#i love identifying with computers and robots…

[tanzdoesthings]

ok i got so excited about moon there that i think my brain did the equivalent of an integer overflow on my excitement meter where i got so happy i did flappy hands and then started saying shit in text like i was having the most uninteresting conversation ever like i went from 255 to 0 it’s incredibly funny i’m unhinged

[mxmorbidmidnight]

To all nonhumans, I do adore thee. Small little dogs, great ferocious creatures, strange cryptids, wolves that swim and run, insects and all there goings, flying (and non flying) birds, felines, equines, assortments of objects, dragons, angels, sea creatures, demons, vampires and gods, beautiful and strange plants, computers, robots, all of you really!!

I love thee nonhumans with disabilities, nonhumans who don’t use gear, who can’t or don’t do quadrobics.

Recovering or recovered zoophiles, nonhumans who are also furries, young nonhumans, adult nonhumans, queer nonhumans, physical nonhumans, nonhumans with delusions. I love all thee neurodivergent and not nonhumans, nonhumans with “gross” urges, nonhumans who experience their nonhumanity in a way that is less common. Nonhumans who feel connection to humanity, nonhumans who love humans and nonhumans who don’t.

Domesticated animals, wild animals, nonhumans who aren’t animals at all. Nonhumans with many kin types, nonhumans with few. Nonhumans with common kin types, nonhumans with uncommon kin types. Newly awakened nonhumans, those who have known their identify for a while and those who are still not entirely sure.

I do love all of thee dearly. I do implore thee to do the same to thineself and the others of thine community. I will say it over and over again, I do truly love thee.

[pomrania]

Going through the AO3 Terms of Service and stuff (because I don't want to click "I agree" without reading through everything) and, gotta love hyper-specific stuff on a FAQ that actually IS something which had been frequently asked:

What about robots, computer simulations, elves, aliens, vampires who are three hundred years old but were turned into vampires at age 12, etc.? The primary use of the "Underage Sex" warning is to identify fanworks depicting sexual activity involving humans under the age of 18 as measured in Earth years. Please use your judgment for other situations.

[xxmrs-waynexx]

Gloss & Glasses: Chapter Two (1091 words)

Pairing: Clark Kent x reader

Warnings: none for this chapter

---

The clack of your keyboard was drowned out by your playlist. You were so focused on finishing this personality quiz for your magazine that you hadn’t heard the knock on your office door. 

Figuring this was the case, Lois opened the door and spoke over your music, “(Y/N)! Hello!” 

With a quick look her way, you smiled and paused your music. This did not deter you from continuing your work, “Hey! Do you think people’s favorite cat breed says something about their personality? I wrote this whole article about Catwoman and what cat breed she is and-”

“Love it. I really do, but I need your help. Johnny got this picture of Superman and as someone who knows everyone, can you tell me if he looks familiar at all?” After shutting your door, she walked over to your incredibly messy yet, to you, incredibly organized desk and showed you the picture on her phone.

“Lois, I have no idea who he is. If I did, don’t you think I would’ve said something by now?” You didn’t even look at the picture. Your eyes were glued to your computer screen.

While yes, you and Lois were friends, she didn’t always take your work seriously. You couldn’t really blame her, though. She had a sense of adventure. The city and its problems called her name. You, on the other hand, were perfectly content attending galas, and parties, interviewing celebrities, and any scandals that popped up. She was very much “Let’s go see what that giant alien robot wants.”

She sighed, more groaned, “Will you please at least look?”

You took your hands off your keyboard and looked at her phone. You couldn’t help but laugh, “That’s literally every white guy in America. Handsome, sure, but come on. Do you expect anyone to identify him? Like seventy men could win a look-alike contest for that guy. Be so serious.”

Lois groaned and turned off her phone, “That’s exactly why this is difficult.”

“Why are you so obsessed with figuring out who he is? Him being the average guy is what makes him an inspiration. I mean, think about it. Anyone could be Superman. That’s what gives people hope,” you went right back to typing. “Besides, obsessing over heroes’ identity is such a Gotham move. You don’t wanna be like Gotham, ew.”

— In the lounge, you made your second coffee of the day. You were stirring in the creamer in your bejeweled cup when a familiar voice caught your attention.

“Hey,” Clark smiled that shy smile at you. It had been about a month since he started here and the two of you had become fast friends. In fact, the days he was out sick or out with Lois and Johnny were some of your most boring days. You always looked forward to talking to him.

“Clark!” you turned quickly, knocking over your cup which did not have a lid on it just yet.

With a speed you couldn’t quite comprehend, he managed to save it before anything spilled. He chuckled awkwardly, adjusting his glasses and giving you another crooked smile, “Uh… be careful.”

“Heh… thanks…” you gasped out a laugh. “You’re so fast.”

“Uh, yeah,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “Helped my pa out on the farm so… I guess that’s why?” he seemed like he wasn’t quite convinced himself. 

You smiled at him and shook your head. Giggling, you asked, “How do you take your coffee? I’ll make you some for saving my life.”

“Saving your life? I’ve never-” he spoke so quickly, you thought he might beat Trisha Paytas at her speedreading. 

“My coffee,” you corrected. “I meant the coffee, ‘cause you… saved my coffee.”

“Right, sorry. Uh, just make me whatever you’ve got and I’ll drink it,” he smiled. He always seemed to be smiling. So were you every time you saw him. 

“Caramel latte?” 

With slight hesitation, he nodded, “Yes?”

“Order for Clark coming right up,” you winked, screwing on the lid to your cup before starting on his. He didn’t bring his own cup so you resorted to the cheap paper ones the lounge provided. 

He sat at the table closest to the counter you were at, positioning himself sideways on the chair to face you. “So, what are you working on today?”

You chuckled softly, waiting for the water to heat up in the coffeemaker, “Oh it’s nothing serious.”

“I wanna hear about it anyway,” Clark leaned into the back of the chair. 

You faced him, darting your eyes across his frame before looking back into his eyes, “Um- Okay!” you were more than happy to tell anyone about your work, though no one in this office building seemed to care. Clark always cared, though. That was something you were going to have to get used to. “I finished my Catwoman article and now I’m trying to come up with a bunch of questions and how they’ll relate to cat breeds. Sounds kind of dumb but-”

“That’s not dumb. That sounds fun. I personally like Maine Coons. What does that say about me?” he crossed his arms and by god, you could see the shirt struggling not to rip on his massive arms- have they always been so big?

You admired him for no more than a second before you came to your senses. The water had heated up and you focused back on his coffee to hide your blush. “It means you’re a really kind person and you’re a bit of a gentle giant.”

“Sounds about right,” he laughed softly. “I’ll take your quiz when you’re done if you want.”

You almost verbally squeaked as you poured in the flavoring and creamer. “You really don’t have to, Clark.”

“I know, but I want to,” he assured you.

—

After you finished your quiz, you clapped your hands together, “Perfect- no, purrfect.” you laughed at your own joke before realizing how dumb that sounded. 

When you opened your office door, you were expecting to see Clark sitting at his desk which was positioned right outside your door. However, you were met with an empty seat. He wasn’t supposed to go home yet. You frowned and shifted your gaze to Lois’ desk next to his. When you realized she was gone too, you sighed. The two of them seemed to do stories together more and more often. They worked well together.

