#feraliminal speculation

[feraliminal]

I hope so! As the extra screens seem to behave like heads, showing emoji and such, and hard-to-kill multi-headed characters are a common trope, it seems like an obvious way to get the drama benefits of killing TTV off without having to lose a really awesome character.

In hindsight, TTV is actually perfect for doing something awful to for advancing plot, demonstrating how bad the bad guys are, etc. if that’s the case. I now wonder if Boom’s had evil plans to do just that for a while!

Posting unpolished crap and running away until I get accustomed enough to people being around that I can actually interact with them! If I wait until I’m happy with something, I may never post again, and there’s a new episode coming so I want to do fandom again dammit.

This was vaguely inspired by a prompt I spotted here - if anyone can manage being both alive and (half) dead, it’s Titan TV. I don’t know if I’ll put it on the Serious Fic Site, but maybe tomorrow. Content warnings for slight mechanical body horror, and existential weirdness.

—

COMING YOUR WAY, Titan TV’s emergency relay had began. Then, line by line at the bottom of Titan Camera’s HUD and getting worse by the letter, BIG MUTANT - YOU CLEAN UP - IT’S BEEN FU

The last few characters of the relay were missing, replaced with a short burst of data. Titan Camera didn’t bother opening it, whatever it was, it wouldn’t change their assessment of the situation or their plan of action. The TV titan’s erratic teleportation pattern, avoiding inhabited areas, had already indicated that there was some kind of horrific enemy that wasn’t showing up on the map. ‘Clean up’ was all that needed to be said.

Of course there was a massive bloody crater at the scene, it would have been more concerning if there wasn’t. There was nothing moving in there that was visible through the smoke. Maybe it was over already. ‘Been fucked up’, that’s what the last relay must have been, Titan Camera decided, wondering whether Titan TV would cloak their map presence from the Alliance as well as the toilets. It wouldn’t have been ‘been fun’, because that would have meant all that was left of them could be… a wobbly little subscreen making its unsteady way out of the smoke, one jet firing at a wonky angle.

“Don’t open,” was the first thing that the little screen transmitted. It hovered there expectantly, until Titan Camera figured out what it wanted and put their arm out for it to perch on.

“What do you mean, ‘don’t open’?”

“Data,” it answered. The cameramen’s titan didn’t usually hear close-range comms as audio, perceiving them somewhere between text and intention, but the subscreen’s transmissions definitely had an audio component that resembled something creaky and far away.

“Really? You almost died and you’re worried about a… bum dial?” Doggedly avoiding acknowledging the rapidly increasing bizarreness, Titan Camera seemed dismissive. But that was a prayer for normality, they’d both take the piss out of each other for freaking out, and get on with war again. The disembodied head was communicating, and that presumably meant Titan TV’s body and other three heads were nearby and functional, even if they weren’t showing up on the map.

“About… messy,” the screen said. Hanging on with magnetic claws, it shook like a bird flinging off raindrops, getting rid of a few droplets of oily fluid. The effort seemed out of proportion to the result.

Something was wrong. This must have been what a human felt like holding a baby or a small animal, something alive and moving and conscious, but with a consciousness that might only be partially reachable. Titan Camera wanted to comfort it, not entirely sure now what it was in relation to the TVmen’s titan, and stroked its side gently under the pretence of wiping off some more fluid. The little screen was overheated and agitated, directionless energy fluttering under its shell.

Even after the smoke began clearing, it wasn’t really possible to see what the culprit had looked like. What was left of it was thick cables and partially organic tentacles tied in oily knots, and glistening chunks of carapace stuck out at angles that didn’t make sense for a moving creature. The segmented armour and multiple sets of appendages suggested something like a squashed centipede or annelid worm, and the only indicator of its allegiance was the vaguely bowl-shaped form of some carapace pieces. Likely it had been modular, and at some point, it hadn’t able to keep itself together.

The rest of Titan TV was in the centre of the mass, nearly completely dark except for a pale, pilot light glow of their core. They were so entangled with the monster that it was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended. Without thinking, Titan Camera scanned the wreckage, and immediately flicked back to standard vision, wishing they hadn’t. Teleportation mishap, most likely.

“That’s a mess?” The camera titan tilted their head toward the crater. It felt wrong to be going through the motions of pushing for more info. But it was a good idea to try and communicate, if only to help whatever of Titan TV that was crammed into their subscreen, or strung along a faint connection with their body, maintain continuity of consciousness. It would likely take days until they could reclaim the rest of themself.

A slender, hot cable from the screen’s underside nosed its way inchworm-like up Titan Camera’s arm and into the confused mass of wiring where their body had forcibly integrated skibidi tech. It was searching for something to latch on to.

“Are you sure?” the cameramen’s titan commented. There wasn’t really a sufficient shorthand in the Alliance’s human-inherited language systems to describe the wellbeing risk and social taboo of plugging into toilet equipment. “It’s… unsanitary.”

The little screen managed to transmit a whisper of emotion, indignant desperation. What it was trying to do - communicate? recharge? - must be a more urgent concern than the risks of navigating the connection between Titan Camera and whatever profane piece of toilet engineering they’d shoved up their arm hole.

“Be careful.” Titan Camera couldn’t have guessed what Titan TV’s reduced self was experiencing or how much interoception it was capable of. The cable seemed to be searching with intent, and the slight dimming of the screen could be interpreted as concentration. Its connection attempt felt like a trickle of compressed heat needing space to expand. This wasn’t a request for battery power, but processing power. Not optimised for running alone or maintaining a connection to a body on standby, the poor thing couldn’t cool itself sufficiently.

