#transformers vs the terminator

[but-a-humble-goon]

Here's some deeply revealing insight into where my mind is at these days. Was just thinking how in this crossover, Terminator and Transformer tech exists in the same universe.

Transformers are powered by Energon. Quasi-mystical energy source and lifeblood of their creator god Primus. They need a recharge on energon pretty much as frequently as a human needs to eat or else they die. Terminators are powered by onboard hydrogen fuel cells. Nuclear. They sustain a terminator at 100% for roughly 120 years before needing a replacement. Conclusion: canonically the literal blood of Primus ain't shit compared to nuclear energy.

[robotclownindulgence]

This was my barbenheimer

[unlikelypandahologram]

new hot take: this is the SEXIEST panel of megatron ever drawn, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. that fucking evil smirk alone is so goddamn hot and panty wetting i'm losing my MIND

[lafinmp3]

🥺🥺

[bronzemettle]

Greetings! I didn't know posts could have titles and couldn't think of anythi-

I'm Xavier Bronze (she/her). I'm plural, polyamorous, and frequently autistically hyperfixate on nerd shit. Early in my existence my headmate helped me write a superhero self-insert fanfic, and it made the choice to cross company lines, including characters and plot elements from not just Marvel, but DC, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Indiana Jones, and others all at the same time.

This is probably where it started, bc now, with certain aesthetics and genre conventions my cognition just kinda does crossovers on its own by default. It actively takes effort for me to remember that certain characters don't exist in the same universe. And for the past couple of years I've started formalizing and codifying this broad-reaching "headcanon world". Here I'm thinking about calling it BronzeRealms, for better SEO and tagging.

Since becoming a codified continuity of its own, the BronzeRealms have only grown. Significantly. Now I have a rough timeline spanning from the Age of Myth roughly three millennia ago all the way to the 41st century. Comicbook superheroes are still here, with a greatest hits grab bag of character versions and lore taken from various adaptions, reboots, and retcons over the decades.

But now the superheroes of today find themselves in conversation and lineage with great warriors of centuries past like Kratos, Xena, and the slave uprising who expelled the Goa'uld System Lords from Egypt, and with the steadfast and resourceful Captains and soldiers of the future, John Connor, Gordon Freeman, Finn the Human, John Sheridan, Ellen Ripley, the Reds and Blues of Blood Gulch, and Benjamin Sisko. Their contemporaries have broadened too. Godzilla, Dominic Toretto, Hellboy, Kim Possible, Ladybug & Cat Noire, UNIT, Sora, The Addams Family, and the Autobots. This is very, very far from a comprehensive list. I have dipped my toe into making a list of source works that the BronzeRealms draws elements from to include, and the table of contents alone is over two pages at this point.

I am fully aware that the scope of this worldbuilding has exceeded all reason, and any chance of ever being fleshed out into any kind of story that could encompass it all. It would take multiple lifetimes just to write 5k word mini fics for every character, event, and time period I've defined lore for. I might put a microfic out once in a while but this is fully worldbuilding for its own sake, for fun!

And I've been talking my friends' ears off about this for years now so I came to this website seeking fresh infodumping victims, lol. And to do more ongoing brainstorming. This isn't a finished product, and never will be, so you should just have fun with it too <3

[pluralsword]

A little thing we did for the end of Transformers IDW, posting now that we have access to our tumblr again. These comics were life changing for us and we know they have been for others including other trans folks, for us in particular we figured out gender stuff, solidified hope in compassion and determination, figured out what we really want to write about and connected to writing communities outside of transformers because of that, loved ourselves more, made numerous friends and met the first person we have a relationship with.

With all their ups and downs, these comics have done an unforgettable good and we hope that the best parts continue in new stories- something we are already seeing some of happen on television and in board games- and in the souls of many.