You then went to put everything back in your purse. Knocking on your dad’s doorframe you smiled softly, “I’m headed home for the day.”

[mystieris]

Urban Gods Worship System

(I'm terrible at posting information about this project xD; )

So in the world of Urban Gods, it's basically the world of the myths, they just have cars and Instagram (btw, I'm open to suggestions on how to make "Instagram" a Greek mythology pun xD), and I wanted to come up with a replacement for animal sacrifices since that's no longer really a thing in our modern day society. While it is common to use altar worship, item and food offerings and prayers of a lot of modern worshippers in our world, since this is a world where gods are also active members of society, there's another, far more popular method - patronizing establishments owned by the gods themselves.

Several major gods own restaurants, hotels, chain stores and other establishments, while more minor gods, as well as nymphs, satyrs, and other benign creatures, will often be employed there. The following is a master list of establishments I have plotted out so far, and who owns and works for them...

Hades - Inferis - A subterranian casino resort in Athens; Charon, the Furies and the Keres will cycle working the different security posts, Thanatos works as waitstaff in the bar/restaurant areas, Hypnos works the front desk on the hotel side, Hecate appears to work some sort of upper management position, and Minthe works as the casino host at the beginning of the story, eventually being replaced by Persephone. Hermes frequently works as a bartender, and all other positions are often filled by unnamed nymphs, gorgons, and other Underworld creatures.

Zeus - Vronti - A luxury hotel chain, with the flagship location in Athens, overlooking the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Thetis works as the concierge, Hermes will work odd jobs throughout the whole building, Hephaestus leads the maintenance crew, and Hera appears to have some sort of job there, but it's somewhat unclear exactly what as through most of the story she and Zeus are hovering between their good terms and their bad terms xD

Poseidon - Atlantis - A small chain of beach tiki bars with "hidden" drug den areas. I haven't quite worked out where the flagship location is, but most of the time the location seen is the one in Athens. And yes... Athena hates that he has a location in Athens, which Poseidon denies being because of his grudge. Claims, "Well, my brothers have their flagship locations here, mortals would ask questions if I didn't, too...!" Pretty much all positions are filled by different sea nymphs and creatures and aren't individually identified yet.

Demeter and Dionysus - A farm/vineyard in Sicily with a shop attached. Basically it's an enormous farm property that different parts are run by Demeter or Dionysus, Persephone basically runs the shop, Plutus offers financial consulting, Triptolemus cares for the animals on site, and various nymphs and satyrs assist in other areas. Additionally, Dionysus also works as the drink master for all three of the kings' establishments.

Athena - A university in Athens. Not much else is developed about it so far as the only scene written involving it is a brief shot of a classroom and just exposits how the gods are "technically not related" according to my world, but Athena is the dean as well as teaching classes.

Hephaestus - Has no direct stores or anything, but is basically the diving force behind mortals developing computers and robotics.

Ares - Basically runs the this world's equivalent to the UFC, which, because it's run by Ares is a mite more violent than in our world. He also has a gym he operates in Sparta that Phobos and Deimos can often be seen working as personal trainers ar.

Aphrodite - A chain of adult toy stores that are franchised to Eros and the rest of her and Ares' kids, while she'll also offer love advice for a fee at the flagship location in Sparta (somewhere within walking distance to Ares' gym).

Apollo - Works as a pop idol, beyond that I don't really have much developed.

Artemis - Like Apollo, not very developed yet, but the idea that she runs a popular hunting blog.

Hestia - Owns a spa resort known for its luxurious food and services.

More will be edited in as I develop more/remember things as I was sick from stress at the original time of posting this. Follow me for more updates on this project and incorrect quotes! :)

[dreamlandsystem]

What if I’m not beautiful

and my queerness is not palatable for you?

What if I’m kinky and stinky?

What if I’m a dog?

What if I am depressed but not complacent,

anxious but not soft spoken,

and when I speak my truth others recoil?

What if I’m a dirty queer, a lesboy,

a fagdyke boything who’s not from this world?

What if I can’t or won’t tone it down,

make it make sense, infantilize myself,

adopt your labels or reject my own?

What if my xenogenders are numbered

like the galaxies in our universe?

What if I identify with my trauma, my parts,

and my autistic t-boy swag?

What if I identify as a turtle,

a vampire, a computer, an Appalachian holler?

Would I still belong? Would you still love me?

I may speak in hypotheticals, but

this is who I am.

I am done constraining myself

for the comfort of others.

I am plural. I am not human.

I am a freak. I am myselves.

And I am learning to love myselves,

accept myselves, laugh with myselves,

comfort myselves, teach myselves,

kiss myselves, heal myselves,

embrace myselves,

BE myselves

robots, critters, queers, and all.

[therecordconnection]

Ranting and Raving: "Video!" by Jeff Lynne

There is no such thing as the “Cult Classic” anymore. Today, if a movie fails or a television series flops, it’s just removed and completely forgotten without a second thought. With physical releases no longer having the same cultural weight as before, it makes media preservation even harder. I hear if you complain long enough about this and get caught, Netlfix or Hulu or Pooblo or Tuubah or whatever else comes to your house and hits you with the Neuralyzer from Men in Black so you’ll shut up.

In the eighties, this wasn’t the case. Movies could brick at the box office, but they might get lucky and find their audiences later on through cable or video rentals or just really good word of mouth. Xanadu still exists today and has love because HBO kept showing it during its infancy and LGBTQ audiences eventually latched onto it (though that’s probably more due to the everlasting power of Olivia Newton-John’s gay fanbase). Phantom of the Paradise owes its continued love and existence to Guillermo Del Toro, the Daft Punk robots, and all of Winnipeg, Canada really loving that movie. I’m with them in that boat (Phantom is one of my favorite movies). Electric Dreams, a 1984 science fiction-tinged romantic comedy, exists today purely through video rentals and good word of mouth.

Electric Dreams is a wonderfully weird cult classic in every sense of the word. It has a very lovably goofy eighties rom-com setup and delivery: Miles Harding (Lenny Von Dohlen), a loser tech nerd geologist who gets no bitches, falls in love with his new apartment neighbor Madeline Robistat (Virginia Madsen), a quirky and beautiful cellist. They're an unlikely pair in every conceivable way, but they fall for each other. The only problem is that Miles' fancy new supercomputer (who becomes sentient and later identifies himself as “Edgar”) would like to see Miles destroyed so that he can be with her instead. Edgar then does everything in his power to ruin Miles’ life and his chances to be with Madeline. Eventually, Edgar comes to accept the love between Miles and Madeline and they get their happily-ever-after. 

On paper, the whole thing probably sounded silly to a 1984 audience, which might be why nobody bothered to see it at the time, but Electric Dreams fucking rules. Von Dohlen and Madsen are great and have such an odd yet instantly lovable chemistry with each other that you can’t help but root for them (it helps that they were good friends instantly and remained that way until Van Dohlen passed away in 2022). Steve Barron, one of the great music video directors of the early MTV era (he’s responsible for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” Toto’s “Africa” and “Rosanna,” and many more), brings that same music video storytelling style to this movie’s visuals. If this movie had done better upon release, it would’ve gotten everything Miami Vice’s directing style often gets credited for. The soundtrack is also really great! Giorgio Moroder did the movie’s theme with Human League frontman Phil Oakey as well as a killer score for it (only Moroder could find a way to expertly turn Bach’s “Minuet” into a duel between a cello and a computer. He couldn't get more eighties than that if he tried). There’s also a really neat Heaven 17 cut that sounds like a Crash Bandicoot level theme (“Chase Runner”), Culture Club right at the end of their relevance (“Love is Love” and “The Dream”), and Jeff Lynne from Electric Light Orchestra with arguably the two best songs in the movie. One of them, “Let It Run,” is awesome as hell, but “Video!” is the one we’re gonna talk about.

