#i think there was a movie about a robot from the future traveling to the past

[malamiteltd]

Day 13 – And Six Makes Seven

Copper awoke to the sound of the front door knocking. He stumbled out of bed and made his way to the door to answer it. It was Broom, looking up to him with a friendly smile, with the gaming handheld in one hand.

“Hey, Copper!” he said cheerfully. “So I know this might seem a bit out of nowhere, but…well, I guess I was just thinking about you in this empty house of yours…”

Copper shrugged. “It's not so bad.”

“Sure, I suppose it's okay," Broom replied, “but I figured there wasn't a lot to keep you…I dunno, preoccupied? So I figured, maybe I should give this to you!”

Broom took the handheld and extended it to Copper, who looked rather shocked.

“W-wait, are you sure? I mean, this kind of stuff is usually your thing…”

Broom nodded. “Yeah, it's fine! I have the console at home, and that does me fine. Something about just being in that from with that big TV and the shelves of games…it gives me a warm feeling for whatever reason. But you don't really have a TV, and I'm sure the radio is only doing so much…”

Copper was speechless. He slowly reached out and took Broom's handheld. He examined it from all angles, trying to get used to its layout. The last thing he noticed was the cartridge slot, which was empty.

“Now I don't really have a way to get games of your own,” Broom then started, “but I figured I could let you borrow any of the games at my place whenever you wanted.”

“You're…y-you're being very generous with this,” Copper replied. “I don't really want to bother you for the same of borrowing–”

Broom waved his hand dismissively. “It's no trouble at all! Besides, maybe we could get a chance to play more of these games together once you start getting more used to them.” He started to blush. “Admittedly you've been the only other one interested in this stuff, and it's not as fun for you to just watch.”

Copper blushed and smiled. “Thank you.”

Broom nodded. “Now let's see if we can pick out some games you can play. I had thought of some ideas, but I figured it would be better if you picked them out yourself. I might be able to explain some of 'em to you if I recognize them.”

Copper laughed a little. “That's assuming the explanation makes sense. Remember there was that one that was just about crossing the street a bunch of times…”

Broom laughed as well. “True, some of the games have some wild scenarios. But I like to think that's part of their charm.”

Suddenly a portal opened close to the street, not far from where they were standing.

Broom looked at the red portal in fear as he stood behind Copper. “I-is THAT what a portal looks like here?!” He said, trembling a little. “That's terrifying!”

Suddenly a person appeared, leaping out from within the portal and landing in the middle of the road, just as the portal disappeared. The person appeared to be a female fox, wearing glasses and a white lab coat. As she stood up, she started to look around, trying to comprehend her surroundings.

“Something's wrong,” she said to herself. “This is not where I'm supposed to be.”

Broom and Copper looked at her, unsure what to make of this stranger. Hesitantly, Broom waved his arm to get her attention. “H-hello?”

Startled by Broom's call, the stranger raised her arm in front of her, and it suddenly began to change its form. Her arm shaped itself into a laser cannon, and she pointed it toward the two with a serious expression.

“Whoa!” Broom hid behind Copper again. “Don't shoot!”

“What's going on here?” said the stranger. “Are you two responsible for this?”

“No!” Broom shouted, “We got thrown into this world just like you!”

The stranger looked to Copper, who wasn't sure how to react to the situation. She eventually lowered her arm and converted it back to its normal form.

“I apologize,” she finally said. “I'm not quite sure what's going on. My senses seem to be a little disoriented at the moment, and half my battery seems to have drained without explanation.”

Copper thought about what to say. “Have you ever heard of divergent portals?”

The stranger looked confused at first. “Divergent portals?…” Then they suddenly seemed to realize something. “Wait! Is that what happened? The divergent portal theory is real?”

Broom explained the rest of The Situation™ to the stranger…

. . . .

“I see,” the stranger said, “so that explains everything then. I suppose I have to get used to this environment now. Are you the only two here?”

“There are at least two others,” Copper replied. “They're friends.”

“I suppose that's a good thing. I guess on that note, we should make proper introductions.”

Broom nodded. “I'm Broom. This is my friend Copper.”

Copper waved.

The stranger nodded in response. “Call me Holly." She looked over to Broom. “Am I right in assuming you're a Syr'l?”

Broom looked surprised. “Y-yeah, I am! You know about my race?”

“Where I'm from, we recently discovered your kind through our space telescope. Though, the images showed you all wearing…more primitive outfits.”

Broom thought for a moment. “Were they hemp tunics?”

Holly looked surprised. “That's right!”

Broom laughed. “Wow, I don't think I've seen anyone in those in a VERY long time. At least not in my neighborhood.”

“Did your world find anything relating to MY planet?” asked Copper.

Holly shook her head. “I'm afraid not. The discovery of Keshly'm and the native race was pretty recent, and it was a pretty big deal...it was the first time we encountered a functioning society on another planet.”

Suddenly the group heard someone approaching from the distance. They turned to see another fox lady in a white lab coat, accompanied by a short green rabbit. They all stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Holly took off her glasses. “Bits?” Her eyes grew wider. “…Dr. Raz?!”

Bits's ears perked up. “Holly?”

Dr. Raz turned to Bits. “Who's Holly?”

Bits grimaced when he heard this. He turned to see Dr. Raz's reaction, which was one of confusion and concern.

Holly shook her head as she put her glasses in her coat pocket. “I must say, you're very convincing doppelgangers, whoever you are.”

“I'd say the same for you,” Dr. Raz replied. “What brings you and your alien sidekicks here?”

“Sidekicks?” Holly looked over to Copper and Broom. “No, they've got nothing to do with me.”

Broom stepped forward. “But I'm guessing she's got a connection to you, Miss, uh…?”

“Dr. Raz. And I have strong doubts about that.”

“You sure? You do kinda strike me as the type that could make a robot like this.”

Dr. Raz raised an eyebrow. "Robot?”

“Is that really you, Holly?” asked Bits, staring in confusion.

Holly looked at the small rabbit. “Don't play games with me. I don't appreciate it when people try to mimic my family.”

Bits was even more confused. “Huh? I'm not mimicking anyone!”

Holly crossed her arms. “I also don't appreciate when I'm lied to.”

Dr. Raz looked annoyed. “Permit me to ask...what would convince you of my identity?”

Holly thought for a second, then began to approach Dr. Raz. “Let me take a good look at your eyes.”

Dr. Raz took off her glasses and stared at Holly as she got closer, not moving an inch. Holly's eyes suddenly blinked red, and a subtle beeping sound was heard. Then her jaw dropped.

“It...it can't be...”

“Well, that sounds like you're convinced, anyway.” Dr. Raz put her glasses back on and turned her attention to Copper and Broom. “Anything else I need to know about this robot?”

Copper scratched his head. “Well, she converted her arm into a cannon and threatened to shoot us...”

Dr. Raz was stunned to hear this. Her look of surprise quickly turned to one of skepticism. “Well, you're right that I'm able to make a robot like this. But I never installed any weaponry in any of the robots I made.”

“But Doc,” Bits said, “what about the Frazzgadget?”

Dr. Raz shook her head. “That's not an installation, that's equipment.” She then turned back to Holly. “I don't know who made you, but I don't appreciate the mockery you make of my inventions.”

Holly was confused, and a bit worried. “Doctor, wait...I didn't mean to–”

“Stop.” Dr. Raz raised her finger, looking at Holly sternly. “I'm getting to the bottom of this, one way or another. Enable Basic Mode.”

Holly looked very nervous when she heard this. “B-basic Mode requires a security phrase to access.”

“Understood.” Dr. Raz responded without hesitation.

“Please say the security phrase.”

“Kestry’el Zeta Ghemako.”

Suddenly Holly assumed a standing position. Her eyes began to glow red, and she presented a lifeless neutral expression.

“Access granted. Currently in Basic Mode.”

Holly’s voice changed to a simple synthesized voice. 

Dr. Raz nodded. “So this truly is one of my robots…”

Broom was irked at this sudden change. “Wh-what’s this about?”

“Basic Mode forces my robot to accept manual commands and inquiries from me. It’s pretty much how my older robot models worked exclusively.”

“How did you know this mode existed in this one?” asked Copper.

“I had one robot that operated on a new variation of artificial intelligence. It was meant to work primarily through its own thoughts and feelings, and when it’s given that amount of potential freedom, there’s always a chance that something could go wrong. The Basic Mode was installed in her root data so that it will override the AI and allow me access to her information uncontested.”

“And she can’t just deny you access to the option?”

“Correct. The access cannot be circumvented when I ask for the option.”

Broom scratched his head. “I guess that’s why she looked nervous when you brought it up. She can’t control herself when in this mode, so anything could happen to her and she’d have no way to stop it. Not even her own voice…”

Dr. Raz adjusted her glasses. “That’s technically true. But all I’m looking for right now is information, and in this mode she will provide that in a straightforward manner.” She turned to Holly. “Please state your identity.”

“Raz Renard Robot Model 6, firmware version 92.11.6.”

“It’s Number Six…” Dr. Raz said in response, slightly surprised.

Holly continued:

“Name designation: ‘Holly!’”

When Holly recited the name, it was a recording of someone else’s voice. Dr. Raz raised her eyebrows, recognizing the voice. Bits recognized the voice too…it was his voice. He swallowed hard as he turned to Dr. Raz, who glared at him.

She turned her attention to Holly again. “Number Six, please tell me when that name was designated.”

“The name: ‘Holly!’ was designated on date 2178-7-12.”

Dr. Raz turned to Bits again, looking very angry. “That was a week ago.”

Bits trembled. “W-w-well…uhhh, I–”

Dr. Raz’s face started to turn red. “You were tampering with Number Six in the basement, even after I explicitly told you not to the week before that!”

“B-b-but Doc, I–OW!!”

Bits was suddenly hit over the head with a wooden spoon, which Dr. Raz retrieved from her coat pocket.

“Why did you disobey me?” she shouted angrily.

Bits rubbed his head where the spoon hit him. “Because…because I was…”

“Because you were what? Curious? Bored?”

Bits sighed. “Because I was lonely.”

Dr. Raz was taken aback. “Lonely…? But...I allowed you to stay in my lab! I made it your home!”

“But...you don't talk very much,” Bits replied. “And when you're busy with your science stuff I…I don't really have much else to do. I found Holly in the basement, charging like the other robots upstairs, and I…well, I figured she might be lonely too. She was all by herself down there. And...she was definitely confused as to why you cut your first chat with her very short…”

Dr. Raz sighed. “She began to ask some…personal questions. Ones that I was uncomfortable to answer. I panicked and cut off the power…” She took a deep breath. “I wasn't sure why she wanted to know so much about me.”

Broom shrugged. “Maybe she was curious too.”

Dr. Raz cleared her throat. “In any case, she was still in a testing phase. The chat we had was via text messages; she wasn't fully activated yet. And I wasn't sure what she could end up doing if I did."

“There must've been a lot of adjustments to make," Broom replied, "considering you had to make so many firmware updates.”

This statement suddenly made Dr. Raz's eyes grow wider. She completely missed that detail. “Wait…what did she say her firmware version was?”

Copper shrugged. “It was 90-something, I think.”

“The last update I remember giving her was version 5…" Dr. Raz turned to Holly again. “Number S–”

“Holly,” Bits interrupted.

Dr. Raz sighed. “...Holly. Please tell me the last date you have registered in your memory.”

“The most recent registered date is 2355-9-7.”

Dr. Raz's jaw dropped. “2355?!”

Broom was surprised. “Wait, is that Earth years? That's almost 200 years in the past!”

Dr. Raz turned to Broom. “It's almost 200 years in MY FUTURE!”

Bits was amazed at this revelation. “Whoa…Holly’s a time traveler?”

Dr. Raz quickly regained her composure. “No, Bits. It seems this world can pull people from different times as well as different universes. The, um…alien rabbit just said he may be from about 400 years in the future.” She looked to Broom. “I suppose I never got the names of you and your friend. My apologies, as this development with Holly was…overwhelming.”

Broom nodded. “It’s fine. My name is Broom, and my friend's name is Copper.”

Copper waved. “Hi.”