This was unprecedented, as far as the cameramen’s titan knew, but if it was possible to share sensations and imagery, why not space? Trusting that both of their subconscious systems would just know how to do this, Titan Camera imagined following the heat sensation back to its point of origin and drawing it in.

The little screen shuddered, and Titan Camera stroked its side again, trying to reassure it with, “It’s okay, go slowly.”

“I know what I’m doing,” it shot back, attention swinging back into the conversation as if it had been pulled away from intense concentration. But the transmission came through with almost normal clarity, and the screen leaned into Titan Camera’s hand. With a gasp of static, something in it let go, and the camera titan felt a rush of the same desperation that had been building up in the too-small shell.

At last, Titan TV’s presence seemed to uncoil, but it was fainter, subdued, a ghost of what they were. “I’ve seen worse,” they transmitted.

“I knew you were in there.” Titan Camera couldn’t feel relieved, nothing seemed hopeful about this situation. People hooked up all the time, in a whole variety of ways, but this wasn’t typical, this was by a narrow cable through a corrupted connection point, and a process closer to parasitism than either of them would be happy to admit.

The screen made a little twitch, an intention movement that needed an absent body to carry out. “Me to a certain extent, anyway.”

Titan Camera felt that intention movement as a shrug, perceiving a ghost body that seemed to be partially merged with their own, and noted, “Feels weird.” They didn’t want to run diagnostics to investigate it any more than that, in case that would demystify the sensation of Titan TV being present and whole. But the little semi-urgent alert that their backup cognitive processor was displaying anomalous activity suggested that the offer of space had been accepted.

“I bet.” As the little screen spoke, it rocked slightly on its perch, pulling at the connection point. The ghost image was becoming more solid at the edges. “That was almost too easy. I suspect I’d have dissolved into you if I’d got distracted.”

“Dissolved into…” Focusing on their concerns about letting their friend connect through a damaged socket, Titan Camera hadn’t considered that risk at all, and externalised it through rationalisation. “We weren’t sure what I’d need to do, what kind of things I’d need to adapt to, so we made sure I’d be able to tolerate upgrades well, I didn’t think that would extend to…”

Titan TV interrupted. “I’d probably have blown up if it hadn’t extended to doing this. But we need to haul lack of arse to sort out a retrieval operation.” Correctly guessing that it wasn’t enough reassurance, they added, “If I had to die a second time today, that wouldn’t have been a bad way to go. I’m not entirely sure.”

Titan Camera didn’t like where this was going, but morbid fascination compelled them to ask. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t remember that clearly, but I think I told you not to touch my sloppy delayed transmission.” In immaterial space, Titan TV shook their head, and this time, the subscreen didn’t move. “Anyway, you know when a human is calling a friend, and another one with poor social skills butts in and yells ‘I love you too, man’ or some such nonsense? That.”

Familiar with the trope but unable to imagine how that could possibly play out while two monsters were tearing each other apart in folded space, Titan Camera turned towards where the TV titan’s presence felt like it had split off to and replied “Sure. What’s it got to do with dying though?” They had no idea what it meant that they now were standing next to a ghost, but if it was an illusion being mutually created, it could indicate that disconnecting would be difficult.

“I think it was her. She was eager to fight you next.” The presence of Titan TV receded for a moment, shifting back into the screen before swirling back, colder. Maybe the improving fluidity of their nonphysical body wasn’t a sign of integration after all but the opposite, their own increasing control over the connection. “But I might have copied, not transferred my consciousness. Less risk of data loss. That could have been me, this me, waking up, and that would be embarrassing.”  As an afterthought, they transmitted, “And classified.”

“Makes sense.” It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. Titan Camera had a dizzying moment of realising everything was completely absurd. Life. Death (or lack thereof). Tiny little organic creatures merging with their waste receptacles. Waste receptacles ending up as vestigial bits of armour on… a skibidi bobbit worm. The TVmen’s titan (or a copy thereof) being more concerned about a clumsy interaction than accidental self-replication. “Well, just in case… hi, I think you’re managing your first few minutes pretty well.”

[feraliminal]

I’ve compared titans to folkloric monsters a few times in fic and, although what we’ve seen in the Alliance bases has been pretty minimalist and tidy, a titan nest is a fun idea. Partly inspired by noticing that one of the random TV base bits has the same texture as the “spine” cable/connector thing on Titan TVman’s head screen.

Titan TV presumably needed to swap out some parts when their body was upgraded, and maybe it was more efficient to just leave what was left of the last one where it was, where it had been wired into the repair bay for the transfer process. It could be useful again eventually. They’re already practically a network of component parts, so it comes naturally to them to sometimes connect back into it for old time’s sake, usually when they’re plugged in to dump excess power into the base or for work that needs closer attention than a remote connection can provide. Their old head can feel like a comfortable space to be in, even if it’s a little broken, and it makes the repair bay like a familiar extension of themself.

Over time, it’s generally continued to be more efficient to build into existing structures than prune what’s already there, so a nest has grown.

Plus some TVmen and the occasional other visitors have started leaving offerings.

[feraliminal]

We know the Alliance definitely are communicating with each other, and communicating across factions, without audible speech. TVmen are the only ones that regularly use spoken words, and even they’ve seemed to communicate silently. Titan Cameraman can speak, but almost never does. So it seems likely that the primary forms of Alliance communication would be through inaudible transmission of information. And this means opportunities for headcanons!