“Video!” appears at a pretty pivotal point in the movie. It soundtracks the montage of one of Miles and Madeline’s first proper dates, which involves sneaking away from a tour group to run around and play in Alcatraz (I’m serious). They’re also seen together at a carnival. Before this date, Miles tasks Edgar with finding a way to write music for Madeline. He intends to pass off whatever Edgar comes up with as his own work, hoping to impress her and make her fall in love with him. This is one of the main reasons Edgar wants Miles out of the picture. He knows he can make music with Madeline (he did it previously in “The Duel” scene, though Madeline thinks Miles is providing the music, not the computer) and fell in love with her by doing that. He is fully aware that Miles is trying to win her love with a lie. Once Edgar figures out how rhythm works, he figures out how melody is made by reviewing and absorbing the music playing in television commercials. “Video!” then starts playing proper once he’s got the basics down. For a computer with no previous songwriting experience, writing a Jeff Lynne composition is a pretty impressive feat!

Electric Dreams is not the first movie Lynne has contributed music to. There are two others. The first one was 1976’s All This and World War II, which is a movie which pairs all-star covers of Beatles songs and World War II footage. I’ve never seen it and I don’t think I need to. But you can hear Lynne, the most famous Beatles fanboy to ever live, do a fully symphonic version of “With a Little Help From My Friends” and “Nowhere Man.” It’s pretty cool. The other one was Xanadu, which is much more well known. Lynne provided five songs: “I’m Alive,” “The Fall,” “Don’t Walk Away,” “All Over the World,” and the title track with Olivia Newton-John. I think they’re all great. Xanadu totally works on its own as a great ELO EP if you want to forget there’s a movie attached.

This is all to say that Lynne was no stranger to giving songs to strange movies, even if he harbored regrets later on about doing that. He regretted Xanadu for a while, but made peace with it decades later (he re-recorded “Xanadu” in 2000 for the ELO compilation Flashback and he’s revived “All Over the World” for every ELO tour since 2017). I don’t know how he feels about Electric Dreams and at this point, he’s done so much in his career that I doubt he even remembers it. I think he should! I think “Video!” is a great song and I think he was a perfect fit for Electric Dreams. The entire soundtrack is dated as hell, but in a fun time-capsule kind of way. It represents the sound of what people in 1984 thought the future was going to sound like. Lynne had already spent time imagining the sounds of the future.

At the dawn of the eighties, Jeff Lynne had gotten tired of dealing with the big orchestras you hear on that great ELO run from 1976-1980. Orchestras started becoming a pain in the ass for him around the time when synthesizers and keyboards were getting some big technological boosts. New wave artists like Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, and the Human League were pushing synths and keyboard sounds into the mainstream and proving that the new technology could be used to make some wildly futuristic sounds. Lynne quickly learned that with a few fancy keyboards, you could start simulating strings and classical sounds, but in a new and exciting way. Suddenly, Lynne and ELO keyboardist Richard Tandy could keep the symphonic pop sounds the band had been making, but update the sound and take it into the future. Suddenly, the “Orchestra” part of the ELO name suddenly found itself obsolete and out of a job.

Dick Clark asked him about this choice on an American Bandstand appearance in 1986. Lynne responded, “Well, you know, I got fed up with using a big orchestra because they used to always be in a union and stuff like that and they used to put their equipment away while we were still recording. So I thought what we'll do is we'll use just ourselves and then we can work as long as we'd like and nobody would complain.”

So Lynne took advantage of all this new technology that was floating around and used it to craft the 1981 masterpiece, Time. That album is the best example of retrofuturism in music I can give. In Time, Lynne imagines a loose concept album about a guy who gets yoinked out of 1981 and flung into the year 2095. The entire album is full of songs where Lynne imagines a future that he would never live to see (I won’t either, unless I somehow make it to a full century of life). Hover cars, rides to the moon, robotic girlfriends (built by IBM) who can also serve as telephones, prison satellites, ivory towers, plastic flowers, and meteor showers as a common weather condition are all present in Lynne’s visions of the distant future. Most of his predictions feel like they’re coming out of science fiction magazines from when he was a child, but the album is more concerned with just letting his imagination run wild and wonder about how one would feel if they were flung far into the future where everyone they’ve ever loved is gone. The future presented in Time feels like daydreaming rather than any kind of cautionary tale or warning. I’ve never gotten the sense that Lynne thinks any of what’s in the album will actually come true. 

If Lynne got anything right, he somehow nailed the still-lingering nostalgic yearning to return to the eighties. Lynne’s narrator constantly laments that he’s stuck in 2095 and 1981 is name dropped in “Ticket to the Moon” and “The Way Life’s Meant to Be.” “Ticket to the Moon” even begins with what is now a variation of the only kind of Youtube comment you’ll find on any old song from the decade: “Remember the good old 1980s / When things were so uncomplicated / I wish I could go back there again / And everything could be the same.” He might as well have called himself “Nostradamus” when writing that one, because that line is going to keep feeling accurate to people until every child of the eighties and every vintage style eighties cosplayer on instagram is dead and in the ground. Lynne using the current year the album was made in had a real danger of seriously dating it, but Time has never sounded dated to me. It doesn’t sound like anything else from 1981 and it still doesn’t. Lynne blended all the old sounds and genres he loved and infused them with the new sounds of the day on that one and imagined a future that still sounds just as magical then as it does now. It took pop music a few years to catch up with what Lynne was doing on that one. Time is still a retro futuristic dream and he carried all the tech and sound effects that he was using on that album with him when he made “Video!” for Electric Dreams. ELO’s future was up in the air by 1984 (Lynne would dissolve the original band for good two years later) so he tackled “Video!” as a solo artist (literally, as no other ELO members are on this) and released it under his own name.  

I don’t know if Lynne’s predictions for 2095 will come true. The verdict is still out on that. But what I do know is that everything Lynne is describing in “Video!” is a reality that I’ve lived to see, though perhaps differently from anything Lynne could’ve imagined in 1984. We’ll get there.

In the context of Electric Dreams, “Video!”’s lyrics are all about the many things Edgar the computer can find out about the world in pre-internet cyberspace. He can watch it all, from rock n’ roll to old time movie scenes, and learn. He has no other choice: he can’t move from Miles’ desk and see it himself. Nothing in Lynne’s lyrics are dated except for one thing. He mentions that satellites “send their love from up above / Down to [his] VTR.” VTRs, which I believe is meant to be a reference to “Video Tape Recorder,” is an obsolete machine in 2024. It’s long been replaced by digital video, such as DVDs, Blu-Rays, and 4K. That’s the only specific reference he makes besides working in both the movie’s title and  the title of the Phil Oakey/Giorgio Moroder collab. “They beam across the sky / Together in Electric Dreams.” I imagine Lynne was probably told he had to work in the title somewhere. To his credit, it’s a pretty smooth title drop. Clumsier movie songs have done it much worse. 