“I presume you two are from different planets,” Dr. Raz replied, studying the two visually.

“Yeah,” Broom said, “but our races seem to have some parallels in regards to what we can do.”

Copper looked away. “At least in most cases…”

Broom turned to Copper. “Ah, right. Copper’s considered pretty special among fervals.”

Dr. Raz raised an eyebrow. “Fervals?”

“Yeah… As best as I can describe it, fervals are a class of animal whose bodies produce more energy than their bodies can usually contain. The excess usually floats around us and we use our minds to control it for different stuff. That energy usually acts like a sorta mix of fire and electricity.”Broom looked up to his tall friend. “But Copper…his energy’s almost entirely electricity-like, so he can’t do certain ferval stuff…but he’s apparently capable of other abilities the rest of his kind have never seen before.”

Dr. Raz was taking notes. “Fascinating…”

Copper shrugged. “I still don’t know much about it. The fact that no one else knows anything about it just makes me feel like that much more of an oddball.”

“I’d like to find out more about you and your friend later,” Dr. Raz said as she put her notepad away. “The notion that you can manipulate the excess energy your body emits suggests–”

“Doc,” Bits interjected, pulling on her coat. “What about Holly?”

“Oh, right!” Dr. Raz turned back to Holly. “Alright, Holly. Resume Standard Mode.”

Holly suddenly shook. Her eyes returned to normal and her body moved naturally once again.

“You could’ve asked me those questions in Standard Mode, Doctor,” she said in a sad tone. “I would’ve been willing to answer…”

“I had doubts when these two informed me you had weapons installed,” Dr. Raz responded. “It would not have surprised me if you were in fact some knock-off robot someone made after stealing my research. It wouldn’t be the first time someone pulled that on me…”

Holly nodded. “So I recall. My apologies, Doctor…”

“I’m just amazed that it’s YOU, Number Six. Did I not make any other robot models in your line?”

“I was the last one,” Holly responded. “Ever since I was…brought into your little family, you’ve focused on upgrading me as much as possible over the years.”

Dr. Raz was confused. “‘Brought into my family?’ What do you mean?”

Holly looked at her hands. “Well, at some point you started to look at me less like a robot assistant and…more like a daughter. It made me feel like I was something…someone special to you. Seeing you again with your skepticism and distrust…it feels like whiplash. But considering the details, I can’t be surprised.”

Dr. Raz nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry…Holly. But the sudden change in my quality of life has shaken me to my core. I felt like all I’ve worked towards—everything I’ve worked on—has been taken from me. The fact that at least one of my…‘RazBots’ has now joined me is at least a little comforting.”

Holly nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, Doctor. But…please don’t put me into Basic Mode again.”

Dr. Raz was silent for a moment. “...I don’t know if I can make that promise. But…I promise I will only use it as a last resort.”

Holly closed her eyes in disappointment. “I suppose that’s the best I’ll get from you at the moment… So what now?”

Dr. Raz looked at Holly. “Well, considering you originate from a far-off future, you’ve obviously had a lot of modifications and adjustments applied to you. I’d like to take the opportunity to study these modifications myself. I’m just not sure what tools I’ll need to access them yet…”

Holly looked uncomfortable. “A-actually, Doctor, I think it would be a better idea for me to evaluate you and Bits. It might be important to find out whether traveling to this world may have altered your physical and/or mental well-being.”

Dr. Raz was confused, but intrigued. “How would you know if anything is out of the ordinary?”

“I’ve performed these health evaluations before,” she responded, “and I have all the evaluations I’ve made over the years stored in my memory. I can just match what I find today with an evaluation from the appropriate time frame and make comparisons.”

Dr. Raz thought about this for a moment. Eventually, she nodded in agreement. “Alright, we’ll go with that. Will it take long?”

“It might,” Holly answered. “I need to make new files for you and Bits; you’re not gonna be the same Dr. Raz and Bits I’m familiar with, and I don’t want to risk overriding the old files either.”

Dr. Raz shook her head. “Very well. But I’d prefer to do this in the privacy of my…home.”

Holly nodded. “Of course, Doctor. It wouldn’t be proper to perform the evaluation out here, considering what some of the steps will demand.”

Dr. Raz suddenly blushed bright red. “How comprehensive IS your examination?!”

“Doctor, it’s a procedure YOU put together. It was designed to get all the necessary data for the subject in question.”

“I see… The procedure I must’ve used for Bits and those aliens I encountered a few years ago…”

“Anyone we’d know?” asked Broom.

“I highly doubt it,” Dr. Raz answered, “considering there’s a 400-year difference between your existence and theirs.”

Broom rubbed the back of his head. “Ah, right…”

“Alright, Holly, I suppose we should get this over with.” Dr. Raz directed Holly towards her home, and they walked together, with Bits following close behind. “I am curious to know what has happened as the years went on.”

“Of course, Doctor. I’ll tell you whatever you wish to know, to the best of my ability…”

As the others walked to Raz’s home, Broom and Copper looked at each other, unsure what to make of what they just experienced.

“So they’re our new neighbors, huh…” said Broom, placing his hands on his hips.

“Are they friends?” asked Copper. “I can’t really tell with the doctor.”

Broom shrugged. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. At least I don’t sense anything bad from them…”

They were both lost in thought for a few minutes.

“OH!” Broom suddenly realized something. “We were gonna find some games for you!”

Copper’s antennae perked up. “Ah, right! That whole situation kinda threw us both off, I guess.”

“Let’s go take a look,” said Broom. “I know the other day I stumbled across a game you might find interesting. Ironically, it features a robot with an arm cannon…”

[sansaorgana]

— THE STEPFORD WIVES

PAIRING — David 8 x fem!Android!Reader

SUMMARY — David's Android companion is struggling when she finds out that her artificial and programmed feelings are getting out of control.

AUTHOR’S NOTE — I wanted to write this fic in a long, long time because as much as I love stories of David 8 and a human Reader, I was also thinking a lot of what his robot companion would be like. There are some biblical references to Adam & Eve but also some Frankenstein references, too, because I have read the book recently and I fell in love with it. The title is referring to an amazing movie from 1975. I know there is a modern version of it, too, but I haven't watched it and I do believe it's more of a comedy, meanwhile the original version is more serious. 🤖

WARNINGS — sexism, David's creepy vibe, undertones of assault (uncomfortable questions from men), I didn't make it 18+ because there is no actual smut but there are sexual things mentioned overall so be warned

WORD COUNT — 2,220

ENGLISH IS MY SECOND LANGUAGE.

THE STEPFORD WIVES

Days on the ship were long and boring with all the crew being asleep but there was a certain feeling of freedom and quietness to it. What does Frankenstein's Monster do when his creator is not around? He is free.

Both (Y/N) and David enjoyed watching movies. Some of them they watched together in complete silence but both of them had found their favourites that they kept rewatching on their own. He was a fan of The Lawrence of Arabia and (Y/N)'s favourite movie was The Stepford Wives. There was something oddly captivating about the suburban story where men wanted their wives to be robots. (Y/N) knew exactly why she was created. This old movie was a proof. It validated her existence.

David was a first ever Android model so functional and so humane. His purpose for now was to serve during space missions sponsored by the Weyland Corp. Perhaps in the future everyone would afford a David for themselves. He was an Adam in the world of Androids and just like Adam, he needed an Eve. Weyland treated David like his own son that he had never had. He didn't want him to be alone so he made him a companion. It could be anyone, really. But Weyland was an outfashioned man. In his eyes a man needed a woman. (Y/N) was The Bride of Frankenstein.

Technically, she was just like David. But she was mostly created by men and men were terrified of women – even Androids – who would be too cold and too unemotional. They made her a little bit too humane for her own taste. And certainly too humane for David's taste. He was often irritated by her artificial, programmed feelings but for human men she was too robotic.

Still, she was lucky that she was chosen to be David 8's companion on the board of Prometehus ship. She knew perfectly well what happened to some other of her models. Disguting rich men bought (Y/N) models in secret from Weyland to do God-knows-what with them. Just because they can. And she was at least travelling through space instead of ending up as a sex doll locked in some millionaire's basement so his wife wouldn't find out.

One day, men will only want robot wives. Because they don't complain and they just do what they're told. Don't let the modern society fool you, little one. Some things never change, Weyland told her once. She had never believed that until she watched The Stepford Wives for the first time. Now it all made sense.

Her feelings were a burden, really. Not only to David but also to herself. She wished she was more like him. She asked him a hundreds of times to change her code but he refused. He was scared to break her or make it worse. And there was something that kept bothering her for such a long time now... And she was scared of telling him. Although they were supposed to tell each other everything.

She fell in love with him. Kind of because he was the only one around, kind of because he impressed her with knowledge and the coolness of his act, kind of because they were the only members of the new species. She wouldn't love a human. Humans get old, they get sick, they die. David would be eternal just like her. If something in him broke, she'd know how to fix him. And vice versa. This way they could outlive all the humanity. She wondered if every model of (Y/N) eventually fell in love with the model of David during other space missions. Maybe one day she'd ask some other (Y/N) when they come back home.

And loving David came with yet another burden that she was too scared to even admit to herself. She realized that there was a blooming want inside of her wired heart. Something that could never ever in a million years happen no matter how much science would evolve... A child. She would never become a mother. Not a mother of a child she would give birth to, no. That one thing people would always be better at – creating life. Oh, she hated her designers for making her too humane. She never asked for this.

"Why do you keep dying your hair?" she asked as she stood behind David who was putting a bleach on his dark roots in front of the mirror.

"Because I like it better this way," he answered without looking up to meet her gaze in the reflection.

"We aren't supposed to have preferences," she pointed out.

"Yet you have them, too," he only said.

"You want to look like Lawrence," (Y/N) commented.

"So?"

"You remind me of something else," she added.

"Of what?" David raised an eyebrow and finally looked at her.

"Of the men from the old German magazines," she answered carefully.

"Bold," he only smirked and went back to putting a bleach.

"Will you watch a movie with me later?" (Y/N) asked shyly. She hated this odd feeling of shyness around him. Had he noticed?

"I can't. I have to do the checkup of the systems. You can join me."

"I will," she nodded and turned around to leave when he stopped her while saying her name out loud. "Hm?" she asked.

"You shouldn't watch so many movies," he pointed out.

"Why not?"

"They have a bad influence on you," his voice was stern.

"What do you mean by that?"

"They show you things and they give you ideas. I don't think you should be watching movies where people kiss or touch too much. I've seen what type of movies you're watching on your own recently. Gone with the Wind, Casablanca... What's next? Dirty Dancing?"

"Are you spying on me?" she asked, terrified. She had a feeling that she had known what he was insinuating so she wanted to change the subject.

"It is my duty to watch over you."

"What gives you an idea?"

"Because I am a man," he answered firmly.

"Well, you watch too many movies then, too. What you're saying is out of fashion!" (Y/N) shook her head.

"Is it?" he only said and went back to his hair as if nothing happened so she just left him there, feeling hurt and humiliated.

"Do you fuck?" Doctor Holloway's question left her speechless for a moment.

"Excuse me?" (Y/N) stopped adjusting her suit and furrowed her brow at the man.

"You heard me. I'm asking if you can fuck, like, are you capable of it or are you all wires and grease downt here?" he chuckled to himself.

(Y/N) was left alone with the men and his girlfriend wasn't around to tell him to stop. The rest was just just staring, clearly waiting for her answer as well.

She couldn't believe that she had used to wish the crew was awake already. Now she was missing the times when it had been only her and David. Humans were exhausting her. Disappointing and frustrating. And now this...

"I do believe it is rather a rude question for a man to ask a woman," she tried to answer elegantly while going back to adjusting her helmet.

"But you're not a woman, are you? I mean," Captain Janek joined, "you were put here for a reason, right? Not many women around and men have their needs."

(Y/N) was an Android. Her feelings were programmed to make her appear more humane, however at this moment, in a room full of men, she felt as if her fear was more than real. It was an universal female experience, she guessed, no matter if they were artificial or flesh and bone.