The dedication of the artists and writers and consultants and all contributors to try to tell a story about alien robot life with feelings and identity, existential crises, war, death and the ends of empires while alongside humans and other forms of life is truly something special. thank you <3

(don’t have all the comics/didn’t have room in the photo to get in more/was precarious/forgot to put the motorcycle comb sister triplets for the movie comics, but even for various things we haven’t read we are glad)

Image ID: Standing on a trans flag and Transformers Rarities on a windowsill are large number of transformer toys. Behind them are a two book tall line of comic books: Windblade Volume 1, Transformers Phase 2 Volume 12, Lost Light Volume 4, Unicron, Best of Arcee, Transformers Volume 5 Horrors Near and Far, Shattered Glass II #4, Transformer vs Terminator, Magic of Cybertron, Transformers vs GIJOE Volume 3. Bot toys both official and custom (with some unlicensed accessories and 3d parts) are: PRID Arcee, T30 & TR Windblade, T30 & Siege Chromia, T30 Cosmos, PotP Elita, Mistres of Flame, SG Flamewar, Origins Bumblebee, T30 Skids, Siege Starscream, Velocity, Anode, Lug, CW Bombshell, Aileron, Legacy Knock Out, IDW1 & WFC Greenlight & Lancer & Siege Dazzlestrike, IDW1 & IDW2 & S86 Arcee, Gauge, Armada Sureshock, Animated Blackarachnia, WFC Airazor & Tigatron, CW Jumpstream, Dust Up, Rust Dust, & Pyra Magna, Nautica, MP Road Rage, Siege Nova Storm, ER Smokescreen, & PotP Novastar. End ID.

[sykeswrites]

Hello all!

I will be posting my Masterlist today and it will be pinned, just thought I’d let you all know that I’m adding a few more options I write for!

I will be adding Wednesday, The Addams Family (1991), The Conjuring plus The Nun, Transformers, Avatar plus The Way of Water, Terminator, Predator, Alien, and Disney plus Descendants

[davidmariottecomics]

100 Blogs (Give or Take): FIGHT!

Hello! 

Welcome to my 100th* blog! 

*Or, rather, blog week 101 over on my website. In terms of actual blogs, I'm probably more in the 70s-80s? I try to update as much as possible, of course, but some weeks things've not uploaded properly. Occasionally, I've had just too much life stuff or I haven't really had much to write about. And sometimes, on the extreme ends, I've had way too much to write about and have been overwhelmed at trying to parse out everything I needed to. Last week, when I missed the actual week 100, was somewhere inbetween those: feeling uninspired because I was so tired from both stuff in my personal life and the many many many things happening in the world at large. 

I've, unsurprisingly, still got a lot on my mind. Like 200 organizations have pledged their support for KOSA and sounds like they might not all understand exactly what they're supporting (but you can still make your voice heard on why not to let it pass, namely the continued safety and security of LGBTQ+ folks online who might otherwise get explicitly banned from the most public online spaces, or at least implicitly banned through shadowbanning--as well as all the kids that could be harmed from the inability to access information that they might actually need.).

The U.S. blocked a U.N. call for ceasefire singlehandedly, despite the rest of the security council (minus abstaining U.K. and... that was noticed, guv) being in favor and, of course the overwhelming national and international support for a ceasefire (one progressive thinktank's polling suggested around a 60% US support for ceasefire, to whatever extent those kinds of polls can be trusted, however, the feet on the ground at protests, making calls, sending emails, trying to get into Senatorial offices with ladders, etc show a pretty vocal support for one).

The website formerly known as Twitter gave me just another reason to leave with their new AI. I don't want to see anything about it because I, y'know, get that it's like dunking on the people who wanted to use it for evil and that's funny or whatever, but it's also another AI system that's almost certainly just regurgitating things actually people said and thought and made and ought to be given credit and/or money for the use of. We shouldn't be letting our guard down around an AI just because it's telling transphobes to go fuck themselves--this is still the same shit that is stealing from artists or denying people their medical coverage!