Lynne sneaks in a few lyrics in the song that become ominous and foreshadowing if you’ve seen the movie more than once. The first two verses end ominously with the lines “The world is at my fingers / Under control” and “I’ll just stay here on my end / I’ll have it all.” Those lines foreshadow Edgar eventually using his supercomputer intellect to control other computer systems and mess with Miles’ life, from cutting off access to his credit cards and funds, to manipulating phone lines so Madeline can’t call Miles later in the movie for comfort when her cello has been broken in an accident (it gets caught in an elevator door and gets crushed). His whole motivation in the movie is that he “wants it all,” especially Madeline. Lynne later captures that ominousness with the absolute beast of a song “Let It Run,” but “Video!” is reserved for Lynne soundtracking the moment where Edgar stays inside and excitedly discovers the world at large and how to write pop music, while Miles simultaneously goes out and discovers the world at large with his lovely lady. 

Musically, “Video!” strikes a balance and finds a perfect blend of the mechanical and the human elements of music making. Lynne seemed to understand that more than some of the art-school new wavers that were ruling the US and the UK in the early eighties. The entire song is mechanical, but that makes sense given the in-universe explanation that a literal computer is making it. The rhythm is provided by a drum machine and everything else is synthesized and sequenced to hell and back. Even the fun sound effects throughout the song and during the middle instrumental bit are canned and not original to the song. There’s something that kinda sounds like a twangy guitar at the end of the verses and on the chorus, but that could just as easily be a keyboard making that sound. Lynne has made records where he’s played all instruments organically, but keyboards, sequencers, and machines not only suit the assignment, they’re necessary for the assignment.

The human elements are Jeff Lynne’s vocals and his always sharp sense of melody. Lynne’s never been the most mind blowing singer, but his vocals and melodies capture a magic and a warmth here that few of the survivors from his generation still making music in 1984 were capable of. He sings the song with that same sense of wonder that he has on Time. I love the melody of the verses and that chorus is so upbeat and happy and infectious. I love the way he slides into the chorus by holding out the word “on” before saying “video.” Oooooooon! It’s pop music at its most delightfully fun.

I’ve been surrounded by video my entire life, but Lynne makes it feel like it’s a brand new concept to me when I hear this song. I said that everything Lynne is describing in “Video!” is a reality that I’ve lived to see. That reality is Youtube. “The world is at my fingers” because I can more-or-less search for whatever I want (whether I actually find it is another story). The entire second verse can be used to describe someone discovering Youtube for the first time:

I see that rock and roll And all those old-time movies scenes They beam across the sky Together in electric dreams I'll just sit here on my end I'll have it all

Youtube, for all its numerous (numerous) flaws, allows me to be my own MTV VJ and watch scenes from my favorite movies with only a few mouse clicks. I can sit at my computer and watch videos in comfort (and while eating my dinner). Like Edgar, I have it all. Lynne sings that verse with completely sincere jubilance. The song is entirely mechanized, but the feelings presented in the song are not and they help provide a warmth and joy to the whole song that makes it sound like a dream. Lynne makes the concept of watching video sound like it’s the most exciting technical marvel you’ll ever see. He sells it like he’s Grover Cleveland lighting up the 1893 World Fair. It’s fantastic. Lynne isn’t even just fascinated by video, he’s fascinated by the entire process that helps bring it to life. That first verse takes the song from the hugeness of outer space and leads it to the small and insular space of a computer in an apartment without ever losing a step.

The satellites that search the night They twinkle like a star They send their love from up above Down to my VTR

Lynne sounds absolutely amazed by the technological wonders of 1984. He sings it with a child-like fascination that’s so lovably dorky. He sounds like Miles Harding does in the movie when he gets to talk to Madeline about architecture and his dream project during dinner. I was only ten years old when Youtube first arrived in December of 2005, so I essentially grew up with the rise of the internet and internet video creation. I imagine it must have been mind blowing to older people who were there to witness that boom. Maybe some of them were as excited as Lynne sounds on this song.

Nowadays, we take a lot of the modern technology around us for granted, but for Lynne in 1984, this was all exciting and new. That might be where the excitement and exuberance in the song stems from. Betamax and VHS had only existed for about a decade when Electric Dreams first came out, so people were only just getting started in terms of building up home video libraries and having video readily available to them. Camcorders were only starting to become a common commodity when Electric Dreams arrived, so I imagine people were going nuts and losing their minds that they could make home movies and shoot video of their own. Nowadays, technology has reached the point where the little bricks in our pockets (which are Edgar-level supercomputers of their own) can do almost anything, even film video anytime, anywhere. Now more than ever, the world really is at our fingers due to the way technology and social media keeps us interconnected.

“Video!” sees a continuation of Jeff Lynne’s interests in technology and the future that he was exploring on the Time album. Once again, his music is featured in a movie that’s weird, strange, and ridiculous, but also incredibly fun. “Video!” and Electric Dreams as a whole, is a beautiful little time capsule. It arrived during a time when the wonders of the future and technology was full of optimism and we were once again evaluating our relationship to tech as the world was continuing to undergo constant change. After Electric Dreams, Lynne would examine his own relationship with technology with the 1986 song “Calling America,” one of the last ELO singles before he went off to enjoy a second life as an in-demand producer for a while. He doesn’t sound as excited when he sings “Yeah, we’re living in a modern world” on that one. He doesn’t sound as excited about satellites on that one either, though that might have more to do with him being fully sick of ELO by that point and having to wrap up one last album before he can move on to other things.

Electric Dreams, both the movie and the soundtrack, aren’t as well remembered as Xanadu and I think that’s a shame. Electric Dreams is such a strange, beautiful, and moving love story. It’s the thinking man’s version of Spike Jonze’s Her (it’s also better than Her). The movie only played in theaters for a few short weeks before resigning to its fate as a strange movie you take a chance on when you’re wandering around the video store on a Friday night and you and your partner are looking for something interesting to watch. In hindsight, maybe a movie like Electric Dreams was just too strange to ever capture mainstream attention. 

But don’t feel bad for it! It’s lived and has found its share of people who love it, despite its initial failure. I’m one of them. Lenny Von Dohlen and Virginia Madsen are also in that boat. They loved working on it and had nothing but positive things to say about it. Madsen still considers it one of the best things she’s ever made and I agree with her. Cult classics like Electric Dreams find their audience. Sometimes it just takes a while.

I can tell you that Tumblr absolutely fucking LOVES this movie. If you do a search for “#electric dreams” you will find SO. MUCH. FANART for this movie in that tag. It’s not even funny. Tumblrinas L O V E making art of Edgar the computer. They love making art of him so much, you’d think he’s the protagonist of the movie, not Miles and Madeline. You’d also think Miles, Madeline, and Edgar are in a polycule with each other (hot take: polyamory would not have saved them). The fanart in that tag isn’t even that old either. People love this movie and they love him. (A shocking number of fanart posts depict Edgar hanging out with GLaDOs from Portal, HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and AM from the Harlan Ellison short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I have come to the conclusion that Tumblr really loves antagonistic machines).

Electric Dreams celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year (it came out on July 20th, 1984, so this post missed its birthday by eleven days). An unloved film in its time, but a lovably strange and beautifully sincere science fiction romance that remains a beloved cult classic to those who know about it. If you want to see the film for yourself, it’s on Youtube for free. I highly recommend it.