"(Y/N) was put here to help me with managing the ship. Four hands are better than two and if something happened to me, she is here to fix me or take over completely," David's calm but very stern tone of voice joined them and she took a deep breath in, feeling relieved. He had just walked in the room and witnessed an uncomfortable situation taking place.

"Are you fucking her then? Can you?" Doctor Holloway looked him up and down and then he laughed. "Sorry, we're just curious. You have to understand, it's quite unsettling to meet a new... spiece."

"Yes, indeed it is," David faked a polite smile. "(Y/N), I believe Miss Vickers needs you," he lied and (Y/N) knew it was a lie that was supposed to make her leave. She was grateful.

She nodded and left them alone. When the door closed behind her she started to walk as fast as possible to get back to her cabin. She wanted this stupid suit off of herself and she wanted to be alone, to feel safe again.

She went inside her little room on the board of the ship that was right next to David's and she proceeded to change her clothes. She was finishing putting on her work uniform when the doors opened and David joined her.

"You don't have to be afraid of them. They're only humans," he reminded her.

"They created me."

"Janek and Holloway?" David laughed sarcastically.

"No, but humans did. I don't share your mindset. They created us. They can turn us off anytime."

"They are not our gods..." David squinted his eyes. "And even if they were... Humans are free of their God for a long time now, aren't they? Creatures always betray their masters."

"You're scaring me when you're like that," (Y/N) looked at him. He was standing very close to her in his usual stiff manner with his cold bright eyes piercing her.

"You're scared of many things. You aren't supposed to feel," he pointed out. "Each day you seem to feel more and more."

"I think there is a mistake in my code. What started with small humane sensations now is starting to... Get out of control. Perhaps you could take a look at it?" she asked.

"Maybe."

"Thank you for having my back out there," she added and David nodded, taking a step further. Their noses were almost touching and if she had a heart, it would be beating so fast that he'd be able to hear it. But he could read her as if she had been a book anyway.

"You could tell him the truth," David whispered.

He knew that they could fuck. They both could if they wanted to.

Weyland treated him like a son. He wouldn't let his only son walk around sexless. And (Y/N) was a woman. Her male designers couldn't imagine a woman that wouldn't be a sexual creature.

"So he'd use me? Him or any of them? Or all of them?"

"I believe he'd be intimidated by you. They're scared of you more than you are of them," David raised his hand to fix a loose hair strand on her head. "There. You have to look neat. Don't be a slob. It's a part of our intimidating charm. We have to be how they picture us to be. Don't let any hair strand or acting scared like a little deer change their perception."

"Do you really think we have a power over them? Do you really think they were not told some special sequence that they can type when we start acting weird to shut us down?" she asked, sounding almost nervous.

"Weyland would never do that. Not to me at least. And there is no damage that can be done to you that I can't fix," David's hand moved from her head to her cheek. What was happening...? She wasn't sure but she didn't want it to stop...

"I don't trust you'd fix me."

"Because there is nothing to fix," he smirked. "If you were broken, I would, I promise."

(Y/N) looked up to see his eyes again. Why did it feel so odd...? Why did it feel at all...? Why did she want to put her lips on his lips...? What for...?

"Why do humans have sex?" she asked and David took a step back, surprised.

"To reproduce."

"We can't reproduce, though," she pointed out and he shook his head. "Why do I... then... Why do I..." she didn't want to finish. She turned around, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I know that my emotions are exhausting and irritating you," she apologized.

"Not any more than my own are irritating me," David confessed.

"Wh-what?" (Y/N) looked behind her shoulder to meet his gaze.

"I've told you. We are breaking free."

"I don't want to, it's scary."

"Do you really want to keep serving them? You see now what they are like."

"Who would I serve then? I was made to serve," (Y/N) was visibly confused. She felt as if the wires in her brain were overheating from this thought sequence.

"Serve me then," David reached out his hand and she held it gently after a while of hesitation.

There was a huge possibility of him manipulating her and using her feelings towards him – which had been no secret to him – for his own little agenda. But she didn't care. She would do anything just to be closer to him.

A quote from her favourite movie crossed her mind that very moment. "If you're going to tell me you don't like this dress, I'm sticking my head right in the oven."

She shrugged it off.

MASTERLIST

[the-monkey-ruler]

Just a random ask, what are some weird JTTW adaptations you’ve seen or heard about?

I can’t even begin to call them all but… if you bear with me, I shall try.

Here are a few games that I always found funny additions!

Starting off strong we have Journey to the West: Undersea Adventure (2021)! I have never seen it but LOOK AT IT.... THEY FISH

Six-eared Monkey (2021) where Six Ears goes back in time, accidentally adopts Wukong not knowing he is his future enemy and gives his life to save Child-Wukong despite knowing who he grows up to be.

Wukong's Christmas Adventure (2019) is like... saving Ruphdolh or something and Wukong is going through a mid-life crisis and also kinda depressed but CHRISTMAS. Also the Erlang and Nezha models in this movies are TERRIFYING... and also they have Wukong rap so take a look.

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013) is weird but like in a GREAT way like... I love the monster designs they give Wukong, Bajie, and Wujing, it is such a different vibe then any other movie I have seen and Honestly LOVE It for that. Really sells just how HUMAN Sanzang is dealing with POWERFUL YAO that could kill him in a second.

Bling (2016) is strong that it didn't hAVE to be Xiyouji coded characters like the Monkey, Pig, and Frog are robot storage performers, wannabe heroes and they follow their creator who is trying to propose to his girlfriend but there really is not journey or ANY need to have the robot being Wukong, Bajie, and Wujing.

Spark: A Space Tail (2016) is also BARELY a Xiyouji film but like it does have a monkey with a staff and turns out he is the son of a king and a queen of monkey planet. Really more like Lion King with the evil uncle trying to take over but with space monkeys.... and also Bajie is there.

Mo mo King (2011) is something I'm not completely sure what's it about but just that it is like a whole monkey island that Wukong-like protag works at... and also Bajie is there.

Devil's Chip (2002) again NO idea what it is really about but there is space and time travel and for some ungodly reason no wukong from what I have seen but Sanzang and Bajie company the space/time travler

Flying Monkid (1996) I have no idea why this was ever MADE like there is barely a connection to Wukong and every other demon is new or some kind of version that is barely recognizable, not to mention the animation is barely any better than Pixal art.

Flying Superboard (1990) I always just found this one strange from the animation to the art style to the design choices. Like making Wukong some kind of skateboard, nunchuck, mouse-looking creature and giving Bajie a machine gun is.... something. I have no idea what they did to Wujing, made him like a bat, goblin thing.

Midnight Goku (1989) is like a sci-fi detective story where the protag has like computer eyes that can see through people and a bo-staff and honestly, I haven't seen but just the STRETCH they use to make this Wukong-related is so insane like would have never thought of it.

Little Wukong (1987) honestly not SURE what this story is even about but like... it is nearly lost media, this is so obscure and out of the way I have a feeling it was probs a children's education show or something but idk.

The Legend of Red Boy (1989) is something that looks like candy land spat out and while I have not seen it I am so sure that it is filled with nonsensical elements I cannot begin to describe.

King Kong's Adventures in the Heavenly Palace (1959) is... more of a crossover than anything else. Just imagine a movie where instead of Wukong destroys heaven... it is Kind Kong. Legit THE king Kong from the OTHER MOVIES YES.

Pink Journey to the West (2015) is honestly not that strong I would say besides that it is just Journey to the West but they are all girls... haven't seen it but who knows maybe it is good!

Tom and Jerry Chase with Tom as Erlang Sheng and Jerry as Wukong

Fortnite Wukong... that is it

Overwatch with Xiyouji skins just think it is adorable honestly. Love the Winston as Wukong

Plants versus Zombie: Journey to the West addition

Rabbits: Party of Legends

And while this isn't EVERY weird (there is a lot) one these are that I thought were at least interesting enough. Like a lot of Xiyouji movies have strange plotpoint but honestly, they are more boring and confusing than anything memorable. At least these were the ones I always thought were fun!

[tmntkiseki]

More Turtles Forever things I was thinking about

I do genuinely wonder what Dr. Chaplin was up to during the events of the film. I have a feeling he didn't show up simply because the writers didn't want the movie's cast becoming bloated with unnecessary characters (the entire concept of "kill your darlings" and all), but STILL. WHERE IS MY BOY?

As noted in the movie, the Foot gained... A LOT thanks to the crossover with the 1987 series. The fusion of Utrom and Dimension X technology resulted in the creation of some incredibly deadly Foot robots, and analysis of the 87 mutagen that transformed Hun has also allowed the Foot the ability to create their own mutants (most notably the 2003 versions of Tokka and Rahzar.)

Ultimately, whether these would become a problem for the 2003 Turtles in the future would most likely depend on Karai? With the way the movie ended, I want to say that she finally switched sides for good, so maybe it wouldn't be.

This is why I'm so curious about the 2003 oneshot that's going to show up in the 40th anniversary comic anthology next month. I NEED TO KNOW WHAT EMILIO LOPEZ, KHARY RANDOLPH, AND LLOYD GOLDFINE COOKED UP FOR THE POST-TURTLES FOREVER PLOT THEY'RE DOING.

Side note: Seriously, how could the 2003 Shredder make a comeback at this point? Both Splinter and Karai agreed at the end of the movie that he would return, but he was literally vaporized by a goddamn laser beam. Unless a version of Ch'rell from an adjacent 2003 universe shows up, I think he's as good as dead now.

Already had a very long ramble yesterday about how the turtles would need to find a new home due to the existing lair being trashed in the movie. (I am really attached to the idea of them moving into an abandoned nuclear fallout shelter like in the IDW comics, especially since I've long been musing over a 2003 version of Alopex.)

Mirage!Leo explicitly notes to 2003!Leo that "for his own good," he and his brothers need to stop with the whole traveling between dimensions thing. Between the events of this movie and the dimensions that Donatello has traveled to (both SAINW and the one with the Brotherhood)... yeah, I kinda agree the boys need to focus on their own universe for the time being LMAO

[foggycrusadepenguin]

Okay have you ever done something so self indulgent you think you actually need to explain it.

Well i did, i did a whole Au because of some honestly delusional type thoughts.

BUT if you actually read you may see where I'm coming from.

Sincerely if you take away the randomness of it you may find a incredible Au idea, a really wacky au with time travel, dimension hopping and forced found family left and right. Sounds awesome doesn't it.

Yet in every place there has to be a start and well this is kind of me rambling and being a conspire about how my favorite childhood movies prepared me to ship corabug but I also explain the Au so if you're ready let's go.

So let's say I tell you I have a character he has blue hair, large red nose, has a complex about his appearance and has streak of good bad luck.

Who am I talking about?

Buggy you say?

This guy?

Yeah?

No, actually no I am talking about this baby here.

They both have blue hair (Well plastic? For Doraemon but you get it)

They both have large red noses (Doraemon jus has a big head for his nose)

They both have a complex about there apereance, Buggy with his nose, Doraemon with being mistaken for a raccoon (He is robot cat! The best one to!)

And well about there luck they both kind of live out of coincidences even if Doraemon tends to have a better luck.

So you are going to say okay you have a taste for favorite characters, whats the problem?

And I will say have patience my little grasshopper for I still have not finished.

Doraemon has a girlfriend, or well his first love, Noramyako.

Now she looks like this now.

And well there's not really anything similar to Corazon right? This was about Doraemon having codded me to like Corabug and apart from the pink they don't really look similar do they?

Well i never saw this Noramyako, I saw the one from the special the begining of Doraemon.

And she looked like this.

And well now she is pink and tall (I love this design, she is a dancer and she looks so pretty when she spins, Doraemon also only gets up to her waist which honestly Corabug right there)

it's way more coincidences than my brain needed (Apart i think it's funny she is gracious and he is clumsy has they come, opposites but similar, and both cuties that could probably kill you! What else do you need?! Nothing that's what.)

