#manufacturing wizard

[electropneumatic]

KUKA HAAS, MANUFACTURING WIZARD

Commissioned from Ziruka (@rukafais) during her Wizard Sale - it ends on December 31st, so if you want one for yourself, move fast! They did a great job, I'm really happy with the art.

This is the MANUFACTURING WIZARD, otherwise known as Kuka Haas! It formed one day in an industrial plant, and has been exploring ever since. Spells include SUMMON STOCK ALUMINUM and SENTIENT FORKLIFT.

[electropneumatic]

for the various people and persons who like doing these

[teasetsotw]

--- Designer/Manufacturer: Doc Holiday Molds (DHM) [X] Region: Wichita, Kansas, United States Time period: 2001

[wild-magic-oops]

It's so cute that Gale pays a sorcerer Tav/Durge a compliment about their magic:

For reference - this is the line a cleric gets:

[thatweirdoziangirl]

Over the past few days, I watched all 4 Oz silent films. The Larry Semon one was pretty wild. Definitely a departure from the original source material (although it was based on the play Baum wrote, that recon artist.) My personal favorite is The Magical Cloak of Oz. I'm always so amazed at the ingenuity silent filmmakers had when creating and execution special effects at the time. It's true movie magic.

[electropneumatic]

Hello again,

Thank you for explaining nature and ecosystems for me. It is fascinating how every organism makes an impact on the world around it. While factories and assembly lines can be very complicated, it looks like nature is infinitely more so.

As a token of my appreciation, please accept this plastic model of you. When thrown behind you, it will expand in size and act as a decoy to any in pursuit; in normal situations, it's just a decoration.

While I'm beginning to explore the world outside of factories, I don't think I'll stumble across you for quite a while, as it looks like the moist environments that you enjoy would be detrimental to me. However, maybe someday I will figure out a way to avoid these limitations, and we will be able to meet.

Thank you again,

KUKA HAAS

MANUFACTURING WIZARD

Hello Moss,

I am Kuka Haas, the manufacturing wizard. I formed last year in a factory, but I'm beginning to grow curious about the outside world. Could you please tell me a little bit about "animals" and "plants"? If you are interested, I could teach you a little bit about industrial machinery in return.

Thank you,

KUKA HAAS

MANUFACTURING WIZARD

Hello, Kuka Haas!

Hmm. Well, nature is both simple and complicated! It might help you to think of everything as a cog in a machine.

Everything affects everything else, from the smallest Flora to the largest Fauna. Ecosystems are fragile, but everything works in harmony most of the time!

Life and nature go though cycles of destruction and rebirth

In Australia, eucalyptus trees are a good example! The bark and natural oils inside the tree are very flammable, and the trees themselves have adapted specific traits to deal with their constant catching-on-fire in the Aussie heat.

When a eucalyptus catches fire, they've adapted to drop all their seeds on the ground. After the wildfire passes, the seeds have a rich ashbed to re-sprout from! Thus, the natural cycle continues.

[iruludavare]

{ ooc. @ finnish phds how does it feel to get AN ENTIRE SWORD when you graduate 🎤 }

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

It's been a bit over a year since the core four (me, my beloved, his bestie gun wizard esquire, and my bestie, doctor horse girl) went on a very successful very effective bonding group cohesion road trip, which is long enough to observe a pattern in recollection and presentation. keep in mind that literally no one in the core four is White and 3/4ths of us are from (recent) immigrant families.

the way my beloved and doctor horse girl describe this trip: we went on a roadtrip with friends! it was fun!

audience reaction: how nice!

vs

me and gun wizard, esquire describing this trip: WE DROVE TO WEST VIRGINIA IT WAS SO COOL. what? yeah, of course on purpose.

audience reaction: ...west virginia????

so anyway. maybe I'm not the normal person here.

[homunculus-argument]

I'm pretty sure that lab-grown precious gems could and should be used for some sort of witchcraft fuckery purposes. This is one of those "I have no way to even begin to rationalise this, but I feel like it should be logical" sort of things. Like there's some inherent elemental safety buffers in natural gems and crystals that manufactured ones wouldn't have, so you could do some absolutely nuclear wizard shit with them. Like how being born through c-section or having a trans man father would technically exclude you from "no man of woman born" in a prophesy.

[prokopetz]

On the one hand, it's true that the way Dungeons & Dragons defines terms like "sorcerer" and "warlock" and "wizard" is really only relevant to Dungeons & Dragons and its associated media – indeed, how these terms are used isn't even consistent between editions of D&D! – and trying to apply them in other contexts is rarely productive.