The Skibidi Toilet fandom tends to headcanon that there’s a sign language as well, and I think that makes a lot of sense. First, we know that cameramen interacted with humans at some point. This must have involved communication, but if they don’t regularly use spoken communication, a simple sign language would make sense because it would be a pain in the arse to have to get a chat app out because your robot wants to bluetooth you a few words like “do you need anything?”. Second, a thought transmission system is likely to feel quite intimate. Humans don’t even feel like using the phone sometimes, so to be literally speaking directly into people’s brains would be a whole other thing. Even if it’s socially normal, like phone calls and small talk (apparently), there’s going to be times when people don’t want to or can’t do that. And third, loads of human cultures have sign languages, so why wouldn’t a robot culture? Sign and transmission languages might be used simultaneously in many circumstances, so there might not need to be signs for everything.

What this means is that the primary Alliance languages are likely to be quite minimal - this is a real thing in many human languages. Names and personal pronouns could be situational or optional. For example, names that aren’t just a descriptor or unit number could be used as status signifiers, indicating that the name bearer is so important that there needs to be a shorthand way of referring to them in conversation. Or maybe the opposite, because there’s only one Titan Cameraman, but there’s loads of soldier cameramen and “that guy with chipped paint that kind of looks like a hamster on his head” is a bit long. Humans love to name stuff, so naming could also be a silly human trick and a way to connect to a special human friend. In the fandom, people often refer to characters’ first and upgraded incarnations differently. Something like this in headcanon could look like their names/signifiers/shorthand signs changing. And a step further, previous names might be considered bad manners or even similar to deadnames if someone’s attached a lot of emotional weight to an upgrade.

Something else interesting that human languages do is avoidance registers when, in certain social situations, people change their language to avoid taboo words. The really interesting ones to me are when people avoid words or word categories for good luck - some cultures have languages used when harvesting so the produce doesn’t go bad, and people in high-pressure jobs sometimes have a taboo on saying things like “it’s a quiet night”. In an Alliance context, this could translate into something like scientists/engineers/etc. not using certain words while working, or even a whole engineering register.

Personal pronouns might not be a big thing, if there’s a way to communicate “the sense of a person” or names are quick enough to sign, a third-person and even first-person pronoun might not be needed unless someone’s emphasising pronoun-ness. The default might be a neutral pronoun-less-ness, which might translate into “they” and “it” in English - or into the common human habit of using “he” for anyone that’s not visibly femme-presenting and not a boat. Some human languages also do fun stuff with pronouns depending on gender and status, so Alliance personal pronouns might be based on something like unit type or status rather than or as well as gender. As the femme-presenting Alliance members seem to have high-status roles, she/her pronouns might have a status association - maybe leading to things like people switching to she/her pronouns to make a point of something being extra official serious business.

[feraliminal]

Just wondering, how do you think Skibidi Toilet will affect tech-head (camera, speakers and TV) character designs afterwards?

Would skibidi toilet popularity cause such character designs to be immediately reminding people of skibidi toilet? Mind you, I actually like skibidi toilet series. But the latest news about Michael Bay adapting it means it'll probably get a lot bigger in public consciousness, and I don't want to be seen as a rip-off.

Oh, that’s a super interesting question, and one of the first I’ve had! (Note to people in general, I have the “must be invited” vampire autism, so I’m not great at being outgoing, but I am friendly really, so feel free to ask stuff or say hi!) My first thought from a fandom anthropology perspective would be to check out if there’s any precedents and how that’s played out. Unfortunately nothing comes to mind about how to find that out.

So I think what I’d say is that some people who aren’t really familiar with object heads might assume that tech head characters are from Skibidi Toilet, but people who are actually interested in the character concepts won’t. And that spontaneously (or even not spontaneously) having the same ideas as other people is totally normal, and worrying about that is also totally normal, but you shouldn’t let it hold you back from sharing your creativity. You know that what you’re doing is yours, people who are genuinely interested in your character/s will love them, and people who are unfairly judging them at face value aren’t worth worrying about.

I expect that it might happen a little bit, because people do confuse similar-looking genres - like some people believe that all Western animation is Disney or all anime is naughty tentacles. But on the bright side, the Alliance factions do have a specific look - types of camera/speaker/TV, clothing styles, colour schemes, post-apocalyptic setting, etc. I’d expect that would probably continue into a film, and it would function similar to other genres of character - everyone knows about Dracula, but vampire characters aren’t considered rip-offs of Dracula unless they’ve got the cape, the widow’s peak, etc. And even if they are derivative, eg. Alucard from Hellsing, they can still be really original and fascinating characters in their own right.

Also, there’s the question of whether even it matters if something appears accidentally derivative. I’d very much like to say it absolutely shouldn’t. If you’ve had the idea, and you know it came from you, then it’s your idea, and it’s just one of those pranks that the universe plays if someone else had the same idea. Another point of view could be that there’s no original ideas - there’s a theory called “cultural universals” that says the same symbols keep showing up in different cultures because they mean something about how we understand the world.