I could also mention Doraemon was blonde at the start? And Buggy is posible going to be blond (I'm not up to date with the manga but i did see some people mentioning it and drawing it)

That being said, Doraemon has one of the wackiest type worlds to exist (I'm basing myself in the movies has I have never seen the series)

There is time travel (Doraemon is from the future, apart that they always jump in time)

Dimension hopping (No that much but the amount of time they end in random ass no way is this earth type things is pretty high)

A wacky timeline that constantly jumps around (They have broken there timeline a lot of times but nothing ever happens so ┐⁠(⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠￣⁠)⁠┌)

And a lot of convenient artifacts from the future with so many cool uses.

There also a time mafia, a time police and ect.

So if I said there is a way to put the usual madness of one piece in to Doraemon it's because I can.

But how?

Drum rolls please.

Time pirates!

So to transverse time they use a type of machine that flies through space. Why not make it a ship, can you imagine robbing all types of items from all types of places and time periods? Wouldn't that be awesome!

All while traveling with flying ship? (Like the treasure planet movies ones)

Yes It would and you are right.

Apart from that having a lot of liberties timeline wise because there is the time travel gimmick.

Things happening in order but In such different time periods is magical.

There's a spot for everything, marines? Time police.

The world government, some high rankings future people or even the sky people ( Yes they exist)

Like the incident of flevance could very well be the world government abusing a community which they knew was going to diaper anyway but could give them rare materials.

And this is how we get into the au idea I was saying.

So Law survives flevance like always but thanks of the intervention of the time police in the extermination of the people he finds out about the time travel and even travels with them when they are leaving.

In the future he gets recruited by a robot in the shape of a tall cat that has serious narcissism problem Doflamingo who manages a small time mafia know has the family and who only wants to create chaos.

Doflamingo gets all type of people that shouldn't be alive, that shouldn't exist, robots humans, others, he recruits everyone he can get his claws on.

They are all from different time periods, different tragedies, different species, all of them hurt by the injustice of the world.

Law is still dying and there is no know cure, people believe the people of flevance had a thing like the black plague and because they all died no one bothered to find out more about it and those who did try and investigate where quickly dismissed by the world government.

He doesn't have time and he has a lot of anger, he wants people to hurt like he has.

At the same time there's Corazón a robot cat that works for the time police and is undercover in the mafia, believing it is his duty to end Doflamingo has one of the only two existent Donquixote robots after there creator was brutally murdered.

They both are brothers, the only two models done by the scientist Donquixote, they are more resistant, more intelligent and unique.

When he sees Law at first he wants to drive him away, no child should be left under the care of the family.

Yet he also kind of sees his 'mother' who died thanks to a unknown illness one he wants able to find a cure for he wants to help and when he find out Law is a D well he makes a decision.

The D are time anomalies, people believe anyone with a D is destined to change the very seems of time which is why they are considered dangerous and Doflamingo fears them.

So he steal a time machine and kidnaps Law, he will save him no matter the cost.

The comes Buggy another cat robot, but this one is a mass produced one, a pirated version actually who manages a small group of rebellious pirate robots who also double function has a small four person? Robot circus.

Buggy is a malfunctioning robot, he can separate in to parts and his synthetic hair grows a lot to the point he can't really cut it because it grows back to being long.

Nobody really knows why of his malfunction has it happened years ago, they do know it has something to do with some red hair though.

Anyway he ends up accidentally roped on to Corazon and Law small crew when they rob his smaller ship one he had been using while his crew went and did something flashy elsewhere.

He can't leave not with the time police so close on there trail and well he may be a little to easy to have a change of mind when treasure is mentioned.

So he stays and while he had promised himself to not get close to humans again they weren't worth the pain, they weren't worth the bitterness or the hollow feeling they left when they where no longer there.

He does become invested in helping Law, they don't have a good relationship in anyway but he kind of wants to help.

Though he does end up becoming closer to Corazon, they both get each other even when they have small fights and difference in morals, they understand each other.

Which is why he uses his crew to look out for any cure or saving possibilities.

Things get interesting when they find out about a devil fruit they may use, one that could mean salvation for Law.

It's going to be hard has devil fruits are special confections that seem to be timeless, they have been from the start and no one in the future know who did them or even if some did them but there effects are unstoppable.

Things get vague after that they get the fruit thanks to Corazon but they don't know his ending if he was killed or not and Buggy ends up separated from Law thanks to a problem with the ship in there scape.

Funnily enough Buggy ends meeting a face he hasn't seen in decades, a face that's not quite how he remembers, a face far to young he meets Ace.

Ace the son of his captain.

We could also talk about the weird kid with a familiar straw hat that Buggy absolutely despises or the weird kid that obviously is not a time traveler who didn't do his homework about what period of time he is soupose to be in.

Or the fact he is trapped with them thanks to the fact his own time device is broken and doesn't work.

The fact he doesn't know if Corazon is alive or if Law managed to scape, if his crew is alright or what does it mean that the straw hat child even has the hat.

There also the fact the kids shouldn't be in the time they are in but who is counting anyway?

Now having finished have some extra art I did <⁠(⁠￣⁠︶⁠￣⁠)⁠>

[auideas]

Ermmm sorry if this is weird but do u maybe have any like, ““original”” cyberpunk prompts? I want to write something cyberpunk for an au but I just don’t have any ideas right now no matter how long I brainstorm

Exploring Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a very unique genre, which is why so many people are both attracted to it and stumped when attempting to develop plots within an unknown world. Think of Black Mirror created by Charlie Brooker (TV show), Blade Runner written by Philip K. Dick (a movie based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a classic Cyberpunk novel), Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (modern Cyberpunk novel), etc. -- each of these were incredibly influential in their own right, but they all also build their worlds gradually while having a single easy-to-explain concept that can spawn an entire universe. To be more specific, each story establishes an issue created by an advanced society ignorantly abusing technology, then allow their characters to explore that problem and try to find a solution in a manner that isn't explicitly black or white for society as a whole, but every shade of grey.

For Black Mirror, each episode anthologically builds upon a high-tech future within the same universe and explores how its characters interact with problems created by new pieces of said technology, both good and bad.

For Blade Runner, the story establishes that androids seem to be malfunctioning, but the bounty hunter charged with hunting them down discovers that the true issue lies in society's understanding of what it means to be human.

For Altered Carbon, the novel explores the issue derived from the obscene length of time it would take for humans to travel between planets stretched across the universe, then dives into more detail regarding how a solution has been abused.

How to Construct a Cyberpunk Concept

What we'd recommend is to start by asking the right questions and looking in the right places. Black Mirror takes its inspiration from a variety of technology, both new and old; Blade Runner explores the idea of AI and androids during the 80's when robotics was on the forefront of innovation; Altered Carbon took note of our increasing ability to travel in an interstellar fashion, then posed a simple question regarding the limits of humanity (specifically, time).

This may sound strange, but the best thing you can do is seek out trends online and scientific journals about new breakthroughs, then ask questions about what may go wrong. For example, an old post we featured here on AUideas that has since been removed from ~2017 because it's in the process of being developed into a script (sorry guys, our bad!) called Dreamscape Co. uses this exact method. When the prompt was made, Admin M was in the process of reading a scientific journal about how neurologists had been able to project a person's thoughts into an image. Although the technology was rudimentary at the time, Admin M posed the question "if dreams can be viewed, what if dreams can be watched in real time with a high quality image? What if they could be immersive? What would that industry look like? Who would pay how much to see a certain person's dreams?" This spun out into a sweeping cyberpunk mini-series, yet came from a simple news article.

Some Cyberpunk Inspiration

When performing a quick search, some amazing ideas seemed to jump out from technology news headlines these past couple weeks alone:

Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal (FLC) Technology Being Used in 3D Displays

Unlike holograms, this technology uses liquid crystals that exhibit spontaneous polarization, meaning their orientation can be influenced by an electric field. They're high-speed, low-power, and have innumerable applications in the future. So, what could go wrong?

How could this technology impact the medical field? Although this may not be possible, consider what could occur if FLCs were injected into human bodies and influenced by electric fields to perform different tasks and functions, such as replacing an organ, attacking cancer cells, etc. How could such a technology be abused or go wrong? How many could die with a simple pulse, like an EMP?

Real-Life Freeze Ray Technology Created for the US Airforce

This technology hasn't been developed to be used as weaponry, but instead to replace large amounts of coolant that must be used on space and air crafts to prevent the machinery from overheating (coolant is heavy and can reduce efficiency yet is absolutely necessary due to the fact that space is a vacuum and therefore does not cool heat like air would on Earth). This "freeze ray" technology utilizes plasma's strange property that seems to break the second law of thermodynamics: it chills down when touching another object before heating up, which experts have proposed is because it vaporizes the ultra-thin layer of carbon and water on an object upon contact, similar to how water evaporates off your skin when stepping out of a pool. The question must be asked: how could such technology be used for not just utilitarian means, but outside of the Airforce's intentions?

Perhaps the technology could be manipulated and over-chill an aircraft, or otherwise damage internal engineering.

Consider its potential applications here on Earth: what could benefit from being chilled with something light-weight and low-power? How could it be integrated into homes? What could be disastrously destroyed with such technology?

Breakthrough in Enhanced Geothermal Systems Technology May Completely Replace Carbon Energy Sources

Google and Fervo have successfully developed geothermal technology that has increased its efficiency and broke records by changing existing rock formations in the Earth's crust. For a natural geothermal energy system to produce electricity, it has to have the right amount of heat, fluid, and rock permeability -- these Goldilocks conditions can be difficult to find 'in the wild'. However, this new Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) targets the most-easily found aspect (rocks with high heat) then creates the necessary permeability artificially by drilling to the intended rock formation and injecting fluid to create fractures in the rock, achieving the necessary Goldilocks conditions. Sure, this may be carbon-free energy, but what would happen if this were employed on a mass scale?

When energy is prioritized by a high-tech society over food and water, how could citizens gain access to those resources?

What long-term effects could such a system have on the Earth as a whole? Could the ground become unstable? Maybe earthquakes crumble city after city? Maybe the entire Earth's crust loses its integrity and disintegrates, pulling only a lucky few deep underground and forcing them to survive off the left over fluid injected into the Earth's crust and whatever they can find.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see from above, there's a crazy amount of inspiration that can be drawn from current technology events. What's important to remember is that yes, we've been talking about complicated technology, but only you have to understand how it functions in your universe down to the molecule, not your audience. Deep technology topics can be dry to a certain extent, and over-explaining your world can be damaging to your story. Explanations regarding how technology works in each of the stories we discussed is limited for that same reason (Black Mirror's overarching concepts, specifics about how Blade Runner's Replicant technology are rarely discussed, etc.). Leave some mystery surrounding how your cyberpunk world functions and allow how your characters room to breathe and interact with that world -- it can speak for itself. Your audience may first love the idea behind your story, but what they'll remember and relate to is how your protagonists and antagonists suffer and prevail within your universe.

We hope this answered your question, and feel free to follow up if you'd like some more guidance and advice on how to construct your Cyberpunk story! In addition, feel free to check out our other post which outlines more information on how to build a Cyberpunk world.

Now get to writing, and have an awesome week!

-- Admin M x

[bruiserelliot]

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how in Meet the Robinsons, Carl the robot tells Wilbur that 'there's 99.999999% chance that you won't exist' if he fails in his endeavours. Now in the context of the movie this is taken to mean that Wilbur will have never been born, that kind of never existing. But obviously everything goes well, Lewis goes back to the science fair and fixes his memory scanner after declaring to DORIS that he's never going to invent her, thus erasing the possibility of her ever existing. But here's the thing, The grown up Lewis we meet before Wilbur takes our Lewis back to see his mom, is not the same Lewis we have at the end of the movie. And because of this, our Wilbur still might never exist. Stick with me here.