On the other hand, it's not true that these sorts of fine-grained taxonomies of types of magic are strictly a D&D-ism and never occur elsewhere. That folks make this argument is typically a symptom of being unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons' source material. D&D's main inspirations are American literary sword and sorcery fantasy spanning roughly the 1930s through the early 1980s, and fine-grained taxonomies of magic users absolutely do appear in these sources; they just aren't anything like as consistent as the folks who try to cram everything into the sorcerer/warlock/wizard model would prefer.

For example, in Lyndon Hardy's "Five Magics" series, the five types of magical practitioners are:

Alchemists: Drawing forth the hidden virtues of common materials to craft magic potions; limited by the fact that the outcomes of their formulas are partially random.

Magicians: Crafting enchanted items through complex manufacturing procedures; limited by the fact that each step in the procedure must be performed perfectly with no margin for error.

Sorcerers: Speaking verbal formulas to basically hack other people's minds, permitting illusion-craft and mind control; limited by the fact that the exercise of their art eventually kills them.

Thaumaturges: Shaping matter by manipulating miniature models; limited by the need to draw on outside sources like fires or flywheels to make up the resulting kinetic energy deficit.

Wizards: Summoning and binding demons from other dimensions; limited by the fact that the binding ritual exposes them to mental domination by the summoned demon if their will is weak.

"Warlock", meanwhile, isn't a type of practitioner, but does appear as pejorative term for a wizard who's lost a contest of wills with one of their own summoned demons.

Conversely, Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Legends of Ethshar" series includes such types of magic-users as:

Sorcerers: Channelling power through metal talismans to produce fixed effects; in the time of the novels, talisman-craft is largely a lost art, and most sorcerers use found or inherited talismans.

Theurges: Summoning gods; the setting's gods have no interest in human worship, but are bound not to interfere in the mortal world unless summoned, and are thus amenable to cutting deals.

Warlocks: Wielding X-Men style psychokinesis by virtue of their attunement to the telepathic whispers emanating from the wreckage of a crashed alien starship. (They're the edgy ones!)

Witches: Producing improvisational effects mostly related to healing, telepathy, precognition, and minor telekinesis by drawing on their own internal energy.

Wizards: Drawing down the infinite power of Chaos and shaping it with complex rituals. Basically D&D wizards, albeit with a much greater propensity for exploding.

You'll note that both taxonomies include something called a "sorcerer", something called a "warlock", and something called a "wizard", but what those terms mean in their respective contexts agrees neither with the Dungeons & Dragons definitions, nor with each other.

(Admittedly, these examples are from the 1980s, and are thus not free of D&D's influence; I picked them because they both happened to use all three of the terms in question in ways that are at odds with how D&D uses them. You can find similar taxonomies of magic use in earlier works, but I would have had to use many more examples to offer multiple competing definitions of each of "sorcerer", "warlock" and "wizard", and this post is already long enough!)

So basically what I'm saying is giving people a hard time about using these terms "wrong" – particularly if your objection is that they're not using them in a way that's congruent with however D&D's flavour of the week uses them – makes you a dick, but simply having this sort of taxonomy has a rich history within the genre. Wizard phylogeny is a time-honoured tradition!

[electropneumatic]

The Manufacturing Wizard inspects a CNC milling machine. His belt is similar to a chain-type automatic tool changer, and he uses it to hold a couple cutting tools.

[princesssarcastia]

bold of you to say "draft dodger" like it's something derogatory?

Satine Kryze should not be a sympathetic character.

A complex and tragic one? Sure. Every day of the week.

But she did not 'have a point', neither in-universe, not outside of the sw framework. She isn't a hero, neither of her own story, nor of someone else's. There is no way she wasn't a tool. You should not look at her and think 'this woman has done nothing wrong and what ultimately happened to Mandalore was to no part her fault'.

Because guys. Friends. Strangers on the interwebs.

Pacifism doesn't work.

And it certainly wouldn't have worked in motherfucking Star Wars – the 'wars' is literally in the title – for a system or series of systems who wanted to stay neutral.

YOU DON'T STAY NEUTRAL FOR LONG BY JUST SAYING 'YEAH, NO THANKS <3' TO A LARGE-SCALE CONFLICT.

source: I am Swiss, we've looked at this in history class. Extensively.

Satine was a dreamer (thanks Obi-Wan) who was allowed to keep her delusions because they actively benefitted Palpatine's plans. And that's something you can quote me on. There is literally no other reason (apart from supremely bad writing but we'll leave that aside here) for her and her little friends' 'Alliance of Neutral Systems' or whatever to be allowed to exist.