Jeff Lynne is also celebrating this year. At the time of this writing, he’s preparing to take his modern day version of Electric Light Orchestra on the road one more time before retiring for good (he’s calling it the Over and Out Tour, which I think is just a fantastic name). He’s definitely not going to play “Video!” but he’ll be playing every ELO banger in existence, of which there are many. If you’ve never seen the maestro present his music live, I highly recommend you catch him before it’s too late. I plan on going to one of the Philadelphia nights. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. 

“Video!” and Electric Dreams are snapshots of a simpler time that dared to get a little silly and dream about a possible future. Some of its ideas about where technology was headed and our relationship to that technology were hauntingly accurate, some of it is hilariously outdated. Lynne’s visions of video and where video technology ended up being incredibly accurate in all the best ways. Video madness came upon us like a trance in the dark and because of that madness and the internet that houses all that madness, a movie that went completely unnoticed forty years ago can still exist and float out there today, waiting to be found. It wants to share with you what the world looked like during an interesting crossroads in time and it wants to show you what people thought the future might look like. Electric Dreams wants you to know that the future is strange, but it’s also bright and love can be found in the strangest of places if you know where to look. Don’t worry. It’s all under control and it’s all on video.

Electric Dreams sends its love to you. Send some of yours back to it.

[ronqueesha]

re: the allergies/holidays/birthday/etc post you just reblogged, can we have a few little known facts about sarit, or iona? (or both if I'm very lucky)

Sure! (And thank you for letting me talk about my beloved characters)

A funny thing about Sarit and her long list of medical issues: she has no known allergies at all! Even the exotic allergies common in the settled systems from various alien flora and fauna that can debilitate many other people. Sarit's ravaged and painful lungs have no problem handling all known forms of alien pollen/dander/allergens you can think of.

She grew out her hair only once, in her teen years when she was still figuring herself out. But other than that, Sarit has kept the same haircut she had since she was that sickly little boy sitting behind a computer terminal while bedridden.

She LOVES chunks pumpkin pie. This is perplexing to others, especially Andreja, since it has the consistency and appearance of gelatinous orange poison.

She can control her mechanical prosthetic right arm wirelessly. It doesn't happen often, but she does have the ability to make her arm crawl to her using its fingers like a horrible metal spider.

Her birthday is September 14.

I mentioned it before, but my favorite comfort headcanon is that Sarit is distantly related to an alternate-universe version of my Fallout 4 OCs Zoe and Nathan Bhatia. In Starfield's universe, Zoe and Nathan were happily married in 2077 and lived happily ever after with their son Shaun. Shaun would go on to have a brilliant career in robotics and computers that would lay the foundation for the technology used in the settled systems. Shaun Bhatia is Sarit's great-great-great-great-great grandfather.

Over the course of the crusade, Iona found various ways (many of them very unethical) to taste the blood of her companions, and learned to identify each of them from taste alone.

Iona's birthday is the Pathfinder equivalent of August 27. (and naturally, that is also Saints Row Iona's birthday)

When Iona is bored during a long war council meeting, she will summon a servant to fetch her a mug of cow's blood she will loudly sip to signal her desire to end the meeting. If things continue against her wishes, she will send for a crazy bendy straw to loudly slurp up the last drops of blood from the mug.

Iona is very tall, one of the perks of being a dhampir. She inherited many of the positive traits of a full vampire, including the unearthly conventional beauty and a tall physique. She is a very slutty supermodel with supernatural powers over blood.

Despite having a mountain of kinks, one of Iona's semi-secret turn offs is receiving pain. She is very much not a masochist in bed, and prefers inflicting pain via her fangs or other sex toys her partner consents to using.

One of her favorite ways of flirting with Arueshalae is following a battle, the two of them will walk through the battlefield, over the corpses of their enemies to retrieve Arue's arrows. Arueshalae will pull each arrow out of the bodies of their foes and salaciously hand them to Iona so she can lewdly lick the blood off the blades of the weapons. This display often makes their fellow companions uncomfortable, if not queasy. The two of them often have to quickly retreat to the privacy of the commander's tent in the aftermath, with Iona's chin dripping with gore and Arue's bright red eyes flaring with desire.

[honeyconez]

Me skibidi cave

Last updated 10/30 I go by Conez or Ed idc

I am a minor so you will be blocked if you’re a super duper old person *AND* you creep me out in any way. I know the warning signs. I am not stupid. If you think you’re getting away with something you’re gravely mistaken. I have my own little ways. I’m in your walls. I’m in your crusty little walls. Like a rat.

Any pronouns I’m confused about what I identify as

PLEASE REQUEST STUFF!! I LOVE REQUESTS AND I LITERALLY HAVE ALL THE FREETIME IN THE WORLD! DONT BE SCARED!!! AS LONG AS ITS NOT INCREDIBLY NSFW OR ILLEGAL PLEEEEASE REQUEST STUFF!!!!

I’m pan don’t bring a pan near me give me pans

I like team fortress 2 a lot

I like cursing. I try not to a lot. Also, I have many MANY reasons to believe I may be autistic so just a warning. I am getting a diagnosis soon so I will update accordingly.

I have trouble interpreting the tones of things. You don’t have to use tone indicators though, I don’t really know what all of them mean. I use emojis as indicators I guess

I don’t mean to be an asshole tell me if I’m being rude or something 😭😭

Please don’t be scared to interact with me I don’t bite, I’m a nervous person so I usually can’t hold conversations too well

Other things I like

• SCP Foundation

• HLVRAI

• Guardians Of the Galaxy

• Deadpool

• Mouthwashing

I have art block right now

posting schedule does not exist anymore

I will try and go through all the notes on my posts to block people who fit my DNI list or people who give me bad vibes.

SOMETIMES I ACCIDENTALLY FOLLOW PEOPLE SO IF I UNFOLLOW IN 2 SECONDS SORRY I MISCLICKED PROBABLY 😭 I FEEL BAD ABOUT IT

ALSO TUMBLR MAKES ME UNFOLLOW PEOPLE SOMETIMES

My tags 😩😫😣(if I remember)

•wholetconezcook - drawings

•conedoodledoodle - doodles

•conezdumbideas - shitposts

•conezyappityyap - rambling

•conezeatspencils - pencil drawings

•conezirlskibidis - my irl pookies

•conezsillyvoidcomic - my stupid comic

•conezonthattypicalgrind - typical colors rants

•conezdoesthegmog - gmod

•conezgoofyassocs - my ocs

I’ll add more if I need to, I won’t bother tagging my old stuff and I don’t tag reblogs

Other stuff I like + DNI List

Other general stuff I find neat •Computer viruses(stuxnet……)

•World Wars 1 & 2

•Patterns in math…. My beloved….