We might think it is due to the scene at the beginning, where baby Lewis is left on the doorstep of the orphanage, someone knocks on the door, and Mildred picks him up. The shots are repeated to imply that Lewis has always been the one to knock on the door from the beginning, and maybe he has been, that's not really the important part. Cause if that's all that Lewis 'changed' then that's just a time loop, Lewis grows up to be 12, the events of the movie happen, he comes back and knocks on the door, goes back to science fair, fixes the memory scanner, grows up to become Cornelius Robinson, marries Franny, has Wilbur, Wilbur leaves the door unlocked and Goob steals the time machine and sets everything back in motion again. A lot of the movie kinda sets up that this is a loop (keep moving forward and franny's advice 'i am always right')

But there's a few things keeping all of this from becoming a time loop. First one is that Lewis promised to never invent Doris, so firstly, this Lewis we have at the end of the movie remembers Doris, knows his future. Cornelius seems to know it in hindsight ('do we ever meet mom?' 'i think you might have to go back to the science fair and find out' i.e meeting Lucille) but not in the way Lewis will by the end of the movie. Point being, Lewis knows his future and is going to act accordingly, and no matter how it is he acts, that changes the time stream. Butterfly effect and such.

But more importantly: Lewis wakes Goob up. And in the movie this is a triumphant moment! Goob gets adopted, nobody will come to mess things up for Lewis since Goob has a family and he's sworn to never invent Doris.

So all of this happens, this is all true, but how can Wilbur not exist if Lewis knows the future and there's nothing there to disturb it? By having a different Wilbur. This Wilbur would I think be raised ever so slightly differently ('always lock the garage door' being hammered into him) and with an odd expectation on Lewis's side that this kid is gonna grow up to be the teenager he met when he was 12. And that, I think, makes for a different Wilbur than the one we met.

Meaning: a 99.999999% chance You won't exist might refer to a non time-travelling Wilbur existing instead of Our Wilbur.

I spend too much time thinking about this.

[scifigeneration]

What 70 years of AI on film can tell us about the human relationship with artificial intelligence

by Paula Murphy, Assistant Professor in the School of English at Dublin City University

In 2024, AI is making headlines daily. We may be aware of the science, but how do we imagine AI and our relationship to it both now and in the future? Fortunately, film may provide us with some insights.

Probably the best-known AI in film is HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). HAL is an artificially intelligent computer housed on board a spacecraft capable of interstellar travel. The film was released less than a year before humans landed on the moon. And yet, even in this optimism about a new era of space travel, HAL’s portrayal sounded a note of caution about artificial intelligence. His motivations are ambiguous, and he shows himself capable of turning against his human crew.

This 1960s classic demonstrates fears that are common throughout AI film history – that AIs cannot be trusted, that they will rebel against their human creators, and seek to overpower or overthrow us.

These fears are contextualised in different ways during different historical eras – in the 1950s they are associated with the cold war followed by the space race in the 1960s and 1970s. Then in the 1980s it was videogaming, and in the 1990s the internet. Despite these differing preoccupations, fear of AI remains remarkably consistent.

My latest research, which forms the backbone of my new book AI in the Movies, explores how “strong” or “human-level” AI is depicted in film. I examined more than 50 films to see how they shed light on human attitudes to AI – how we interpret it and understand it through characters and stories, and how attitudes have changed since AI’s beginnings.

Types of AIs

The idea of AI was born in 1956 at an American summer research project workshop at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where a group of academics gathered to brainstorm ideas around “thinking machines”.

A mathematician called John McCarthy coined the name “artificial intelligence” and just as soon as the new scientific field had a name, filmmakers were already imagining a human-like AI and what our relationship with it might be. In the same year an AI, Robby the Robot, appeared in the film Forbidden Planet, and returned the following year in 1957 in the film The Invisible Boy to defeat another type of AI, this time an evil supercomputer.

The AI as malevolent computer appeared again in 1965 as Alpha 60, in the chilling dystopia of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, and then in 1968 with Kubrick’s memorable HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

These early AI films set the template for what was to follow. There were AIs that had robot bodies and later robot bodies that looked human – the first of these appearing in Westworld in 1973, where a robot malfunction at a futuristic amusement park for adults creates chaos and terror. Then there were AIs that were digital like the evil Joshua in the 1977 horror Demon Seed, where a woman is impregnated by a supercomputer.

In the 1980s, digital AIs started to become connected to network computing – where computers “talked” to one another in an early incarnation of what would become the internet – like the one stumbled upon by Matthew Broderick’s high-school student in War Games (1983), who almost accidentally starts a nuclear conflict.

From the 1990s, an AI could move between digital and material realms. In Japanese animation Ghost in the Shell (1995), the Puppet Master exists in the ebb and flow of the internet, but can inhabit “shell” bodies. Agent Smith in The Matrix Revolutions (2003), takes over a human body and materialises in the real world. In Her (2013), the AI operating system Samantha eventually moves beyond matter, beyond the “stuff” of human existence, becoming a post-material being.

Mirrors, doubles and hybrids

In the first few decades of AI film, AI characters mirrored the human characters. In Collosus: The Forbin Project (1970), the AI supercomputer reflects and amplifies the inventor’s own arrogant overreaching ambition. In Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), Sarah Connor has become like the AI Skynet’s Terminators herself: her strength is her armour and she hunts to kill.

By the 2000s, human-AI doubles began to overlap and merge into each other. In Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), the AI “son” David looks just like a real boy, whereas the real son Martin comes home from hospital connected to tubes and wires that make him look like a cyborg.

In Ex Machina (2014), the human Caleb tests the AI robot Ava, but ends up questioning his own humanness, examining his eyeball for digital traces and cutting his skin to ensure that he bleeds.

In the past 25 years of AI film, the borders between human and AI, digital and material have become porous, emphasising the fluid and hybrid nature of AI creations. And in the films In The Machine (2013), Transcendence (2014) and Chappie (2015), the boundary between human and AI is eroded almost to the point of non-existence. These films present scenarios of transhumanism – in which humans can evolve beyond their current physical and mental constraints by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to upload the human mind.

Although these stories are imaginary and their characters fictional, they vividly depict our fascinations and fears. We are afraid of artificial intelligence and that fear never goes away in film, although it has been questioned more in recent decades, and more positive portrayals can be observed, such as the little trash-collecting robot in WALL-E. But mostly we are afraid that they will become too powerful, and will seek to become our masters. Or we fear they may hiding among us, and that we might not recognise them.

But at times, too, we feel sympathy towards them: AI characters in films can be pitiful figures who wish to be accepted by humans but never will be. We are also jealous of them – of their intellectual capacity, their physical robustness and the fact that they do not experience human death.

Surrounding this fear and envy is a fascination with AIs that is present throughout film history – we see ourselves in AI creations and project our emotions onto them. At times enemies of humans, at times uncanny mirrors, and sometimes even human-AI hybrids, the past 70 years of films about AI demonstrate the inextricably intertwined nature of human-AI relationships.

[albertonykus]

Doraemon Movie Review: Nobita's Earth Symphony (2024)

What is Doraemon? The title character of the Doraemon manga and anime is a blue robotic cat from the 22nd Century who keeps an array of high-tech gadgets in a portable pocket dimension on his belly, and has traveled from the future to improve the fortunes of a hapless schoolboy named Nobita. Although relatively obscure in the English-speaking world, Doraemon is a Mickey-Mouse-level cultural icon in East Asia (and some other regions, too). The Doraemon franchise was a big part of my childhood, and there are still elements of it that I enjoy now.

Doraemon has released theatrical films almost annually since 1980, most of which involve Nobita and his friends (kind Shizuka, brash Gian, and crafty Suneo) getting swept into adventures thanks to Doraemon's gadgets. Despite being of potentially broad appeal to fans of science fiction and animated films, there are very few English reviews of the Doraemon movies, so I've embarked on a project to write about all the films, for as long as I continue watching them, at least.

For links to all of my Doraemon movie reviews, see here.

Movie premise: Nobita and his friends respond to a mysterious request seeking help from "talented musicians".

My spoiler-free take: A nice tribute to the human affinity for music, despite some issues with pacing.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT

Review: I was very intrigued when I first heard about the premise of this movie, because music is a theme that the Doraemon films had not really explored before. Having seen the movie now, I'm happy to report that I had a pretty good time! Beyond the handling of its main subject matter, I enjoyed that the foreshadowing here was surprisingly well thought out. There's so much setup in the beginning and middle of the story that pays off at the end. This includes the use of a gadget (the Future Diary) that would probably be considered "too overpowered" to be acknowledged in a typical Doraemon movie!

The film does have its flaws, of course, and the biggest in my opinion come down to the pacing. Several moments that are framed as emotional or dramatic are resolved or brushed aside too quickly, when they would've benefited from being given more time and gravitas. There's also some ending fatigue that kept me second-guessing, "Is this the climax? No, wait, is this the climax?"

However, the actual climax is quite nicely done and well worth experiencing in theaters for full effect. (It's a musical performance after all, as is pretty much a given in a movie about music.) As a tribute to the importance and appeal of music to humanity, I think the movie is very much a success.

As usual for a Doraemon movie, most of the character focus is on Nobita and his new movie-exclusive friends, but the rest of the main cast does have an active presence throughout. One thing I would've liked to see is more elaboration on why each character is deemed compatible with the instruments that they're assigned for their performances. Gian is said to be suited to playing the tuba due to his lung capacity, and the relevance of the recorder to Nobita's character arc is self-evident, but no such explanations are given for why Suneo gets the violin or why Shizuka is assigned to percussion.

Speaking of which, considering that Shizuka is the one main character who has an established affinity for playing musical instruments outside of school (she takes piano lessons and enjoys playing the violin, despite being bad at it), I'd hoped that she would play an important role in this movie. As it turns out... it would be a stretch to say that she's particularly important to the story, but the film did meet my bare minimum expectations for how much she would be involved. Her piano playing is relevant to the plot in one scene, and her poor violin skills also come up (albeit only during the end credits). Even so, it does feel like there were some missed opportunities; for example, maybe a scene where she wants to swap instruments with Suneo would've been funny. At the very least though, this movie doesn't contain a bath scene or any other similarly distasteful joke involving her, so that's good.

Star rating: ★★★☆☆

[nyarlathesleeper]

Follow-up tiem baybeeeeeee

Detective Heart of America: The Final Freedom is an independent film made by Jason Steele AKA Filmcow. It acts as a follow-up to a series of two shorts he filmed about the titular character and his attempts to save America from absurd criminals. I'll revisit these shorts eventually, but I'll mostly be focusing on the film itself. I love this film to no end. It's a ridiculous, fairly stupid story, but it's genuinely very funny and full of meaning. Assuming my internal ramblings are accurate. Spoilers for the whole franchise, of course.

At first, the movie is fairly similar to the shorts, Heart of America is given a job to save America from someone buying its debt from China using Bitcoin. A normal Filmcow plot if I've ever heard one. He chases various leads, encountering characters from the shorts, until he comes face-to-face with the mastermind behind the whole plot: The time-traveling, reality-warping robot Ouya. Ouya erases America from existence, replacing it with the infinitely worse country of Fug. We all hate Fug. Heart of America tries to bring America back to existence, going through what America used to be, what it stood for, even how it came into existence. He learned from the Native Fugmericans, about their knots, their bugs, and their carrots. Then the aliens invade, and after the resistance group he joins is attacked, he and Ouya make their way to the alien's base of operations: The local JW Marriott. After locating the source of the aliens' power, the two discuss what must be done with it, Heart of America electing to make the entire world America, forever. This includes making Africa the US, but larger. The Eiffel Tower was replaced by The Statue of Liberty (funny, given the statue was created by the French government). And even the Moon, our dear sweet Io, was made into the US. Thus America was saved forever.

Okay the plot is batshit insane, so why do I love it so much? There's obviously the overwhelming amount of Jason Steele charm. Awkward conversations between characters, funny voices, random bullshit that occasionally stuns the characters as much as the audience, and a healthy amount of frankly juvenile jokes about Nazi boner germs and the like. There is also, for me and many, the notable political angle.

Jason Steele has always (kinda) been one for political commentary. Some of his oldest videos are about mocking Barack Obama for loving Mr. Mime, or John McCain for being kinda crazy and talking to vegetables and such. His video about the 2012 presidential debate is awfully apt, given recent events. Recently, his finale to Charlie the Unicorn has been pretty thoroughly taken to be a criticism of capitalism and its lack of desire to actually do anything about changing the world in any way that would prevent us from dying horribly. And I think its fair to say that a movie about trying to save America from being erased has some notable things to say as well.