And, also mostly on Twitter because it's a bad place (and I'll remind ya now, I'm leaving by the year's end. I'll be here on the blog and you can find me on Bluesky and I have a couple spare invites if you might need one, but my Twitter's coming to an end soon and I think my Facebook/Insta aren't too far behind...) multiple dirtbag comics guys decided to make the rounds again. They've had their airtime and I have no interest in giving them a platform, but boy, they sure were around. 

Plus, y'know, all the other stuff that has just been continuing, from the continued assault on Ukraine to Covid hospitalizations and deaths going up again.

It's the end of the year and cha'boy is tired. It has been a long, long year and I'm very much looking forward to it ending for whatever that is worth and the time of relaxation I get to have around that end. And so, I wasn't really feeling like writing... but then, I saw a post on Bluesky from Marcus Jimenez asking all comics folks about crafting fight scenes. And so I wanna talk about that this week because I don't often get a chance to talk about the mechanics of comics within comics, and that can be really fun! 

Squaring Up

As someone who has written and edited a lot of fight scenes, there are a lot of different ways to go about it. As I think I've said before, in my own writing, I tend toward a little more description and full dialogue so the artist has those space considerations in mind when working from my scripts. As an editor, I've worked the "Marvel" way where pages are more plotted with with less dialogue and specific action. I've worked with folks who do more of a rough pass where they focus on the concrete smaller moments and then leave a lot of the action up to the artist. I've worked with folks who're even more prescriptive than me. And there's something to finding the right balance on all sides with all these folks--from the writer and artist meshing in terms of what sort of detail they want from each other to having complimentary colors and letters. 

But for myself, and something I have sometimes talked to creators about, one of the first things I focus on when it comes to an action or fight scene is the specific things the character(s) can do. When I think about some of my bigger fight sequences in say Transformers vs. the Terminator or Transformers Wreckers: Tread & Circuits (both available from my webstore, *hint hint*), one of the most apparent things is that I loaded them with a lot of characters doing a lot of things, so... sorry to my artists (no, I know Alex and Jack loved working on them--again, if you can, write to the artist's strengths and I happened to work with guys I knew were excited about these sorts of big scenes). But in that, there are a lot of characters with specific abilities. Generally speaking, right, in TF/Term, we've got three different types of combatants: Sarah Conner is a human, the T-800 is a Terminator, and the Transformers are Transformers. So the skills Sarah has are different from all the robots and, obviously, the Transformers have the ability to convert modes which is something unique to them as characters that can make for really exciting sequences. And even within the Transformers, there are different combat capabilities: Skywarp can teleport. Soundwave has sonic attacks. Megatron has a huge arm cannon. Optimus has an energon axe. The Seekers can fly. And characters like Velocity are medics, who she doesn't really shoot to kill, she can hold her own after millenia at war, but she's not a fighter first and doesn't wanna do terrible damage to anyone. 

To me, it's the same thing as a fight with Spider-Man. You know he's got the proportional speed, strength, and agility of a spider. You know he has web-fluid (unless he doesn't and that sort of circumstance is interesting in a fight). He can stick to things and sense danger and all the standard Spidey tricks. And if you want a scene to be engaging, you wanna know what your characters can do in it that is unique--either to other characters and stories, or within this specific scenario. Seeing Spidey use his webs or his wall-crawling or his spider-sense is more interesting on a page than him just swinging his fists (generally). These are all sort of tools in the toolbox that determine what they can do in a fight. I also think that when you combine them with the circumstances of the fight, you start to see how they'll act in a fight. Why they make the decisions they do. 