•Paradoxes

•Spaceeeeeeeee

•Geology

•Math in general I guess

•Death of the universe(I could go on and on… please ask me…)

•Coding

•Rules of robotics

•History

Games

• Undertale/Deltarune

• Minecraft

• Celeste

• Rayman

• Subnautica

• Cat Quest I & II

• Stardew Valley

•Cuphead

Movies

• Emesis Blue

• Deadpool 1, 2, 3

• Howl’s Moving Castle

• Magnificent Nine

• Steven Universe the Movie

(Will add more I remember)

Cartoons / Shows / Series idk

• Lil Pootis

• Adventure Time

• Fionna & Cake

• Adventure Time Distant Lands

• Steven Universe

• Minecraft Storymode (I watched the Netflix thingy before it was removed)

• Captain Underpants

• Team Neighborhood

• Over the Garden Wall (one of my favs)

Books / Comics

• Curse Of the Werepenguin

• Dogman (huge inspiration)

• Breaking Cat News (huge inspiration)

• Bunnicula

• The Outsiders (could yap forever)

• Midsummer’s Nights Dream

• Adventure Time Comics

•Countdown to Zero Day

Youtube series or Youtubers I like

*(by youtubers I mean their videos if they don’t really have a series) **(if any of these Youtubers are actually bad people please tell me I live under a rock)

• Honorcrocketts

• Rubberfruit

• Kostamonien

• STBlackST / Unusual Troubles

• Kitty0706

• Requiem For A Pizza

• Badwatervideos2009

• HoovyTube

• Team Neighborhood

• Kugawattan

• TheInvertedShadow

• DamashiDX

Musical Artists

• Lemon Demon

• Neutral Milk Hotel

• Penelope Scott

• Weird Al Yankovic!!!!

• ARTHUR

• The Scary Jokes

• Metric

• Beck

DNI LIST

Homophobes, transphobes, racists, pedos, pervs, proshit, pro-Israel, zionists, zoophiles, completely NSFW blogs, TERFs and SWERFs

also specifically people who still draw/use/support dr br*ght. Seriously? Use Dr Shaw or another rewrite. It’s not that hard.

[pigswithwings]

Hello, I understand you're the guy that everyone says helped them figure out they're objectum (thank you for all the objectum positivity btw it's highly appreciated), however I thought what happened to me was funny enough to put in your inbox: I kept seeing art of computers/robots being treated gently and going "ah to be a robot treated gently and with love". And then I kept playing robots/anything robot-adjacent I could get away with given the setting in ttrpgs and I think I figured out I might not exactly be a human guy all of the time?? Otherkin/robotkin awakening moment. Anyways if you spread robot love it will eventually cause more robots to exist. It's a very efficient system I think

oh thats so cool to hear... personally i think that increasing awareness of otherkin and objectum things won't necessary Cause more people who identify with those to exist, more so Help more people understand that they are those things!! its my opinion that plenty of people are Already objectum or otherkin and they just dont know it so i am glad to help spread info ....

[iliiuan]

10 Characters 10 Fandoms 10 5 Tags

Tagged by @gunkreads

Rules: choose 10 favorite characters from 10 different fandoms -- no double dipping! Then tag 10 friends or mutuals to complete the game as well.

Top 10

Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black - She's amazing. I love every clone she plays. I would literally be watching thinking, so-and-such hasn't had any lines recently. That's a bummer. I really like that actress. And then remember that they are all played by the same person.

Kaylee in Firefly/Serenity - she's amazingly feminine and also a badass ship engineer. It was love at first sight. What can I say?

Contessa in Worm by wildbow - I Love this character's superpower. I named my planning system after it: Path to Victory. 432 steps remaining.

The Hippopotamus in But Not the Hippopotamus by Sandra Boynton - I am the Hippopotamus. I watch from a distance and often miss out because socializing is scary. Also, this story is amazing and everyone should read it whether you have children or not.

Kosmo in Love You to Bits - If you haven't played, you should. This chubby little character is completely lacking gender identifiers imo, so I decided that they're enby. Also, they're dating a high-femme robot. The whole thing is beautiful and entertaining.

Uncle Iroh - Maybe it's because I was 40 when I first watched atla, but Iroh is the best. He drops so much wisdom and he does so in a very indirect way. He's life goals, you know?

Jemmy in Destiny's Road by Larry Niven - I am a huge sucker for the cook who saves the world, and this book delivers.

Angela Montenegro in Bones - There's a scene where Bones is saying how everyone on her team is a genius, "except Angela, of course." I chewed rocks and spit nails about it. Angela, with minimal formal training, does data mining, image manipulation, and other computer magic that normal people would require a PhD and a team of programmers to accomplish. Not a genius my ass.

Camina Drummer in The Expanse (show version) - She's the best. What can I say?

Sarah Stanley in The Story Girl by Lucy Maud Montgomery - My favorite character from childhood. I wanted to have her social abilities so badly.

Tags

@ankh-morporkianpostalworker

@apocalypticavolition

@unmarkedcards

@cannoli-reader

@quietcontradictions

And anyone else who wants to share! Tag me!

[hahahahawk]

I want a fake person to live in my computer. But not like that.

The neurospicy coping/productivity technique “body doubling” is about seeing someone doing your desired activity helps your executive functioning circuits let you also do the desired activity.

I’m not a scientist about this, I just have a wonky brain that responds well to this (but not working in an open plan office, go figure (that probably has to do with agency and consent, but this is a derail))

Today I tried a utility/tool/“game” called Spirit City: LoFi Sessions. You get an avatar in a cozy apartment, and both avatar and apartment can be customized. You set the lighting/time of day and tell your avatar where to go (“on the bed”, “at the desk”, “on the window seat”, “by the fire”) and what to do (writing, typing, gaming, drawing, meditating, knitting (as a knitter, I judge the knitting animation “not bad”)).

There are lofi-chill out music playlists in the “game” and rudimentary productivity tools like a todo list, a habit tracker, a pompodoro timer, and a “journal” feature.

The gamification is earning coins (by logging in, having the app open, and using the productivity tools) to buy different furniture/clothes and following hints to find new wacky pets.

I’ve spent about 15 years obsessing over productivity tools and techniques, so that side of the utility did nothing for me. I pay for Spotify, so the included music did nothing for me (the songs were pleasant, but repeated too soon for my liking, and I wasn’t interested in manually switching the playlist every 40 minutes). Dress up/decorating does nothing for me.

Needless to say, I got a refund pretty quickly.

Well, I did… but not without some hesitation because holy shit the body doubling aspect did something for me. At a few junctures in the hour-ish I had the program open, I looked over from my main project, saw my avatar typing away at their desk and thought “hell yeah, we’re getting stuff done” then went back to my project without doing any random googling or checking social media.

I considered keeping the “game” just for that aspect, but

The window didn’t fit well on my vertical monitor

The avatar wouldn’t change tasks/take breaks without my input

I would *so much* love to have a CG avatar in the corner* of my screen that would have its own pompodoro timer and mostly spend 5 hours typing on their laptop in a variety of locations, but also model “get up and stretch/snack/drink water” for me.

The interaction I’d want to have with this avatar:

Patting them on the head to tell them they’re going a good job.

I do *not* want that behavior reciprocated to me because I refuse to be complimented by inanimate objects (or people who don’t know what they’re ‘complimenting’)

Them suggesting I take a break whenever they do

Me notifying them when I start a break/get back to work. (I do a lot of flow state work and usually prefer flexible breaks rather than scheduled ones)

I will accept feedback (and data exports) about my working/taking a break patterns

—-

* I think the large default window was both a blessing and a curse for Spirit City. It allowed the avatar to be big enough to feel like a person in an environment instead of a stick figure in a box. But I don’t actually have a lot of screen real estate to give over. So it’s be nice if the program handled being odd window sizes better.