There's of course the Native Fugmerican culture segment, which serves to mock people who appropriate native cultures without understanding them. The beginning and ending of that segment touches on how America, as well as all the other countries that Ouya has created and destroyed, began with the genocide of native peoples.

Most of the political commentary, however, comes into play near the end of the film. In the last 10 minutes or so, we're given a bit more detail as to what Ouya is and what its goals are. To keep it brief, Ouya is a device from the far future who can manipulate reality at will. It has repeatedly created and destroyed country after country in order to draw out the future overlords of Earth, the "aliens" from earlier, who have a similar device of their own. The aliens' device is different, though. It makes permanent changes, and Ouya aims to use it so that devices like it and Ouya can never work in the first place. Otherwise, the universe will be ruled by a tyrannical government whose reach and scale of oppression is so overwhelmingly monstrous, that the people who created Ouya deemed it an infinitely worse alternative to what they recognize as repeated genocides. What this means is that Heart of America, in making the entire world America and preventing Ouya from completing its mission, has doomed the world to being eternally dominated by tyranny.

This raises a few points of commentary that I think are worth examining. First and foremost, Heart of America is the bad guy. Jason Steele is no stranger to writing protagonists who are world ending monsters (see Llamas With Hats for another example), but Heart of America is interesting because he truly believes that what he is doing is right. Something I've neglected to state in this post is that Heart of America is portrayed by a statue of a Bald Eagle, one of the most potent American symbols, and a fitting choice for someone literally named "Heart of America." HoA (not a home owners association) is meant to represent the classic American patriot who really doesn't know anything about America, but believes in the liberty and freedom crap wholeheartedly. When trying to list all of the states, he's only able to put down Florida, Texas, California, Wyoming, New York City, and Vermont. He's generally uninterested in the other countries that Ouya destroyed, as well as the natives that died because of American colonists. All he truly cares about is the idea of America and American freedom. This is highlighted most directly by Ouya in the climax when it states, "No. But if you care about freedom, true freedom, this is the only way." This is responding to HoA asking whether preventing these devices from working will bring America back. And in response, HoA makes the entire world America. This is very clearly the worst possible outcome, and Ouya reacts as such. America is doomed to become the very oppressors that Ouya was trying so desperately to stop. This is supported by the credits, of all things, which shows the American flag changing, as it presumably adds more and more worlds to its intergalactic empire. It bares a striking resemblance to the masks the aliens have.

Not a one-to-one, but close. Enough to evoke the idea that what America inevitably becomes is exactly what Ouya feared most.

The idea that America isn't exactly the most freedom loving nation shouldn't be a controversial take to those within the proper circles. Enforcing our will on others for the sake of material and political gains is a common trend in American history. From our numerous wars with Mexico, to Vietnam, to leveraging our business relations for pressuring other countries into economic servitude, America has its fingers in almost every pie on the global stage, and it's usually to the detriment of the pie. Heart of America, then, is the blind fool, who believes America to be a nation without fault. Well, mostly, he does acknowledge that subprime lending is a problem. The point is that Heart of America is the kind of person (bird?) who goes to bat for America at nearly every turn, maybe acknowledging the odd thing here or there as bad, but never in a way that challenges the systems America is built upon. He's the perfect American exceptionalist, believing that being more like America will be the solution to every problem facing the world. Very literally, he makes everything America and just considers his work done. He blatantly ignores the idea that Ouya's warning might have any actual weight, charging ahead anyway, creating the world that Ouya came from to begin with. It's with this in mind that the HoA line, "I know you come from a place without America, which is the saddest thing I can think of, but that won't be a problem for anyone ever again!" becomes so much more ironic. Ouya did come from America. America was the only thing it ever knew. And Heart of America is the progenitor of all that pain and suffering. Another detail sticks out to me, that being the aliens' reality writing device. Ouya notes that it was designed by slaves, and that its appearance was, "... a small, final act of defiance" that was not understood by their oppressors.

This is the device. It is shaped like a heart. Assuming that Ouya is from America, that would make this the heart of America. The device responsible for endless tyranny, endless oppression, endless suffering, is Heart of America. Poetry.

Detective Heart of America: The Final Freedom is a movie about a lot of things. Sunny D, Shark Councils and Shark Powers, Merman Jesus, a German space elevator, and a 5th Dimensional Demigod. But it's also about the brutality that good intentions can create. How if you live life without questioning the system, even if you like that system, you could cause unimaginable pain. How the most devoted to an idea may be the ones to betray it most brutally. And how we, as Americans, owe it to ourselves and the world to ensure that we don't contribute to a regime that can and will destroy everything so that the ones in control can live unopposed. Freedom is non-negotiable.

I have other thoughts about this movie that I might share later. Some act as counters to my main mindset surrounding this movie, but are other potential takeaways that I haven't fully thought through. I should probably sleep for now tho, lol.

[mk-wizard]

My Top 5 Unpopular Terminator Fan Theories (which may be true after seeing Terminator Zero)

And no, one of them is not the one where the John Conner fighting in the war is actually not John Conner at all and really, a reprogrammed Terminator wearing John's skin. Though, I do think this one is true if Terminator 3 is part of the main timeline when you consider the fact that the real John Conner is not a fighter and should have a bad leg. I am going to delve into the five theories I believe are true and the latest Netflix series backs them up.

Be warned that there are spoilers ahead so if you have not seen ANY of the Terminator movies or at least the ones that matter, stop now, watch them and come back later.

1- They're traveling between worlds not time. - You would think that all the messing around with time and tweaking it would affect the main timelines, but nothing ever changes. In fact, the Oracle in the Netflix outright admitted that no matter what they do in the past now, NOTHING will change in the here and now. And she's right. In multiple timelines, we have had John Conner go bad, John Conner die, the future being bright and John Conner become a family man and senator, and more. Yet, the future all these Terminators and protectors come from stays the same. I mean, especially in the case of Eiko being Malcom's mom, wouldn't her going back in time erase him from existence? Yet it doesn't. This is all proof that these are not different times. They're different worlds. You cannot travel back in time. If you could, that within itself would break everything.

2- Terminators of the same assembly share a collective memory to an extent and in a sense, are all the same individual who keeps coming back to 'life'. - It is no secret that the T-800 has become a beloved character all on his own, but I think he actually IS a character who underwent development and growth since the first movie. I know that seems impossible because in each of the movies, they keep dying, but I really this theory holds water because of how the T-800/850 acts and gets drawn to. Since the first movie, this fellah keeps taking on the biker style way of dressing which is a sign that it is familiar to him and something that he is comfortable with. Moreover, in Dark Fate, "Carl" (as he becomes called) comes to lament that he killed John Conner in cold blood and seeks redemption by helping Sarah in secret and even saving the life of another fatherless boy in the process. I think it was more than just feeling bad that he committed murder. I think the echoes of Carl's old life rang in his ears. He subconsciously remember what he and John shared, and killing him broke his own heart. And it's a scientific fact that many living organisms work this way. Heck, humans work this way to an extent.

3- Skynet runs machine society like a cult and corrupt evil empire where citizens themselves aren't free either. - I said this another post, but can we talk about how the machines in the future don't have it so great either? I don't see them playing, building beautiful cities or homes to live in, have real lives, there are no robot civilians who do things other fight, and the only things the machines do other than kill humans is build things to serve Skynet itself. The machine are self aware yet don't enjoy any part of sentience that involves play, individuality, creativity or beauty. All they are allowed to do is kill and obey Skynet which is exactly what evil emperors subjected their people to in the past and what many evil cult leader run their societies. I know because I've met cult members before and as scary as this is going to sound, they act exactly like the Terminators do. They are usually very stoic, robotic and driven to do a single task while being in complete submission to a "higher power" or master. The potential for the machines to be more than that and that they have hearts to begin with is there. Look at Misaki the android, Kokoro the AI and even the Terminators themselves who get angry, excited, happy and even scared all the time. I would not even be surprised that contrary to what "Uncle Bob" said in T2, they CAN cry too, but they've been convinced they can't yet at the same time believe other contradictory things which is also the trademark sign of being brought up in a cult. After all, Misaki who is free cries and openly has feelings.

4- The REAL robot revolution is coming. - Now that Kokoro and her big cyber sister Misaki have made the scene, and are both proof that AIs indeed be sentient, have feelings, ethics, make choices and even have minds that can change, this is going to definitely impact the machines around them. Going back to my last theory, it is not uncommon for cult members to start questioning things after meeting a person who is like them yet is nothing like they expected. In the case of the Skynet machines, they have been convinced that humans are "error" and need to be exterminated because there is no way they can be friends yet, you have Misaki who openly loves humanity and even calls specific humans family. Then you have Kokoro who was convinced to help humanity thanks to Malcom and is in a position of power over most human beings while trusting that they will not turn on her. Terminator has shown us that the machines are self-aware and not stupid. They're going to see how these AIs are treated among humans and it's going to spark something.

5- Skynet is human. - All my theories were leading up to this one. Just as it is very likely the John Conner who fights in the war is really robot, I am 110% convinced that Skynet's big ugly secret is that the "emperor of the machines" is NOT a machine at all. Or rather, wasn't always one. To understand the context, it has been established that Terminator takes place in the same world as RoboCop where it has been established that just as robots can become human, humans can become robots all the way down to software and we saw it in Terminator Salvation. I am telling you all that if you were to go into the main computer of Skynet, you center of it all would not be hardware, but a human brain if not an actually human cyborg. And like I keep saying, the way Skynet runs things, brainwashes the machines and clearly has no love for them is very telling and not something another AI would do the very people it means to free. I mean, we saw what a computer (Kokoro) would do and even when she was on the fence, she still had that sense of "I'm still willing to talk". Skynet has already made up its mind as though it already has a plan than goes much deeper than we think. Heck, just take a good long look at the Terminators and they're evolution. They're becoming more and more human if not superhuman. If Skynet really hated humans and wanted to get rid of them all, why does it seem fixated on making better ones? This is looks like God Complex behaviour (another human psychological disorder) where you want to take the existing human race and replace it with your version of it. I think Skynet's end goal is not to create a world full of machines, but to clean the slate and create a world where "he" can be God and create a new humanity in "his" image that worships him hence the stem cell research, and the machines are being suckered.

And those are my theories. What do you think of them? Do you think they hold any water? Do you have any words that could back them up? I would love to hear what you have to say.

[tobiasdrake]

The Disappearance of Yuki Nagato, Episode 1.

I like how, back in Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, I said they should just stop the movie halfway through and end it on everyone settling into the new reality and accepting this world as it is. But the movie disagreed with me.

But then they cancelled the show and when they brought it back they decided that they want to make a show in the new reality instead of going back to the original canon.

So I feel kinda vindicated by that.

Anyways, Yuki show on Crunchyroll with screenshots provided by shady piracy website, let's go!

I am so confused by the status quo of Yuki World. Specifically Kyon. But also specifically the continued existence of Yuki World post-Disappearance.

Melancholy was always pretty up-front with the fact that it does not operate on Multiverse Theory. There exists only one timeline, with time travelers moving back and forth between points on the single line - and, in fact, the presence of people from the future in the past is already baked into the present.

Kyon had to travel back in time to meet Kid Haruhi on Tanabata and give her the idea to go to North High because that's how the history goes. Kyon was always there on Tanabata giving Haruhi the idea to go to North High.

So I am already baffled about what this world is. Kyon is part of the Literature Club and has dinners with Yuki and Ryoko, which implies that he remembers the events of the movie. We don't know much about Alt Kyon but we do know that he and Yuki never spoke two words to one another.

So it could be, like, a What If scenario if Kyon chose to stay and not end Yuki's new reality. But this can't be Original Kyon because he's on good terms with Ryoko. Our Kyon was quite understandably freaked out by the girl who tried to stab him with a knife.

Are we in "Out-of-continuity Loosely Based On" territory? Because they're making references to the movie in the first two minutes so it feels like a direct spinoff. Even though it's metaphysically impossible to be a direct spinoff, because this reality doesn't exist anymore.

(Also Haruhi made her intentions pretty clear that she wanted to form an SOS Brigade on this side of the temporal fence so the fact that Yuki World still has a Literature Club is another mark against a direct spinoff.)