So, to use TF again, in TF/Terminator, let's talk about the set-up to the big fight that runs through issues #3 & #4. It starts out with Bumblebee and Sarah scouting out the Decepticons who are up to no good. And the instigating question is, if Bumblebee's a good scout, how does someone sneak up on him? Well, Skywarp is a teleporter. So he just appears! But he's also maybe a little dumb, so he announces himself. Bumblebee's first priority is protecting Sarah, so the best way to do that is for him to shift modes around her as a running shield. They'll go faster. If he gets hit, it'll reduce the impact on her. Etcetera. He could do other things--he could stay and fight and blast at Skywarp, but because the option is open to him to change modes and to drive away, he's going to because that's fun and it makes sense with his character. Then he tries to do some fancy driving to trick Skywarp into ramming into Megatron, but because Skywarp can teleport, hey, he gets away in perfect position to take another run at Bumblebee. But because he teleported higher to get a better position, it also left him more open to get shot by Optimus in the heroic arrival of the rest of the Autobots. The characters' abilities made a really clear picture of the sort of action that could occur with the setting and are reflective of why they act the way they do. 

Throw a Punch A lot of the action is going to flow pretty naturally, from a writing standpoint, once you've got it started. If I know who my characters are, what they can do, and the basic scenario they find themselves in, as long as I've got that in my head, I can just sort of play them off each other and see how the action goes. But there ar some other practicalities I try to take into account as I go. 

1. How many characters do I have to keep track of? Like I said, a lot of my fight scenes have been bigger. I've got groups fighting each other, with civilians to worry about. And while you don't need to show every beat of every action, you do have to keep roughly in mind how everyone is reacting and to what extent you do want to switch between POVs and protagonists. I tend to measure my beats to either pages or page turns, rather than doing too much action switching on a single page unless I'm trying to convey just how hectic things are and just how simultaneous actions are occuring. 

2. How fast is your action moving? Two things I think about a lot when I'm writing action are that a round of combat in Dungeons & Dragons is supposed to be 6 seconds, and that the coolest fight I've ever seen on film is the almost 6 minute fight scene in They Live. (6 minutes later...) I'm back! Okay, so either way, I think what both of those are very representative of are how quickly action occurs in a fight and how much of the time in a fight is the other stuff. It's the non-combat movement. It's catching your breath or setting a trap or focusing on another problem or putting sunglasses on a guy. And in comics, you have the ability to dialate time as you'd like, so each panel can be a second or a matter of seconds, with the gutters allowing time to pass out of frame. You want your action to be logical and continous, but it's okay to have other things happening in the flow, and maybe more importantly, to chose which moments have the most impact.  In D&D, 6 seconds can take like 6 minutes. And on film, you're getting so many constant frames. Comics lets you be a lot chosier in how you expand and contract the time around those moments. 

3. How text heavy is the fight? Here's the other side of things. I know that I tend to be a talker. I mean... look how long it's taken to get to this point! I like dialogue in my comics and often have characters trading verbal jabs during the action. And that takes time and space. As do sound effects. So, I try to balance my fight scenes to the essentials. Much the same as the issue of time, I'm trying to select the moments of greatest impact with what we're "hearing". The more that's being asked of an action panel, the less text I try to give it. Let the art take over. But if I can use the action as a punctuation: If Optimus or Thunderclash or whoever is giving his hero speech and can toss a punch at a baddie to make his point, I'm going to use it. And if action is the visual punctuation to dialogue in this way, SFX are the visual punctuation to the action. They're an exclamation point on what sound is important. A lot of the time, it'll be no sound. But if it'll clarify the action or if it'll enhance the mood, go for it! 

Most important to a fight scene is that *generally* they're supposed to be fun. They're moments of fantasy where a side that's in some sort of right and a side that's in some sort of wrong clash and there's a victor and we all cheer because it's entertaining to see Rowdy Roddy Piper get his ass handed to him up until the end, but when he finally gets one over on Keith David, you know it's because he was right. So while you're thinking of all this stuff, if you give in to the fun, it'll propel you through a lot of it. Now, there're obviously also moments when the fighting is supposed to be building tension or showing the horrors of violence, but I think that goes to a lot of the same mentality as we've already got. It's about making the characters respond to the situation of the fight and if their responses fall in line with that, it'll still be smooth sailing because it'll be what makes sense.