“Human-shaped things with non-human heads”, for example, are a trope as old as human culture. Animal-headed people are the oldest. I’m including a pic of the Dancing Sorcerer, because I love them and have used their concept a ton in my non-fandom life even if they might not actually be that authentic an example of cave art (and actually a story about someone interpreting a smudgy sketch as a deer-person, and then as a sorcerer, is also interesting). The lion man is authentic. A pretty direct ancestor of today’s object heads could be Japanese tsukumogami from the 12th century or earlier. We obviously personify animals as being like us because we can see they behave a bit like us, but in the case of personified objects, the connection is that humans personify everything because we’re so good at spotting emotion - it’s so important for maintaining relationships with other humans to know that, for example, a person we treat badly will be upset that we also worry that a tool we mistreated won’t work because it’s upset too. That’s useful in itself because then we take better care of our stuff.

However, in reality, it’s hard to get over worrying about being derivative. I’m autistic and returning to fandom after a five-something year absence, so I’m still not comfortable with the unspoken social norms. Looking like I’ve swiped someone else’s idea is one of the (many haha) things that scares me, and I’ve abandoned unfinshed fic because someone else has written/drawn something that’s… kind of maybe the same if you peer between your legs and look at it upside down.

It actually annoys me how many ideas I’ve abandoned or haven’t been able to finish because I’m worried about people’s reactions - but no one’s actually reacted really badly at all. I wouldn’t want anyone else to have the same experience. And if I was advising someone else in the same situation as me, I’d say that it doesn’t matter if something is kind of similar at first, it’s how originally it’s used that matters. Anyone accusing someone of swiping an idea or being derivative or somesuch just because they happened to have the same idea at the same time (and aren’t actually, like, copy-and-pasting bits of someone’s fic or something) is just being a massive wanker. Even in the world of making media for money, people have the same ideas all the time - like schools where children learn magic, an impulsive character with a red colour theme and, probably one of the oldest themes, a hero maturing by going on a journey and facing a challenge. Check out the TV Tropes wiki for endless examples, because some of these themes really are older than dirt.

[feraliminal]

Here’s my headcanon thoughts, loosely based on how new social movements (post-1960s activist organisations) work. I’m biased because I’m an anthropology student studying new social movements, but I’d also expect the Alliance to act more like a NSM than a state’s army because money and political power aren’t relevant any more, and there’s no external government. Imho, worldbuilding is never a waste of time because a) it’s fun because people-watching is fun for everyone, and b) fictional worlds are exaggerations of real worlds, and that’s fun for nerds!

The camera faction retains a lot of its pre-war structure, and is the most visibly hierarchical, but a lot of that is just people doing things how the first generation were taught/programmed to. In practice, decisions are a bit more bottom-up, with base commanders and commanders of specific teams consulting with their groups to make decisions which are usually accepted by a central command. The camera matriarch is the head of central command, and usually represents the faction in meetings, along with commanders from relevant teams. (In the real world, older, bigger movements tend to have more structure, but structure softens over time as new people get to know each other and localised groups get tighter.)

The speaker faction didn’t have an independent pre-war structure of their own, but decided it would be a good idea to become more independent as they grew their numbers in the early months. What they’re doing is more or less an intentional, planned version of the decentralisation stating to happen in the camera faction. They’ve got a horizontal system of teams with responsibility for particular areas, and bigger decisions are made in meetings of representatives from each circle. Representatives are chosen by election, or just whoever’s best positioned to communicate for their circle when a meeting is needed. The speaker matriarch is the only permanent representative, responsible for regular reps’ meetings, communication between circles, and communication between her faction and others. (In the real world, groups that split off of older movements tend to be more intentional about avoiding the inequality and slowness that can come with structure and hierarchy, but still need to retain some structure to function alongside structured groups.)

The TV faction is very small, maybe only a few hundred. There’s not much visible hierarchy as everyone seems to be talking to each other, but the invisible hierarchy is absolute and everyone knows who’s got the last word. Commanders make decisions for their teams/areas (eg. Polycephaly for comms and info flows), and if there’s a decision that affects everyone, the TV matriarch is making it. She or Polycephaly are usually the only people communicating with other factions in formal meetings (although who deals with who outside of meetings is more difficult to control). (In the real world, small, close-knit groups can basically become little consensual autocracies because people become “The Person Who Does The Thing”, and one of “The Things” to do is decisionmaking. In my experience, this can be absolutely fine if everyone’s united enough that decisions are obvious, and it can be a lot faster than democratic or consensus-based decisionmaking, but catastrophic when something does go wrong.)

Exactly where titans fit into group structure varies depending on the faction. I’d expect all factions would have a maintenance team for looking after their titans, but they’d also need to be involved in planning somehow. Titan Camera is a commander on the cameramen’s Wargear: Vehicles team, which also covers striders, tanks, transport vehicles, etc. and has some decisionmaking responsibilities related to what they and the team are doing, but where and when is generally decided by the Global Strategy team. Titan Speaker is on the speakermen’s specialised combat units circle (which includes striders and large units), as well as the strategy circle and wellbeing circle. They’ve repped for strategy in a cross-faction comms meeting, which was a bit of a culture shock for other factions (“Yeah, no, strategy, like, in general. Not just about me.”). Titan TV is another “Person Who Does The Thing”, in this case “The Thing” is destroying stuff. They don’t really have to do much else, so can get away with being a bimbo, but have also ended up as an accidental spokesperson for the TV faction because other factions tend to contact them when they’re deployed. It’s a bit of a toss up whether they reply with something useful or with “piss off, I’m busy”/“how the fuck should I know”. (In the real world, balancing publicly-visible action roles and behind-the-scenes strategising roles is difficult. People involved in action on the ground aren’t always the best communicators, which is fine if there’s a lot of support across teams, but harder in smaller groups where people tend to specialise in one role.)