Not that they were neutral in any way, shape or form, by the way.

So yeah sorry to the Satine stans, but you're idolizing a character that was written exclusively and specifically for Obi-Wan's manpain and who, in-universe, was a supremely bad politician. Because the level of mental dissonace needed to factually be a Republic System, have a seat in the fucking Republic Senate, rely upon their military for aid while actively proclaiming that All Violence Is Bad And Barbaric one sentence later AND THEN CLAIM TO BE NEUTRAL IN THE WHOLE CONFLICT – it's just mind-blowing. Even moreso that people actually look at this character and see something aspirational in her.

Again, I'll gladly dissect her character any day of the week. She is fascinating because of all the implications her existence as a head of state carries with it, as well as her deeply complicated family history and her relation to mandalorian culture.

But it just grates on me personally that that all gets ignored in favor of her being some sort of icon of white american saviorism (bc that's literally what she is) and her objectively bad political takes being treated like they are the only correct stance to be taken during the Clone Wars/Mandalorian Civil Wars.

If you think pacifism works and actually lets you stay neutral, I desperately urge you to open a history book. Because those two are mutually exclusive. Especially in the scenario that Star Wars paints.

[jouste]

The Iron Wizard! The Iron Wizard has manufactured the heaviest wand to ever to be Abracadabra'd, casting much weightier and improved spells! A simple Magic Missile becomes intercontinental while Detect Magic has such a range that it is always a resounding "Yes".

[disco-archetypes]

YOU - "How do you feel about manufacturing large quantities of drugs?"

SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER - "I feel that's illegal."

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - She's a radiocomputer wizard. Radiocomputer wizards don't care. She probably thinks it's illegal -- *and* fun.

[malicious-gay]

so maybe you’re a wizard

and maybe you’re easily one of the best wizards of your generation (and maybe some before)

and maybe that’s all you are

maybe every ounce of self-confidence you have is manufactured. maybe it’s an illusion and maybe you’re convinced that if people never squint and look beyond it then they’ll never have the see the rest of you.

(because maybe they won’t like what they see. maybe you’re too selfish. maybe you’re too arrogant. maybe you’re nothing like what they expect and you have to be what they expect because they don’t want anything else.)

and maybe the idea that someone could love you for who you are instead of the skills you honed and the services you provide is strange and foreign. maybe it’s uncomfortable because of course not, no way, don’t be absurd. look at the illusion, astral project, take the fantasy version of myself I created in my hands just for you. it’s better than the real thing.

maybe the real thing is awful and messy and broken.

maybe all you’ve ever been is the sum of someone else’s aspirations.

maybe all your loved ones ever touted were your skills and abilities and how smart you were and how clever you were and how brilliant and sharp and talented you were. and maybe that was all they cared about.

maybe you were led to believe you were never more than your abilities by the same person who later helped take them away. (the same person who convinced you you’d be nothing without them, and never good enough for more. the same person who showed you the endless possibilities that were for someone better than you. someone more than you. no, no, the candy is sweet but it’s not for you.)

and maybe now you think being smarter than everyone is the only thing you’ll ever have so you have to be the smartest person in the room because that’s all you have.

that’s all you have.

and if you don’t have that then you’ll have nothing. you’ll be nothing.

without it you are nothing.

and maybe you’re a wizard and the woman you loved who constantly showed you a world outside your reach comes to you at your lowest. when you’re stripped of everything you felt made you whole.

and she tells you the one thing you can do to fix it. the one thing you can do, the one power left in your hands.

the one thing you’re good for without your brilliance, without your intelligent, without the skill she helped take away from you.

you can die

(you weren’t anything to anyone anymore anyway)

[sideprince]

"The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy ... was a law in the wizarding world that was first signed in 1689, then established officially in 1692."

Ok.

"The Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery was a bylaw of the British Ministry of Magic, written in 1875, which banned the use of underage magic outside of school."

Sure, makes sense. Just under 2 centuries after the Statute of Secrecy, British wizards decided that kids can't be trusted to use magic without threatening exposure. (Also makes sense it was Victorian wizards who decided this.)

"Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence."

A weird thing to tweet into the canon but go off, I guess? Presumably these plumbing methods took a while to spread through the countryside, which is where most wizards lived.

Oh. Wait. OH.

New headcanon: the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery was imposed because until the late 1800s, it would have been impossible to, since children literally had to use magic every time they used the bathroom before then.

Side headcanon: the decree was lobbied for by wizarding toilet manufacturers hoping to increase their profits, in order to pressure wizards into investing in having them installed.