I think that's it for me for this week, but maybe in a coming week, I can do something like a mini-version of something I did on my Patreon when I did an annotated version of the Wreckers #1 script and  do sort of a practical walk-through of a new original fight scene. 

Until next time. Happy Hanukkah to those that celebrate! 

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Dungeons & Daddies (Podcast), Reverse 1999 (Video Game), Nancy (Comic), Lego Masters (TV show), Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (Short story collection), Factory Summers by Guy Delisle (Comic), It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood (Comic), Slaughterhouse-Five (the Comic adaptation by Ryan North & Albert Monteys), being almost done with all gift shopping and wrapping 2 weeks early, Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video Game), Dandadan (Manga), our little mall Model Train Museum, Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville (Comic), Blue Beetle (Comic), Birds of Prey (Comic), Christmas lights, finding a good deal on a present for myself (I found the G.I. Joe Bishoujo Scarlett statue for a mere $40 at a local secondhand store and I think she's really pretty), not getting sick even tho Becca was, and I guess The Killer (Movie). Not my favorite Fincher by a lot. We're tentatively gonna see Godzilla: Minus One tomorrow, so looking forward to that and will try to figure out seeing Boy and the Heron, Eileen, Dream Scenario, and maybe The Marvels (tho it being a Disney film makes it a tougher sell) before they're out of theaters... and maybe Priscilla... and maybe FNAF on the big screen since Becca's really into FNAF right now. Too many movies! And I love movies! 

New Releases this week (12/6/2023): Sonic the Hedgehog #67 (Editor)

New Releases next week (12/13/2023):  Sonic the Hedgehog: Winter Jam (Editor)

Announcements: Look for a kind fun thing I contributed to this week! I'll share it when it's live! 

The Cartoonist Cooperative is still doing E-Sim cards for Gaza. You can donate a digital sim card so that residents can get access to the internet and have more functional phones and, in exchange, get some comics or a drawing or whatever else is available from the many participating artists. You can also give more directly. If you don't have money, and I get it, you can call or fax or email or show up at the offices of your representatives. There are a ton of demonstrations happening this weekend and you can see if you can put your actions in on one of those!

If you aren't a Patreon backer yet, remember, it's a great gift for someone or yourself. At my $10 tier, last month, I got Becca to record an Adults-Only podcast called "Abandoning the Premise" with me. You should be able to hear a short sample at the link. And if that seems cool to you, you can get the whole episode, but a bunch of other weird stuff on my Patreon! This month's "Something Weird"s are going to be a root beer review (I bought 6 different root beers and Becca suggested I talk about what I thought of them and there'll be a little more to it that that) and hopefully posting next weekend, a Holiday Gift Guide written, chosen, and designed by me (be careful if you're a person who might get a gift from me... you might see your present in there)! 

And keep an eye out for more news soon. Really hoping to have some cool news in the new year if not before! 

Pic of the Week: So, last Wednesday, I made a trip up to the IDW Los Angeles office. Because we have a lot of people spread out, we have a couple office locations. But the LA office happened to host some friends from SEGA and, specifically, some visitors from Sonic Team! We gave them the tour, talked about the comics, gave them some to take home, all the good usual visiting stuff. But Karasuno-san, Kanemoto-san, and Hoshino-san very generously did some sketches for us before they left. So, should you get a chance to tour the IDW offices in the future, you might see this sketch page hanging on the wall. 