I’d pin the secret agent as a charismatic culty type, and it can be really difficult when a network of movements have these types around. As well as the obvious problems with recruiting vulnerable followers and/or poaching people from other groups, they tend to do their own thing in their own way, without checking in on whether or not it fits with other groups’ strategies. So I’d guess that what we’ve seen in the series is pretty much it, and the secret agent hasn’t tried to work with the Alliance in general, although he might have tried to work with more individuals than we’ve seen so far.

Who do yall think tells each faction on where to go or what to do?

Cuz u know like with the scientist toilet or gman or someone higher up probably ordered them but what about each faction?

Do each faction have a higher up or are they intertwined with each other and they just know what to do?

Titans maybe?

Or possibly someone else for each faction or just one person?

Ik for the secret agent he has his own little thing tho?

I’m probably thinking too deep into this tho lol

[feraliminal]

Titan TVman and Beowulf are Basically the Same Character: Why Skibidi Toilet Is Folklore

It’s been a long time since I’ve touched the hellsite (I used to doodle and write dirty fic), but I’m fascinated by the silly toilet men videos, their popularity, and the confusion about their popularity. And because I’m a huge nerd and always want to know why people do things, I wrote something. It’s too long to leave on my Notes app and forget about, and I’m also not letting skibidi toilets anywhere near my serious blog. So I actually came back to Tumblr for this.

(Also the first stupid doodle I’ve done in forever, here’s the original meme.)

Toilet humour is obviously a huge part of why it’s so popular, and imho it’s a poop joke that got bigger than the creator intended it to. Toilets are endlessly amusing, particularly for kids, because learning to manage your waste is essential to being a civilised person but something that no one really wants to do. Some of the first conflicts between kids and their parents are often around cleanliness and potty training, and as we get older, the toilet is one of the few places where we’re first alone, particularly if we share a bedroom with siblings. Childlore and fiction about childhood is full of toilets: bullies that strike in school toilets, toilet ghosts like Bloody Mary and Hanako-san, people who died on the loo, and rats or spiders that bite your bum. It’s a classic example of a liminal space that looks mundane but could be full of scary shit.

So that’s my first smart theory, Skibidi Toilet is a contemporary haunted toilet story with something to do with dirt and discomfort vs tech. Clever theories about symbolism are fun and I think symbolism that feels relevant and familiar might be why something first attracts someone’s attention, but I don’t think it can explain the thing having fandom.

The only thing people love as much as poop jokes is stories about cool guys having punch ups, and there’s plenty of that as well. Visually and thematically, Skibidi uses all the tropes that we love in serious popular media - fights, explosions, monsters, giants, noise, the aforementioned cool robots. Swap out skibidi toilets for alien invaders, and cameramen with plungers for cyborgs with swords, and we’d have a respectable alien apocalypse story that’s identical to five other summer blockbusters. But as it is, it’s so ridiculous that it can only be a silly little internet video.

There’s a video by MatPat making a convincing argument that it’s actually about the conflict between independent content creators and the conventional media industry. But again, I think it’s also probably only indirectly what’s turning curious views into millions of subscriptions, especially since the earlier netlore was pretty niche. I think what viewers are picking up on is the dissonance between cool robots, apocalypse horror, and silly toilets, evidenced by most of the comments on YouTube being variation of “why is this actually good”. It’s got the same vibe as other stuff I’d classify as creepypasta-style or meme-style horror: Five Nights at Freddy’s, Among Us, Homestuck, and so on. In meme horror, there is an in-universe threat to characters that’s not played for laughs. However, something like a ridiculous gimmick, a parody of pop culture, or a dissonantly cute art style makes it clear that adult viewers who understand it as fiction don’t have to respect the threat.

The line between feared and respected has always been thin. A cool example of this is the word aglæca in Beowulf and other Old English texts. Aglæca is a debated word because it’s mainly used to describe monsters and demons, but is sometimes used to describe heroes and saints. Both the human hero Beowulf and his monster opponent Grendel are called aglæca. Based on this use and its etymology, some medieval studies scholars think it means something more like an uncanny and powerful outsider. I think a big part of meme horror’s appeal is that it’s still got heroes who are more or less serious characters fighting serious battles. We can respect the characters and their struggles even if we don’t fear the absurd stuff. I’ve chosen Titan TVman for my silly title because they’re the character that best embodies the “uncanny hero” aspect for me, but tbh I think that most meme horror heroes/anti-heroes seem to be these character types.

We know that enjoying horror fiction helps some people manage anxiety and fear, and comedy horror can help us laugh at fear. With the retained seriousness besides the playfulness, meme horror might be more beneficial than basic serious or comedy horror as a comfortably uncomfortable middle ground between the two. Cringe is currently having a cultural moment too, where concerns about and celebrations of being cringe are everywhere, so it might also give us a way of exploring and processing our feelings about embarrassment as well as fear.