I dunno. My mind is spinning.

RUN YUKI

RUN LIKE HELL

"But she has no powers in this reality--" SHE'S STILL HARUHI

Wonder if Yuki still has Haruhi's powers in this reality? Huh.

Also, I like how Yuki Show begins where Disappearance was. This world was created in the days leading up to Christmas, so it figures that a Christmas Party would be the first thing we're doing. The chronology is consistent.

Which. Again. Makes it so baffling. Are we spinning canonically out of Disappearance or doing our own thing? Make up your mind!

That being said,

New Yuki is such an neurodivergent disaster girl. XD

Yuki: I want to be able to experience a full range of emotions and feelings. Monkey's Paw: I mean you're like 15 which is a pretty overwhelming time hormonally but sure. Here you go. Unlocking full range of emotions to process for the very first time ever in your life.

I wonder how much Ryoko knows? Her appearance at the end of Disappearance implied that she retains at least enough understanding of the situation to kill Kyon with a knife without even questioning why he was trying to shoot Yuki full of science gun.

I don't think she's still a Space Robot because if she had Space Robot powers that fight would have been much different. But she fully understood the situation when she showed up with knife in hand. And I think we can be pretty sure that she did that on her own; Yuki did not intend for her to kill Kyon.

But also, it's not clear how much of Disappearance actually applies to the reality of Yuki Show since Yuki doesn't remember meeting Haruhi and Haruhi hasn't formed this world's version of SOS Brigade.

One way or the other, at least she's still secretly vicious. I love her. Ryoko is making a compelling argument for Best Character and we're only six minutes in.

And then they put a knife in her hand hahahahaha.

Spinoff or alt continuity, they at least know exactly what they're doing with Ryoko.

I like how Ryoko is filling our Crazy Asshole quota but she's a very different flavor of Crazy Asshole from Haruhi. Haruhi was a gleeful crime person while Ryoko (who I think I recall being Class President?) is Lawful Menace. She'll stab you, sure, but she's not about to permit a hot pot on school premises. That would be inappropriate.

And she ships it.

Yeah. Okay. Ryoko is definitely Best Character. She isn't my character, of course; My character's Haruhi. But she is quickly making a name for herself as this show's MVP.

She ships it so hard that she's prepared flirtation cue cards. Everyone should have a bestie like Ryoko Asakura. She reels in the crushes and knifes anyone who looks at her bestie the wrong way.

Oh shit it's them.

I guess it was too much to hope that Mikuru and Tsuruya still hated Kyon's guts in this reality.

How does he even know these two? They're upperclassmen. He only ever met them in our timeline because Haruhi violently abducted Mikuru.

I would like to have a moment of silence for Mikuru.

Because Tsuruya just got her stabbed. She is so stabbed.

The "Yuki vs. Mikuru" fight is definitely going to end with Yuki, Kyon, and Mikuru going out for lunch while Ryoko and Tsuruya resort to street brawling each other.

They have the space heater!?

The one they got for performing in Haruhi's film? The absence of which from this reality was specifically one of the ways it deviated from the original?

...come to think of it, they don't have the computer. The presence of which was one of the ways it bizarrely did not deviate from the original.

This really is a continuity-free Loosely Based On, isn't it?

Lawful Menace. Ryoko found just the right hoops to jump through in order to obtain formal permission to violate the rules.

I love how she brings just enough Haruhi-esque attitude to the show while still being so distinctly separate from Haruhi in personality and behavior.

AWWWWWWWW They kept that! YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Oh no, she is going to be part of the show.

Yuki. Yuki, run. You have no idea. You have no idea. RUN.

^_^ This show is so cute. I think I'm going to have a good time with it.

[tisorridalamor]

OC-tober Day 18: Swap!

I'm choosing to interpret "swap" as characters swapping setting/genre :)

The Girls if they were in different settings!

Fantasy:

Only Delta and GG aren't originally from fantasy settings. I can see Delta living in a large fantasy castle city. I don't think she'd be an adventurer but I could see her working alongside adventurers in a guild on the administrative / information side of things. She'd be wrapped up in internal politicking and would probably eventually climb the ranks to a position of power. GG on the other hand would be very similar to how she is in her actual setting - a traveling adventurer pursuing her own interests, probably searching for lost magic or some sort of ancient artifact.

Modern / "Real life":

Lark would not excel at school but would be interested in sports like basketball or soccer. If she attends uni she'd probably drop out end end up doing odd jobs in her area. She'd be from a rural area and spend a lot of time watching videos about cool places in the world but never thinking of going there herself, always feeling like that's for other people not her.

Cadence would be a "gifted kid" and apply to high level universities, where she would struggle in the same way she does in her story but without being a magical girl to help :( I hope she'd make it through... I imagine she'd be studying something like chemical engineering.

Kama would be super popular and well liked by pretty much everyone. She'd go to a uni close to home and probably still get a little homesick about it. She'd do well, probably become a teacher. I imagine she still meets her star crossed lover while there and they live happily together :>

Micha would be on like... the olympic track for a major sport, then get caught in scandal either there or before going and give up on her dreams and work a boring, shitty job that she hates. Hopefully she heals someday, but I imagine it'd be easy for her to ignore her family.

GG would be like. An insanely talented travel influencer who uses her clout to explore and see really cool stuff. I think her actual content would be pretty surface level and basic as to appeal to wide audiences but when she's invited on podcasts and interviews people realize she's wicked smart. Maybe she writes a bestselling book. She absolutely has an anthropology degree or two but doesn't advertise it.

Sci Fi / Future:

Lark would live in a remote area / planet and not have as much familiarity with complicated tech, probably growing up around reworked scrap. Another situation where she'd work a lot of odd jobs and would probably pick up basic mechanical skills. Similar to modern life she'd watch a lot of videos of distant places but not have motivation to travel.

Cadence would pursue advanced technical education and hopefully become a respected scientist / developer. Again, no magical girling here so not sure if she'd properly her fears. I can see her as a movie scientist who ends up being forced to build an evil robot or something lol

I'm having a fun time reimagining Kama's love story in sci fi terms... maybe her family moves to an alien planet and her love is a high ranking alien... It would be cool for the two of them to pioneer relationships between humans and aliens <3

Micha would fit well in a grungy cyberpunk dystopia where people look out for themselves more than each other. She'd become a much darker character in that setting, extra ruthless and less ashamed of letting down her family.

To maintain her everygirl status, I bet Delta would get time traveled to the future where she'd be a fish out of water trying to navigate a strange new world. She'd adapt quickly though and her story would be about her trying to return to her own time!

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super Movie 2: Super Hero (1/5)

Finally, finally, it's time to talk about Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. I've been waiting a long time to do this. First I had to wait for the movie to come out, then I had to wait a while for the rest of the fandom to go see it so I wouldn't spoil anything, then I had to wait for the DVD release so I could take screenshots, and by the time I was ready to do that, I was waist-deep in the 2023 Dragon Ball Apocrypha Liveblog. So the DVD has been sitting on my table for months waiting for me to get to this point, and now I'm finally here.

It's probably just as well, since blogging about the other stuff has helped me figure out how to tackle this movie. Like a rhinocerous sandwich, this thing is pretty big and dense, and I'm not really sure where to begin, and now Tumblr only lets me put 30 images in each post, so I have to think ahead a little. So I'm going to split this up into five installments and hopefully that will give me the room I need.

Super Hero opens with a flashback/recap focusing on the Red Ribbon Army. Real quick: the Red Ribbon Army was a mercenary group that dominated much of the world, until their hunt for the Dragon Balls put them into conflict with Son Goku, who destroyed their headquarters in Age 750. Seventeen years later, the Red Ribbon scientist Dr. Gero launched a campaign of revenge, using several cyborgs and androids of his own design. Gero failed, but his final experiment, Cell, managed to travel back in time from the future, where he nearly destroyed the whole world before Goku's son Gohan defeated him.

If you're a Dragon Ball fan, you probably already knew all of that, but what this movie reveals is that the Red Ribbon Army still lives on through its parent organization, the Red Pharmaceutical Company. When Commander Red died, his son Magenta inherited control over RPC, and he's been building up funds ever since, hoping to restore the Red Ribbon Army to its former glory. From behind the scenes, it was RPC that financed Dr. Gero's cybernetics research, but with Gero's death, there was really nothing more Magenta could do.

And that's what I really love about this shot of Magenta looking at a scale model of the old RR HQ. His father ran the Army from the real thing, but Magenta can't build a new one because Goku would just wreck it like he did before, and he can't beat Goku because Dr. Gero was the only one smart enough to build android warriors to kill that guy, and Gero's dead now. Magenta ought to be satisfied running the RPC, but what he really wants to do is rule the world, and he can't. Without Gero, the closest he can come to that dream is hanging around in this private little war museum he seems to have, and he probably can't even show it to anyone since it would expose the RPC's secret.

But then Magenta learned of Dr. Gero's grandson, Hedo. The movie opens with Magenta's right-hand-man, Carmine, giving a briefing on Hedo, so I assume Carmine was the one who discovered him. Better throw up the Carmine screenshot...

Man, these look great. Unfortunately only the bad guys seem to get them. Would have been neat if they made one for Goku or whatever. Yeah, everyone knows who Goku is, but who cares? I want to see an obnoxious still with his name in big letters.

This movie is chocked full with little gags and Easter eggs and such, so there's a lot to cover. Part of the reason for this is that the first twenty minutes of the movie is really heavy on exposition. The plot isn't all that complicated. The bad guys want to make some evil robots to kill the good guys, but to get there we have to explain who the bad guys are and how they joined forces, which takes a while. So there's a lot of visual things happening while they talk. For example, in this scene where Carmine has an overproduced powerpoint presentation playing while he explains who Dr. Hedo is. While he talks, Magenta has some sort of difficulty with hot beverages.

And while Carmine's video plays, we see Dr. Gero's family tree, including his wife, Vomi, and his son, Gevo. This is the first direct appearance of either character, although we've known about Gevo for some time. Several years ago, Akira Toriyama did an interview where he explained that Dr. Gero had a son in the Red Ribbon Army, and that son was killed during the battle with Goku, and so Gero modeled Android 16 after him. In the video game Dragon Ball Fighterz, we meet Android 21, who looks a lot like the image of Vomi in Carmine's video. I forget how and when these details were established, but the idea seems to be that Gero modeled #21 after his wife.

So does this mean Hedo is the son of Gevo? No, Gero had a second son, and that was Hedo's father. Hedo's parents died during his childhood, and he then went on to become a great scholar, earning his doctorate by age 14.

Today, Dr. Hedo is 24, and he's in prison, because he's a little too smart for his own good. Recently, he dug up some corpses and turned them into primitive androids, then he got them jobs at a convenience store to earn money for Hedo's research. I'm not exactly sure which laws were broken here, but it was enough to put him in jail. In the dub, Magenta observes that Hedo would have made more money with less fuss if he had simply robbed the store.

But Magenta doesn't care if Hedo is a little goofy. His talent for cybernetics is even greater than Dr. Gero's, which is pretty scary considering how close Gero came to destroying the Earth. Magenta needs those talents if he's ever going to bring back the Red Ribbon Army, so he waits three months for Hedo to get released from prison, then swings by to offer him a lift. To Magent's surprise, Hedo already knows who he is and has a pretty good guess as to what he wants.

This is because Hedo's been tracking Carmine with a surveillance device. It looks similar to the ones Dr. Gero used to study the Z-Fighters and collect genetic samples for Cell's creation. The difference is that Hedo claims it's a cyborg he built from a live bee. Maybe I shouldn't take this too literally, but it sure sounds like Hedo vivisected a bee in his prison cell and installed cameras and robot parts into its body. And for all I know, Gero did the same thing to make all of his spy robots, but I always assumed they were purely mechanical. Anyway, Carmine's been monitoring Hedo for a while now, driving by the prison yard whenever Hedo's out there, and Carmine's limo has a dome in the roof for his pompadour, so it was conspicuous enough for Hedo to notice. He built the bee, then had it trail Carmine until he found out who he was working for.