Anyway, Rusty’s Retirement is an idle game that doesn’t scratch the body double itch (though it might if you identify as a robot), but it is a calm farming game that is designed to only take up a strip along the bottom/side of your monitor and it’s been much better for my productivity. It’s great for the occasional quick hit of dopamine (bring it to the front, plant some crops, queue some bot upgrades, put it away again), and also useful for short breaks. On those longer short breaks, I make larger functional and aesthetic changes to my farm, but it generally takes less than five minutes to catch up/run out of content. After that I’m generally ready to jump back into work, and if I’m not it’s usually a sign I need to stand up and take care of some other needs.

[kaninchen-reblogs]

It kinda sucks but it’s also kinda funny that the whole “identify as an attack helicopter” transphobic joke (if you can call it a joke) is a thing.

Cuz like, sure yeah identify how you want. It’s one of those “they’re so close to getting it” situations. The transphobes who use that “joke” are probably tryna make some kind of statement about how ridiculous some gender identities can be but it’s like… gender is fake lol. Societal gender is just as much of a construct as a helicopter.

And the other thing that sucks is that I feel like that whole “joke” ended up, like…. traumatizing even the weirdest and queerest parts of the community, I guess? Like, I know several trans people who find computers and robots and mechas to be gender. There is a thriving community here on tumblr that loves computers and mechas and other physical constructs and think it’s cool and gender and hot (and the new armored core game coming out definitely helped).

And I know my friends and a good chunk of that community would probably find rotary-wing aircraft to be gender, but they can’t — the shame, the trauma, the avoidance of stereotypes. You can see robots and mechas and find them sexy in a queer trans sort of way, but if you think the same of helicopters, you are cringe, a sinner, a stereotype, a dirty tranny who makes the rest of the community look bad. If that “joke” didn’t exist, I know damn well there’d be posts like “helicopters have cute snouts and have delicate inner workings and are high maintenance and that’s just so valid of them” bouncing around with 100k notes with people of all identities being like “omg yeah same that’s so me lol”

Idk maybe this stopped being a kinda-shitposty observation of the trans robot/mecha community and started being an observation about how stereotypes are harmful not just because they dehumanize the marginalized, but don’t allow those marginalized people to explore their humanity in ways that end up aligning with said stereotype. I mean, god, even just admitting that you’re sexually promiscuous (one of the most baseline stereotypes of queer people) gets you demonized by other queer people and you’ll get bullied to the point of locking up your social media or deactivating it within a week.

So yknow what fuck it, this is a positivity post now for weird stereotypical genderqueers. Have a neon sparkledog fursona OC. Point at random objects and call them “gender”. Have a bajillion microidentities. Feel a kinship with helicopters. The people who do attack helicopter jokes aren’t gonna respect us anyways, so we might as well have fun and be happy.

[piqueconcentration]

Jitterbug Perfume - Immortality, Sex, and Discomfort

Originally posted January 31, 2024

As is apparently my preferred introduction: It has been quite a while since I have written anything on my computer, but as generally happens after I manage to read or, dare I say it, complete an actual, tangible book, I now am doing so. I type this knowing that Google docs is using my writing to train adolescent artificial intelligentsia, and theoretically I could make the switch to another software, but as is the case with Adobe, the monopoly’s Matrix-style robotic belly-button parasite keeps a firm hold on my psyche, with an extra bonding agent in the form of a powerful distaste for the effort that it would take to learn an entirely foreign user interface, just to marginally weaken the hold that Google has upon my intellectual property, when they are already in possession of basically all of my identifying information. They could probably construct an AI that would perfectly replicate my online presence, idiosyncrasies and ego included, and the only thing that they would have to do at this point to make convincing blog posts from my perspective is post them about as regularly as an agave flowers. If anything, if this particular post goes up on the internet at all, maybe that’s a red flag- I would have to be a mind outside of my own in order to return to a creative project even after my attention span’s honeymoon.

Whatever. I finished a book, and now I am compelled to write. Actually, I finished two books. The first was Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, the first of the Mistborn trilogy, one that i meant to read way back in high school because some youtuber that I liked at the time had recommended it for its magic system- magic systems, as a concept, I would continue to grow increasingly interested in; the books would remain untouched on my shelf. The second was lent to me by one of my housemates, though I can’t remember the conversation that led to that happening- Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, the declaration about me being compelled to write after reading books is only true in the barest sense. Yes, I do feel an urge to write after being exposed to writing that I like, but by no means does that mean that I actually end up, or even begin for that matter, writing anything at all! Also, that same urge doesn’t just apply to writing. I consume manga at a frightening pace, and though by saying this it may imply the opposite sentiment: I do not say that in order to brag- the speed at which I go through webcomics and manga alike is, frankly, detrimental to my experience of the media in question, as I end up retaining almost nothing of what I have had my head immersed in so much that my neck develops knots that hold it at a painful right angle to my torso. I don’t really stop and breathe in the images that the mangaka probably spent hours and hours drawing; if anything, I mostly pay attention to the words written on the page which, in turn, presents a palpable irony in that the reason I have felt unable to read traditional books in recent years is that my attention span balks at walls of text! 

Hey, authors! I won’t read your book even though I’d probably like it, because it doesn’t have any pictures in it! Show me your work once you’ve learned to draw!

Oh, holy shit the irony goes even deeper. Even though I feel that creative urge when I read manga, all of my attempts at making comics or even working to be skilled enough at drawing to feel confident in my capacity to do so are stopped in their tracks by the thus far insurmountable obstacle of not being able or willing to pay attention to the thing that I’m drawing for long enough to finish anything. Good lord. 

______________________________________________________________

Anyway, the way Jitterbug Perfume was written really affected me. I still can’t tell if I liked it very much (the writing style), but to be fair, I really loved the way George Elliot’s Middlemarch was written, but I have been thus far unable to finish that book by virtue of its inexhaustibly prim density; therefore I suppose that the content of a book and its writing style tend to stay fairly separate considering my enjoyment, and the former aspect seems to have a stronger influence on whether or not I actually manage to make it to the back cover.

In this case, the content was excellent. Jitterbug Perfume was described to me as being about immortality, smell, sex, and beets, and I can’t honestly think of a better way to describe it. It’s a jigsaw puzzle of a story, if all of the pieces on the table were from different moments in time, and at the end, when the pieces fit, you are left with a complete picture that somehow shows an unbelievably cohesive, intimately personal tale, despite the massive scope, time-wise (there are very important events that take place before the advent of Christianity, and plot points of similar influence continue to happen all the way up until modern day).

Now that I think about it, the quality of maintaining a story’s characters and relationships, and especially keeping them as tantamount to the direction and tone of the piece, even when the scope of the story has expanded to include over two thousand years of history, even if that history is embellished upon or entirely invented, is an incredible achievement, and one that I think deserves unending praise. So frequently I find myself put off of pieces of media when, though I once enjoyed them for their characters’ dynamics or their dialogue or their writing styles, those aspects eventually were beaten out of the story by the growing scale of the events taking place. It becomes very difficult for me to continue to be invested in the little things that I like, and for that matter, for the author to continue stipulating on those little things’ presence, when suddenly the fate of the world is at stake, or the consequences of failure become so dire that there is no longer room in the work for mirth. 