Memes, and therefore meme horror, are very amenable to being collaboratively and spontaneously adapted and spread by regular folk. They’re a new form of folklore, essentially. They address stuff that’s relevant to the lives of regular folk, including ugly and uncomfortable things. There’s even a theory that the culture of the very online has began an era of “secondary orality” where how we spread stories on the internet replicates how we used to spread folk stories by word-of-mouth. Secondary orality is a double-edged sword, as it can build creative and supportive communities, but also spreads conspiracy theories and hate. No wonder some of us might not be having our needs fulfilled by regular horror fiction, if we’re facing the bad kind of secondary orality as well as everything else that’s going on in the world. (More allegories! An increasingly absurd and hostile world is another theme in Skibidi Toilet.)

The 1938 book Homo Ludens argued that doing things just for fun has defined features and benefits: play gives us freedom to express ourselves, it’s separate from everyday life, it allows us to construct new worlds with new rules, and it’s never compulsory or for profit. When we’re bombarded by media that’s designed to extract the maximum amount of profit from us, engaging with mainstream entertainment might sometimes feel not as playful or as voluntary. But by being a bit cringe, meme horror retains the appearance of being indie and just for fun even if it becomes obscenely popular.

So, for me, this is what Skibidi Toilet is about. It’s about new folklore playing the same role as old folklore, even if it looks like silly toilet men videos, because we’re essentially the same people as our ancestors telling monster stories around the fire.

[feraliminal]

Skin

(Content warning for robot body horror.)

So, you know how some Alliance seemed to have some patches of human skin, but it seems to be less common now? What if it wasn’t just a consequence of squishing models together, but because they were originally designed to have a little skin to look less creepy to humans? With few humans around, they’ve decided to lose the skin because it’s a nuisance to take care of - it needs nutrients, gets damaged more easily than metal, gets sunburn, etc. In well-stocked Alliance bases, it would have been a relatively quick procedure to remove it and replace it with metal or plastic casings. There’s even a few weirdos who want to keep it or replace it with skin-toned rubber. In less well-connected areas though, skin removal has been a matter of necessity.

—

“I mean, scarves do cover up the creepy skin.”

Immediately, Barrow realised he’d said something wrong. Dent turned its head away, and pulled on its sleeve, which was already too far down to expose any skin anyway. ‘Am I…’ it signed, with another sign that Barrow guessed meant something like creepy.

‘You’re not creepy,’ he signed. ‘You’re good.’ He wished he’d had the signs for something like an all-round decent fellow, but what he’d learned so far had been minimal and focused on practicality. It didn’t look likely that backup would be arriving any time soon, the small army of camera heads had been facing up to the possibility that they could be here for the long haul and preparing accordingly. And Barrow was getting used to sharing his apocalypse hideout with them. He didn’t know the words to comfort the dented camera, but did know the words for car battery, generator, and barricade.

Dent gave a little nod, its way of confirming that Barrow had made sense. ‘This is creepy,’ it signed, rolling up its sleeve a little. It poked the pallid skin on its wrist, and the spot it had poked went paler. Barrow didn’t remember it looking that bad when he’d first noticed that some of them had it, but he’d never looked closely. ‘Skin,’ it signed, repeating the word a few times.

‘Why skin?’ Barrow asked. Or maybe the sign was flesh. Meat even, that was probably a better descriptor of the unhealthy-looking stuff. He’d noticed that signs didn’t always correspond to his mental translation of an English language word. The ‘why’ sign could be used as a general question signifier, he’d seen camera heads using it when he’d have wanted to say where, what, who, how, and so on. He suspected there was an invisible form of communication they were using for added context. The question sign and the name of another camera head, for example, could result in a number of answers - it’s fine, it’s outside, it borrowed your car battery, and so on.

Dent answered with a barrage of sign that Barrow didn’t fully understand. He recognised ‘human’, ‘creepy’, and a sign he’d seen used in the context of concealing entrances they used often and keeping curtains closed at night when the lights were on, maybe ‘camouflage’.

Making his best guess, he used the signs he’d spotted as he spoke out loud. “Humans think robots are creepy, so you had to cover it up with skin?”

Dent nodded.

“Nah, we don’t think robots are creepy. We love robots - you know, the Terminator, Star Wars, Transformers.” He wasn’t going to mention that he’d been in the protests, that he’d seen two hunched-over camera heads being rushed past a baying and booing crowd by a police escort. He’d came back the night after and spray painted ‘shut them down’ on the storefront while the two little creatures had huddled together on the floor under a desk, watching him. He’d thought they’d just been programmed to act cute, now he knew they’d been terrified. “We’ve all been lied to,” he said. “So you’d do the jobs that nobody wanted for nothing. You don’t have to look like us.” He didn’t have the signs for that.

Dent tilted its head, swayed a little on the balls of its feet, and made a soft whirring sound from somewhere in its chest. It raised its hands to speak, then paused, and slowly, clearly signed ‘We both don’t like this.’ It rolled its sleeve up completely - the flesh didn’t look right at all, going bad even. It was mottled a sickly purple, and seemed to be receding from where it started at mid-forearm. It hadn’t been obvious when Dent had its sleeves down, but now there was a faint whiff of a supermarket meat counter. ‘It’s dead.’ That was the same dead used for toilet zombies, not the broken used for damaged robots.

Barrow remembered a scene from some gruesome sci-fi, maybe The Terminator in fact. “Can we get rid of it? Would it hurt you?”

Dent shrugged, and started peeling at the edge of the skin sheet closest to its elbow. Then shook its head.

‘No,’ Barrow signed quickly. “Okay, don’t do that, we should probably find that one who does repairs, just in case…” But it was too late. The gremlin that compels humans to do things like shave their heads at three in the morning apparently had a counterpart for robots.