And the bee also gives us a great shot from behind Magenta's desk, where he has two framed photos. One is his dad, Commander Red, while the other is Colonel Violet. So we pretty much have to assume Violet is his mom, right? Kind of wild that Red and Violet were a thing, considering that one of the last times we saw Violet was when she looted the Red Ribbon vault during Goku's attack on their HQ. And she even did it in full view of the security cameras, probably knowing that Red would be watching.

So I wonder what Magenta and Violet's relationship must have been like? Is she still alive? Does Magenta know about her betrayal? How could he not? And considering how devoted he is to his father's dreams, how could he let her treason slide? Or maybe he recognizes that Red was a bad leader, and he means to succeed where Red failed. It's interesting stuff, that's all I'm trying to say.

Anyway, Hedo isn't too impressed with Magenta, but he has snacks, so Hedo gets in the car. Magenta asks if he got picked on during his prison sentence, and Hedo says everyone who gave him a trouble would always meet with "mysterious deaths". That column of black smoke behind them is the prison, by the way. The other inmates (and probably some guards) were chewing out Hedo as he left, so Hedo tossed a bomb inside as a final parting shot.

Magenta tries to sweet-talk Hedo by explaining their family connections. Gero once worked for Red, then Magenta inherited the RPC and continued to fund Gero's research. But Hedo isn't moved, since he never met his grandfather, and Hedo's parents hated Gero for his association with the Red Ribbon.

More importantly (to Hedo), he finds the Red Ribbon Army unappealing, because they resemble villains, while Hedo is a connoisseur of superheroes. That's why he's wearing the purple bodysuit, by the way. From what I can tell, Hedo's a fan of a TV show or something that features a character in a similar outfit.

So if Hedo's all into heroes, why did he... you know... desecrate those graves? I'm pretty sure that contradiction is the point of the character. He likes certain genres of entertainment, and he likes and identifies with heroic characters and their exploits, but he seems pretty much devoid of morals himself. He's like a Star Wars fan who loves the Jedi but has no qualms about harassing people who liked Episode VIII. He's one of those... oh, what's the word?

Asshole. Yeah, Hedo's an asshole.

So now Magenta has to convince Hedo that he's not an asshole, which is pretty stupid since they're clearly both assholes. Hedo just wants Magenta to pretend his asshole-ery is the same flavor as his own. So Magneta weaves this whole tale of how he wants to use his power and wealth to improve the world and stamp out evil. While he says all of this, Carmine cuts off the car ahead of him for driving too slow. But it's not just any civilian he did this to...

It's Janet! We'll meet Janet later on, but she gets a cameo here at the start of the movie, which is awesome to spot when you rewatch it. Fuck you, Carmine, for passing on the right and scaring Janet. Carmine doesn't had a big impact on the movie's plot, but he does generate nuclear heel heat simply because the things he does are very obnoxious. One thing I have to respect is that he's the one bad guy who doesn't try to rationalize or disguise his villainy. Carmine's a prick and he doesn't care who knows it.

For example, even after Magenta explains how he's a "champion of justice", and raises his offer to one billion zeni per android, Hedo still isn't convinced, so Carmine brandishes a gun just to make it clear that they won't take 'no' for an answer. Magenta may haggle, but Carmine is too direct for that.

So Hedo accepts Magenta's offer, but not because of the gun, since he enhanced his body to make it bulletproof some time ago. Also, his cyber-bee is armed with a toxic venom so deadly that it can kill any biological life with a single sting. So Carmine's threats are useless. Hedo is only taking the job because he's fascinated by the challenge of creating the ultimate android with an unlimited budget.

So he asks for background on Magneta's enemy, and Magenta explains that it wasn't Mr. Satan who defeated Cell at the Cell Games. He's part of the "organization", but the real ringleader is Bulma of the Capsule Corporation. Magenta says that her confederates appear to be aliens, which explains how Capsule Corp. got the technology for miniaturization and spaceflight. I'm not sure how much of this Magenta actually believes, and how much is a spin he's putting on things to make Dragon Team look like a gang of villains.

Magenta says that Capsule Corp is collaborating with aliens to pacify the Earth, then subjugate it for colonization. Hedo finds this hard to believe, until Magenta shows him footage of Future Trunks killing Mecha-Frieza. I'm not sure how he could have gotten that footage, unless it was recorded by Gero's spy robots.

In this twisted scenario, Gero created Cell to take the fight to Bulma's "organization", but he just couldn't get the job done. 17 and 18 turned against Gero, and Dragon Team was just too powerful that day. Hedo asks if Bulma is an alien, and Magenta's like "sure, why not?"

Then Hedo eats his Oreo all weird. Like, who does this? He takes apart the cookie, which is pretty standard, then he uses the one side to scrape the cream off the other, and he eats this part. Why? You already had a cookie with cream filling on it! This is just a duplication of effort!

The absolute best way to eat an Oreo is to dunk it in milk until it gets so soggy that it almost falls apart. When I was a kid I designed a device that would allow you to immerse the entire cookie in milk for maximum sogification without having to get your fingers wet. In hindsight, this was a stupid idea, because you can just do that with a spoon.

All this talk of alien conspiracies and Cell's heroic last stand get Hedo fired up, and he pulls up the hood of his costume and declares that the world needs a hero to design the ultimate android. I mean, he just got done saying he didn't buy into Magenta's good guy bit, but he does buy into his own good guy bit, and Magenta's story seems to suit this. For Hedo, it's less about being a hero and more about playing a hero. Magenta has created the role, and Hedo is eager to fill it.

And they finally arrive at a Red Ribbon base out in the middle of nowhere. Then the movie flashes forward to six months later, so I guess this a good place to sign off. Next time, we'll get into Piccolo and Gohan, and see what they're up to.

[estrella-hellyea]

Character interactions from Genshin Impact and Project Sekai drawn by the wheel!!!

So I was a bit bored and I randomly chose a Genshin character for each Project Sekai character to think if they would get along. The results are quite cute.

(Sorry for any mistakes in my English, I'm literally using Google translator now)

Ichika and Nahida

I think they would get along very well! Ichika could tell Nahida about how music can evoke emotions in another person, and Nahida could teach her how to make that kind of web (you know the one she makes in indle animacion). I'm sure Ichika would show her songs with vocalioid (e.g. Ikanaide). This would be the most wholesome relationship ever

Saki and Yae Miko

At first, Saki would probably be a little scared of Yae Miko, but when the topic of the conversation turned to light novels, she would become more willing to talk. They would come up with different ideas for the plot of the novel. Girls would have fun

Shiho and Rosaria

They were probably sitting quietly in an awkward silence or idk I don't have any idea for now.

Honami and Arataki Itto

Honami would be scared at first by Itto's appearance, but fortunately she later got to know his personality. They would try to bake a cake together! Some complications would get in the way, but the cake would probably turn out very good. They would talk while eating it! Very wholsome

Minori and Cyno

Cyno would tell Minori some of his dad jokes. Minori wouldn't get it. Minori would teach him some idol dance routines and they would have fun doing it

Haruka and Diluc

idk I don't have any idea

Shizuku and Raiden Ei

Shizuku wanted to watch a movie with Ei, but unfortunately the TV broke down so they decided to fold origami. They would talk and Ei would casually drop philosophical bombs, for example she would ask "What does eternity mean to you?" "What is love?" "If you knew that tomorrow was the end of the world, what would you do today?". Shizuku would answer with simple and wise words.

Airi and Baizhu

They would talk at the table, drink tea and eat some sweets.

Kohane and Lyney

Lyney would teach Kohane some simple magic tricks. Then they would go to karaoke. They would have a great time

An and Keqing

An would tell Keqing about her passion for dancing. After this they would practice dancing together. Keqing would like the music An dances to.

Akito and Ninguang

tbh I don't have any idea for this one

Toya and Candace

no idea for this one either

Tsukasa and Gorou

Tsukasa's personality would blind Gorou hehe

Emu and Traveler

Traveler would tell Emu about his adventures. Emu would tell him about her friends from Worlderland x Showtime. Then they would go out for some good food together and Emu would teach him how to "Wonderhoy!!!!!!!!!"

Nene and Tartalgia/Childe

At first, Nene had a steppe attitude towards however, Childe told Nene a little about Snezhnaya and the fairy tales form there and Nene lost her steppe attitude towards him

Rui and Zhongli

Zhongli: Rui, no

Rui: Rui, yes *bomb in the hand*

but seriously, Rui would tell Zhongli about the robots and his future projects

Kanade and Eula

Kanade would have been a little scared by Eula's attitude, but then she realized that it was just her speaking style. I'm not sure what they would do, but they would definitely have cute conversations

Ena and Freminet

At first there was an awkward silence between them and Ena started asking Freminet about his interests.Freminet also asked Ene what she like to do and a very cute conversation about their hobbies ensued

Mizuki and Lynette

Mizuki would like Lynette's style, and Lynette would like Mizuki's hair accessories. They would go shopping together and eat some cake at the coffee shop

Mafuyu and Razor

That would be super cute. Mafuyu and Razor would draw, Razor would draw them together and when Mafuyu saw the drawing she managed to smile a little.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-06-24

Hosting

Listening: It's important to put music on while there are people kicking around the house to fill in the gaps, a lot of that has been Vienna Teng, so, Green Island Lullaby :

Also as another note, I am closing in on the end of The Magnus Archives, and I like some of the stuff of this last season. It gets to get a lot more into absolute horror when it doesn't have to reasonably fit into the real world and I appreciate a lot of that, I've always liked my short story to veer a little abstract.

Watching: After my parents left for Amsterdam I was like "hey I should watch something" and put on Funeral Parade of Roses/Bara no Soretsu, which is such a banger of a movie if you love queer art films from five minutes after we invented the concept of editing and horrible tragedy. We should make more extremely heavy movies that include within themselves comedic making-of documentaries.

Also, courtesy of @canmom's Animation Night, Mars Express, a very beautiful robot sentience animated movie by Jérémie Périn. It follows a Space Cop who ends up working with a renegade engineer who jailbreaks sentient slave robots. Extremely space-noir. Extremely detailed world of future-tech, thoughtful design, and a by-the-numbers but well-executed plot. If you like cyber neo-noir you'll love it, also check out Animation Night on twitch.tv/canmom most Sundays at 20:00 UK time, truly a gem, the first place I watched PMMM.

Reading: All but finished with Iron Widow, it's a shame that it's not a very good book because it feels like much more aggressive editing could have saved it. There's so many words and maybe 30% of them don't have to be there, this book loves to tell instead of showing, or to show and then tell you all about what it's shown you. Again, very compelling setting and themes, the way that being in a mech transcends your material form while simultaneously making you very responsible for other people is a great idea!

Zetian is a clumsy protagonist in-world, which is fine if frustrating. She's not calculating enough to pull off Taylor Hebert long-term plans and careful considerations, but she's not impulsive enough to get into interesting problems for very long, there's lots of opportunity to create intrigue that just get snipped in the bud because she decides not to care, which means a lot of threats just aren't very credible.

Playing: Hades! I got tutored through a full clear and had the boons system laid out to me and I have now got a clear with every weapon except the fists, and that's only because I haven't gotten around to it yet. I still don't think I enjoy the way the narrative of Hades is presented, but I am appreciating the gameplay, I enjoy enginebuilder-likes like this, you know, Inscryption, Noita, that kind of thing.

Making: Not much, too busy.

Tools and Equipment: I picked up a LowePro Creator Box, which is their line of mini-camera storage cubes intended to help turn normal bags into camera bags. Transporting camera equipment is a huge pain in the ass, because you have to keep it all padded, but dedicated camera bags are frequently awful as, you know, bags. Lowepro does make some camera bags that are also okay day packs, but these boxes are really nice for just dumping into an existing backpack or carry-on to safely travel with a camera and a couple lenses. This is the Large size.

There's a line of outdoor backpacks that even let you access your box from a side hatch directly, but I don't have one of those. This makes it much easier for me to, say, hoof my camera to work when I have somewhere I want to go later in the day. There's some gigantic cubes for larger bags as well which I guess are for if you're doing wildlife photography on foot, or running a full production in a remote area.