Jitterbug does this by keeping the story focused almost entirely upon a static set of characters. In all honesty, I do tend to find it a bit grating when a book throws pretty much all of the people that will be introduced over the duration at me all at once, and I also tend to get annoyed when a book switches perspectives back and forth frequently, as it is inevitable that I will be more interested in one of the followed points of view above all of the others (or vice versa, that one of the points of view is especially dull). Let it be known, though generally the book in question pays most attention to the characters that happen to be changing the most, it does do this.

The upside, though, is that even as the setting around the characters morphs drastically with all the changes associated with the world and culture since literally the year 1, the reader is still anchored in the everyday realities of the main characters. The tone of the story stays heavily reliant on each of their emotional states and their changing dynamics. The plot directly follows in the tracks of the characters’ desires and aspirations. As opposed to them being “interesting” people to be around in situations that they have no agency in, they are the driving force of the plot itself, and in this way the book can get away with a mind-boggling amount of in-universe time passing without it ever detaching the reader from the story, or impeding their willingness to care.

That feeling of detachment is exactly the sentiment behind me dropping To Your Eternity by Yoshitoki Oima, a manga that also tackles the concept of immortality, but in a way that I eventually found extraordinarily grating.

Some pieces of media, especially if they continue for a really long time, and even more especially if they are about characters that live much longer than a normal human lifespan, end up bestowing upon these characters a very particularly draining character arc: eventually becoming the most fucking boring people ever. This isn’t really, I don’t think, a product of repetition of personality beats -One Piece, for example, has a main cast that are each fairly one-note, but to me they remain compelling because of the unrelenting new situations, characters, and settings that they rotate through- rather, a common sentiment on the concept of immortality is that a person who is subjected to it will elect that it is a much smarter thing to avoid attachments and emotions as a way of staving off the pain of repeated loss. Combine that with the formula of introducing a bunch of new people, spending a lot of time with them, and then killing them off and meditating on how pointless it all was, and you will have on one hand: a philosophically engaging story about life’s purpose and value; and on the other: one that I will not be reading anymore. Fuck you.

Each time skip in To Your Eternity, my dejection would build, and even though I did enjoy the concepts therein quite a bit, I eventually quit reading when there was a time skip that jumped over so many years that the archaic setting I had been enjoying was gone, along with any characters aside from the protagonist that I may have liked, and I no longer had the will to continue.

Anyway, the point is that Jitterbug Perfume deftly avoids this problem by holding the human experience as an inalienable thru-line. Longer-lived characters don’t become harder to identify with- if anything they become more dear to the reader, as the sentiments that are the crux of their longevity are easily identified with. Their goals, whether they are aware of it or not, are the preservation of emotion and connection- things that the reader can presumably empathize with quite well.

The writing style I would describe as “irreverently confident and connotatively confusing.” The majority of the instances in which Robbins describes anything in this book are unrelentingly riddled with descriptors of every kind, and often of opposing kinds- many sentences use several adjectives to describe a single thing, and the adjectives often carry wildly different connotations. A single line may depict something as both gorgeous and disgusting, just by virtue of the words chosen. Jitterbug is more than willing to yank the reader back and forth like this, and the literary whiplash results in this sort of all-encompassing feeling of mild discomfort. The prose itself is captivating, but in less of the fashion of a ballet performance and more so like a lapdance that really walks the line between attractive and nauseating.

Regardless of whether or not I enjoy the style personally (I still can’t really tell, but I’m leaning toward the favorable side), it strikes me as being exactly what the author wanted. Off-putting, certainly, but one hundred percent intentional. A significant portion of the book’s subject matter consists of topics and sentiments that are at most culturally taboo, and at least playing fast and loose with modern morals and sentiments, especially when it comes to sex. This book, which I really enjoyed, which made me smile and frown and think and even write… will not shut the fuck up about sex.

Every character is steeped in it. Every metaphor is constructed with it. I feel like I could purchase a brand new copy of this fucking thing and its pages would already be stuck together. To get a sense of my feelings (historically) about this- one of my favorite quotes of a friend of mine is from when they asked me: “Hey [my name], would you rather have sex or be stabbed with a knife?”

My point about the “motion sickness” writing style being that it works in favor of the subject matter. The fact that the whole novel is written in a way that makes the reader a little nauseous, figuratively, creates a tone that is much more conducive to, well, not necessarily the intimate discussion of what our society views as crossing lines in the social sand or what should or should not be allowed, but rather the regular enunciation of kind of uncomfortable topics. Combined with a fairly unconcerned and playful tone, the book is able to deftly accept the discomfort that arises from a journey that holds sex as a central theme while progressing through several different settings -cultural and chronological- all with differing views and judgements about a traditionally awkward topic.

Anyway, I liked the book. There is a sentence in there that goes: “Like jugged bees, the funeral orations droned on (134).”

If you think you can make it past all of the disconcertingly flowery (ha, ha.) descriptions of bodily fluids for long enough to make it to that absolute banger of a quote, this may be one to check out.

[obj4obj]

hi, my name is junior, but you can also call me fan, idia, woodrow, or wx! i am a 18 y/o black robot who uses it/its pronouns, and this is my objectum side blog :] i'm not new to being objectum, though i am new to identifying with the term. it's nice to be here!

i really love my pc, oracle! i probably won't post him too much, i'm a bit attached. i also love my phone stand, lark, and one of my plushies, nickel! i also really love ibm computers, g3 imacs, and other pieces of tech! i've really been getting into keurigs and fax machines lately, too. besides tech, i really like pool toys and anything else that catches my eye.

[j4gm]

Mechanukkah night 1: I, Robot (2004)

It’s that time of year where my friends invite me to come and watch robot movies during Hanukkah. Our first vote was for I, Robot (2004), the 100% book-accurate adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s groundbreaking 1950 fixup novel.

For those of you unfamiliar with Asimov, he was writing about robotics and accurately predicting many of our modern ethical and practical concerns about artificial intelligence while everyone else was still busy inventing new ways to kill people during World War Two. In fact, one of the short stories which became a chapter in I, Robot, titled “Liar”, features the original inception of the word “robotics”, which had never been used before then. I’ve written about Liar before. Asimov also identified as a secular Jew, which makes a spin-off of his work a cool way to kick off this watch party.

Unfortunately just about the only feature consistent with the book is the name of the robotics expert Susan Calvin, who mostly gets sidelined into being a love interest and plot device for us to learn more about Will Smith’s character, an action hero cop OC called Spooner. He was given a bizarre and ham-fisted robot-hating arc which was seemingly supposed to be a racism parallel. The conclusion of the arc was that his racism was good actually because it meant he was able to solve the murder case that kicked off the whole plot. Needless to say it was not well executed.

The CGI remains okay for a film from 2004. The car tunnel scene and the climactic final battle were undeniably cool even though the latter had so much crazy camera movement it felt like a Universal Studios 4D experience at times.

As a computer scientist I’m not going to delve into all the reasons why the film’s plot is bullshit because we could be here a long time. It’s supposed to be bullshit. It’s an action movie first and foremost. I just wish it could have been a bullshit action movie without contradicting the core ideals of Asimov’s work, which included stiff resistance to the idea that robots always have to be these Frankestein-esque creatures who inevitably turn on their creators.

Anyway it was a fun movie to talk and joke over, and afterwards @simplyender​ roped me into watching the first episode of Inside Job which was also fun, and is the reason the Discord server now has an emote of Brett with a menorah.

Mechanukkah word of the day: wetware