—

Characters from here - they’re both kind of underdeveloped and more an excuse for cute cultural exchange scenarios, but I’m starting to make a whole little plot plan!

[feraliminal]

Various interesting things on this Reddit post, which I think is legit because it’s also showed up in other places although I can’t find the original source (and tbh is still fun for ideas even if not legit). This reply is the one that’s most interesting to me.

There are lots of ways to interpret it and it’s all fun! I’ve personally thought it’s pretty likely that titans are running on something different to everyone else, and likely generate their own energy. Toilets are definitely running on something from another dimension. Because I’m fond of unified theories of sci-fi, I wonder if whatever(s) it is that’s powering human-made robot species is somehow linked to the appearance of flying space loos.

[feraliminal]

Actual episode 70 discussion before I vanish back into the aether to do coursework:

Obligatory meta bit: I’m in the process of reading Interaction Ritual Chains for a draft thesis chapter (which I need to be writing now) and just happened to be halfway through reading the section on remote/virtual rituals when the episode dropped. The book includes stuff like sports events and concerts as rituals, defined as community-building events where people share an experience and get meaningful symbols and stories out of it. But it has a whole section on why this needs to be in-person. I’ve never really done live premieres before because my fandoms tended to be old, but I’ve now got participation observation data to disprove that - it’s definitely a shared experience for the fan community, and we have plenty of stories. Fandom is folk culture!

The appearance of cam-ghosts and Plunger’s interaction with the secret agent was very cool as I love the “sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from the supernatural” trope. The camghosts could have been hallucinations, but there was one peeking around a corner much earlier in the episode. I suspect that there’s some kind of remote connection/Alliance network going on (they’re able to share and broadcast footage, after all, even if they need to use tablets for long range comms), so these could be virtual encounters through the secret agent hacking or otherwise accessing Plunger’s brain - like he’s able to get into the skibidi computer to taunt the scientist. But why (other than exposition and dramatic effect)? Is he trolling because their death is part of his scheme (likely imho), or is he just an incorrigible dick who can’t say “good job” without being sinister?

Transmission error/recording error: is the secret agent signal jamming? And what was that stealth mode? Is it related to the secret agent and the camghosts? Probably.

Unless our two ex-main characters are fixed or downloaded (which I doubt but I did notice that the the tagline was “someone”, which is usually singular), ST is doing Anyone Can Die. If this was being approached as a lolrandom meme thing, that wouldn’t be surprising, and that has been the tone of much of the series so far. However, it’s ascended to the point that there’s an actual Skibidi Toilet store. The longevity of comparable meme horror/sci-fi series has seemed to rely on people getting attached to iconic characters, so I wonder if there’s a plan for avoiding Too Bleak, Stopped Caring? My guess is having the elites and titans consistent throughout the plot, but DFB may also be an incorrigible dick and kill everyone. I am a sucker for dramatic deaths though, so I can probably put up with it (just about, did that speaker squeak as they were dying? Oh no ;_;).

On the subject of trolls, one way of interpreting Titan Speaker putting out the fire before completely flattening the scientist was that they wanted to kill them themself, another interpretation was that they were fucking with the scientist by pretending they’d show mercy. Either way, A+++ revenge!

Polycephaly is also super interesting as they don’t really seem to be the TV equivalent of the others factions’ big combat units. There’s only one of them, they can fuck around with teleportation-stuff (nanites? weird science particles?) and swap out their extra bits. They might have a role that’s unique to the TV faction, I already wondered if it’s something like managing TV communications or information flows, and now I think that could include something to do with teleportation too. Maybe running the teleportation-navigation software? In the Dune series, there’s heavily mutated Guild Navigators who guide faster-than-light spaceships and to make sure no one crashes into a planet, and Warhammer 40k has a similar Navigator role to guide space traffic through the Warp using psychic beacons.

[feraliminal]

I think “gremlins”, in the WWII sense of “tiny supernatural creatures that can be jokingly blamed when machines do things they really shouldn’t”, would make a great Alliance equivalent to zoomies, brain farts, etc. Maybe titans and vehicle-types have gremlins, and smaller units have bugs? Or bugs are reserved for actual software problems, and gremlins for shenanigans?

[feraliminal]

So, I live on a boat with no heating (yay, but I do have a wood stove), and when it gets this cold, my devices refuse to charge and (I think) run more slowly. I have to stuff my tablet up my jumper to warm it up first. Convincing the cat to sit on it also works.

Which makes me wonder, what happens to the Alliance when it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey? Realistically (haha) if someone’s figured out conscious robots, they’ve likely figured out how to keep them warm, but there’s also a lot of tech being thrown together in a short time, so extreme operating conditions might not have been accounted for. In areas with cold snaps, maybe everyone would hole up for a few days, and particularly make sure anyone towards the end of their charge cycle is safely indoors. Anywhere really polar might be more or less off limits.

Titans and other bigger beings are likely to have less cold weather concerns, in general running too hot might be more of a problem. But that’s not going to stop them from commiserating with smaller friends. Condensation, feeling like frozen arse, and having to de-ice every five minutes is universal.

[feraliminal]

Titans getting involved in construction projects! There wouldn’t be a whole lot of new builds needed, because there’s plenty of human infrastructure to adapt, but if any heavy lifting is needed, why not? It’s good team-building exercise to work with smaller folk, and non-combat activities are good for wellbeing!

Provided it’s more like playing Lego and less like assembling Ikea furniture, that is.

