rot after disposal. So as far as the official record was concerned, they didn't have brains.

Like most people in the belt, I found Rosie on a... unsponsored field trip to the Neptune scrap yards. She wasn't a ship then. She wasn't much of anything. Not much more than a vat with the central ganglia and just barely enough of the stem cells needed to regrow a network. But I took her all the same. Brains were valuable. Few pilots outside the Navy had them back then. Nowadays, a black market for "brain seeds", a cocktail of neuronal stem cells and enough structural stem cells to grow your own into the chassis of your ship. They were pumpin' em out, and leaving them to die. It was cruel. They may be vehicles, but they're a livin' being too.

But I digress. I'd never do that to Roseanna. I make sure she gets proper care. And for a good, proper, working ship? That includes some good, proper work.

The asteroid we were docked in was one of my usuals- good bars, nice temp quarters, nice views of the rock's orbiting twin, and a spacious hanger for Rosie to rest in. The chasiss I had imprinted Roseanna to was a 40-meter light skipper, with some adjustments for handling deep space trips. It was pretty much the smallest thing you could actually use to live and work for long periods of time, but it got the job done. The angular design made the entire ship look like a wedge, or the blade of a bulky dagger. It didn't hurt that each bottom edge was fortified with a sharpened titanium blade, turning the entire sides of the ship into axe-like rams.

Those would probably come in handy today.

I approached Roseanna on the catwalk above her, marveling her alloyed scales. I could almost see her shudder in anticipation as my footsteps vibrated through the air above her. I took the steps down, and hit the trigger to open her top hatch.

When the news got out of the Navy scuffling with a rebelling mining station, an electric air raced across the station. Some went about their day as normal. Some resigned themselves to picking at the leftovers after the dust had settled. And some, like me, knew that they could get the finest pickings.

I strapped in to the pilot's seat like it was an old boot.

"Welcome, Captain Victoria."

Rosie could talk, but more often than not, she chose not to. But she understood me just fine. Most of our communication took place using her three prerecorded lines- her welcome statement, affirmative, and negative- as well as the tiny screen showing a small, emoticon face. Many pilots chose to give their ships an elaborate render, but Rosie preferred it this way. It was the first face I gave her, from somewhere out of the scrap heaps, and she refused any offer I made to upgrade. Secretly, I was overjoyed. To me, that was her face. That was her voice. And it was beautiful to see her true self through them.

I brushed my hands across her paneling. Across the switches, the hydraulic controls for the plasma fuel, the steering, the boosts, the comms channels. The thing with biologics was that you were still the pilot. For whatever reason, they hadn't quite gotten to the point where the brains could take over their own piloting. My personal opinion was just that their personalities lacked the ambition to. But whatever reason that was, the best pilots were still the ones that knew both their ship, and the ship's brain. And me and Rosie? We knew each other well.

As my fingers touched the brushed aluminum controls, rimmed with chitinous layers rooting them into the ship, I could feel the walls around me holding their invisible breath. "Do you know what we're doing today, Rosie?"

Her tiny panel flickered on. ...?

"We got a scrap run."

^_^

:)

^_^

Her panel flicked between various expressions of excitement. My finger quivered on the main power, holding for a moment before flicking it on. The primary electronics of the ship hummed to life, and what Rosie controlled pulsed with it. My hands moved across the main functional panels- main hydraulic plasma valve, exhaust ports open, and finally, flicking the switch the start the plasma burner.

My hands gripped the steering. The hanger's airlock doors opened in front of me. My neck length hair started to float as the station's gravity shut off. I hit the switch to unlatch from the supports above. For a moment, we hang there. The dull crackle of the idling plasma burner is the only sound that resonates through Rosie's hull.

Go time.

I punch the boost.

[terrence-silver]

Why do I see terry being the type to say “I remember back then when you had to send a photograph and a letter to communicate ” and beloved is just like damn 💀 you really are that old ( in a joking and loving way of course! 🫶)

And I think he still misses it.

Loathes casual texting or even any texting at all if he can help it. Thinks it is usually a juvenile, slightly degrading waste of time --- to be so available to everyone at all hours is actually humiliating and the stripping of control it comes with is outrageous and he tends to ignore it as a concept because of it. He'd rather show up personally at your door the good old fashioned way at his own leisure than ever respond to a text or even twenty. Heck. He'd rather jet and be chauffeured to someone's door, half a world away, if need be than text.

Like, in spite of that, an older Terry has embraced and mastered every nuance of modern technology under the sun and even went overboard into full on advanced high-tech surveillance with it, straight towards territory that goes into stalking, spying, eavesdropping, recording, smart houses capable of trapping you if need be, recording, hacking, location tracking, web history fine combing, social media posturing, tampering with data of any kind in any way and online voyeurism, yes, because it is useful, it is powerful and it is practical, and he'd be stupid not to take advantage of a tool when it is right there, at his disposal. Or rather, in his case, abuse a tool when it is right there at his disposal. It is delightful and he'd never denote or overlook the importance of such things even though it is seriously not something his generation grew up with whatsoever. Quite the contrary. He grew up on...Technicolor, for all we know. Maybe even some amount of black and white things. In fact, Terry could full-on enact his darker propensities from the comfort of his own home and own laptop desk the minute the Internet age became a thing and he'd do it with relish.

But, frankly, I think a nostalgia does exist for him.

Things that are uncontrollably obsolete and out of date haunt him, especially if they were things that were the peak of being 'it' when he was younger and 'at his prime' the way he would see it.

He enjoys landline phones more than he'd ever admit. Heck, even those big bulky 80's Motorola phones every Yuppie under the sun had to have back in the days. He's fond of them. Pagers and fax machines? God, the memories. Receiving a letter? Actually writing one himself with perfect calligraphy? The inherent eroticism and anticipation of that. Having physical photographs of people and things. Stuff you can touch. Feel under your fingers. Inhale. Hey, even rip apart in your anger and then mourn the loss of it. Old cars, old movies, old music, old wine, old items. It is...something. The fact that his whereabouts weren't so easily traced or archived decades ago and that you needed to buy a newspaper to discover Mr. Silver is going on trial for something, and even then, with a little bit of bribery, the court of public opinion could be far more easily swayed with less space for alternative thought. It was back when knowledge was truly power. Even the act of stalking. Well, Terry enjoyed going on a 'hunt' and needing to observe people personally instead of just looking at their Streetview online or tampering with their webcam. He mises the excitement of it.

And so, I think he indulges in doing things the 'old fashioned way' constantly even though he doesn't have to and things, whatever these things are, can be one click away at times, especially for a person with so much substantial wealth. Still, he thinks a man needs to go out and do stuff for himself to feel or even be alive. To feel the hunger. The drive. It is as necessary as breathing.

But, still, very little actual patience for texting...perhaps with the exception of a good sext, but even then, he prefers the real thing.

He'd literally prefer a letter and a photograph more.

[ghostbrawl]

DUDE leigh. tv prod is such a sick course?! are you enjoying it? :0c

i'm loving it a lot!!! this coming year i'm going to be doing a lot more intensive actual production rather than theory and foundations and i'm incredibly psyched for it because if theres anything about me its that i love to touch a good machine (cameras + switcher boards).... nobody is eroticizing the machine like i am rn i'm innovating in my field