[feraliminal]

69 part 2 thoughts

It’s been great fun to see how the plot and video quality has gone from standard Gmod-style fuckery to a complete, if minimal, verse. Everything’s so detailed now! I actually think minimal lore can be a good thing, because people can go wild with their headcanons.

Ooh, Titan TVman playing favourites! This actually looks very much like a case of tellies being tellies, they’ve got a group ethos of putting practicality first. The cameras’ titan seems to have taken more damage, and they’ve got more new kit to lug around, so being on low power mode would be more risky for them. Doesn’t mean that it couldn’t cause some drama though, particularly the two of them being like “lol nope”.

Upgrades! More like improved replacements for damaged bits, but that’s still a lot of new kit. There’s not a whole lot of time indicators in the series (minimal canon, yay!), but I would guess that stuff like building titans and bioengineering toilet creatures would take months or years. So it’s likely some years since the invasion. But probably not decades. There’s lots of damage to toilet-infested areas, but it looks like war damage, not like buildings are crumbling and being overgrown with age. Plus the recent events seem to be happening in a shorter period of time. Even though robot development is going to be different to human development, the titans haven’t been in their bodies for that long. They’re dealing with a lot of upgrades and new equipment in a short time, and there’s a difference between knowing how to do something and having lived experience of doing it for real. So it’s also not surprising that TTV isn’t going to be throwing energy around unless it’s absolutely necessary. That also might be an off-label use of power cores, just like partial teleportation probably isn’t a tactic in the handbook.

Since TTV’s monitors can operate independently, I like the idea that their consciousness is a network across four nodes, which might be a thing for other TVmen but must also be something weird to get used to. (Though useful for long meetings. “Is that monitor playing Doom?” “Yep. Multiplayer. With Polycephaly, who I’m only snitching on because they’re winning.”)

[feraliminal]

4. If you make fan content, what's your favorite thing that you’ve created?

30 Day Fandom Challenge

I’m actually really pleased with my last fic, I successfully scheduled time to rest after having a super busy week, and although I wasn’t planning to write anything, that happened! It’s exciting to just be able to write without thinking too much about it!

I’m also pleased with it because exploring the weird possibilities of what nonhuman life could be like is one of my favourite topics. There’s so much potential for writing cute emotional scenes with the titans, because they’re giant war machines and on a bizarre and impersonal scale beyond any human experience, but also living people who do have experiences.

Titan TVman is particularly interesting to me because having a modular body, teleportation abilities, and some possible connection to the supernatural or extradimensional means even more potential for a completely different perception of the world.

[feraliminal]

I’m currently reading Bakhtin on Rabelais, and it’s occurred to me that my medieval European ancestors would have absolutely loved Skibidi Toilet for more than the generic hero’s journey tropes. Dirty jokes! Gratuitous violence! Monsters! Giants!

There’s a whole genre of medieval literature and humour about the “grotesque body” that provided an alternative to official stuff like the church by celebrating all the weird and grotty things that bodies do. Mainly centred around things that go in to bodies, things that come out of bodies, and gruesome things that happen to bodies. Because sure we shit, and get drunk, and die, but we also make culture and communities and more humans with our bodies. This genre was all about celebrating both, because you can’t have one without the other.

I’d challenge anyone to argue that Rabelais wrote literature worth talking about but that Skibidi Toilet and related silly meme stuff isn’t worth engaging with. I mean, the guy literally had a character fart a monster civilisation into existence.

[feraliminal]

Episode 70 part 2 wild speculation…

Definitely a weird science lab leak then! It was super interesting to see the two books with the TV icon, going by the other stuff in the room and the appearance of a toilet with a screen immediately afterwards, I’d guess this could have been the toilets’ data on TV tech, especially since they were next to the skibidi-document (which looked like some kind of flyer or simplified info poster to me, maybe aimed at lower ranking toilets?). However, there’s also what appears to be old newspapers and files around, and old PCs. And no books with other faction icons. So could the TVmen have been the original project, or at least the most important part of it? Being a nerd for edgy sci-fi plots and seinen manga makes me want to say they were the lab leak, inadvertently letting everything else out by escaping. So the secret agent is trying to clean it up with subterfuge and weird tech, the TVs are trying to clean it up with subterfuge, weird tech, and overkill, and the other factions are kind of thrown into this whole mess.

Salmon-shirt camera’s reaction was pretty uninterpretable without knowing what/if other communication was going on, it could have been “wtf”, “they’ve got everyone’s tech, we’re doomed” (first presumably this was already known? second, poor little guy), or “does this mean the TVs have something to do with this?”.

The 1979 date means that something has been going on for 45 years assuming the current series is present-day (and the secret agent has discovered time travel or an amazing skincare secret), but the administration change could have resulted in the start of whatever weird science project it was, or happened as a result of something going wrong with said project. So not many clues and more room for wild conjecture! But I’m wild-conjecturing the first option, because when the toilets got out, everything happened very fast.

Also, communication! I think there’s definitely complex communication going on between Alliance members that isn’t audible or visible. So, we’ve got multiple kinds of communication going on; hand and body gestures used by all factions, various speakermen sounds, audible speech and screen displays used by TVmen, plus… some kind of cross-faction comms transmissions. I still like the idea of sign languages though - maybe they’d use sign for more personal and “off-grid” communication, presuming that comms transmissions that aren’t specifically encrypted would be through some kind of Alliance-net?