[pluralsword]

-*laughs in prowl* back in 2022 at TFCon Chicago the last panel of the con was IDW artists talking about the art experience, and someone asked how they draw the bots doing things or something like that, and Alex Milne said more or less 'well we have to use visual tricks of perception, for example Prowl's bosom on the toy would keep him from crossing his arms so you have to change the angle of things to make it work'

-Transformers is such a different world when it comes to gender and anatomy because Arcee can usually cross her arms across her chest just fine including IDW1 and Terminator Arcees who have the most protruding chest except for Q-Transformers Arcee whose torso is the chest basically but all the Q-Transformer cars are like that. Her girlfriend Aileron who is chubby and buff can cross her arms fine. Meanwhile on the other hand the average car Prowl (canonically a guy so far) with lanky big ankle proportions except for his massive and broad chest cannot do that. want to show this in toy form someday when we get an official or unlicensed aileron toy (our close to proportion accurate Aileron custom can't twist her arms sadly)

flat-chested transformers don't know how good they have it, being able to cross their arms privilege n all that

[theturncoattournament]

Do you love a character with a good redemption arc? Or a corruption arc? Or even just seeing the kind of storylines that emerge from a character who was formerly aligned with an enemy side decide to join a different one?

Then welcome to...

The Turncoat Tournament!

This is a tournament for characters who have changed sides at some point in the story. It can be from good to bad, bad to good, or from one morally ambiguous side to a different morally ambiguous side, as long as the change in allegiance is still clear. Characters can change sides multiple times, and ultimately end up returning to their original side, and still qualify for the tournament!

Due to the subject of the tournament itself being inherently spoiler-y, I will by default not be tagging posts with spoiler warnings. However, below I do have a list of all the pieces of media that have characters in the tournament; if you see something on this list that you do want spoiler tagged, please let me know, and I’ll start tagging it with spoiler warnings!

Media list:

(Arranged in alphabetical order)

2001: A Space Odyssey/2010: The Year We Made Contact

Ace Attorney/The Great Ace Attorney

Animation vs Minecraft

Arthurian legend 

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Bamse - Världens starkaste björn

Bones

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Bungo Stray Dogs

Centaurworld

Chess The Musical 

The Chronicles of Narnia

Code Geass

Critical Role (Campaign 2) 

Cult of the Lamb

DC Comics (Batfamily, Flash characters, Shazam family)

Devil May Cry

Doctor Who

Dog Man

Dragon Age: Inquisition 

Dragon Ball Z

The Evillious Chronicles 

Fable III

Fairy Tail

Fake Princess

Farscape

Final Fantasy XIV

Game of Thrones

Genshin Impact

The Good Place

Gravity Falls

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

Hannibal

The Hunger Games

I Expect You to Die 3

The Incredibles 

Just Dance

Kingdom Hearts

Kinnporsche 

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 

Kirby series

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords manga

The Librarians

The Locked Tomb

Machineries of Empire

Maleficent

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Marvel Comics (X-Men, Avengers) 

Megamind

Merlin

Mistborn

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

Nan Quest

Once Upon A Time

One Piece

The Owl House

Pandora Hearts

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Person of Interest 

The Pirates of Penzance

Pirates of the Caribbean 

Portal 2

Power Rangers: Dino Fury

Pretty Cure (Fresh Precure, Kira Kira Precure a la Mode, Suite Precure, Hugtto Precure)

Provost’s Dog

Princess Tutu

Raya and the Last Dragon

RWBY

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Smallville

Sonic the Hedgehog OVA 

Soul Eater

Soul series (Soul Calibur/Edge) 

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Star Wars (Prequels, Original trilogy, Rebels, Clone Wars, Knights of the Old Republic) 

Steven Universe

The Stormlight Archive

Sunless Sea

Tangled: The Series

Teen Titans (2003 series) 

Teen Wolf

Terminator films 

Transformers

Tron Legacy

Vorkosigan Saga

Warrior Cats

Wings of Fire

Wolf 359

Worm

Young Justice

Yu Yu Hakusho

[but-a-humble-goon]

Don't know what's dumber, Transformers vs the Terminator for existing or me for reading it.

[anthos11]

Transformers vs Terminator by Alex Milne

[canmom]

choosing the treasure that eats you

the gods in narrative podcast The Silt Verses cover an enormous variety of motifs and subjects - and indeed, we are told how new gods are invented all the time, researched and tested by the government, competing to be the patron of companies and individuals, broken down and dumped when they're no longer needed. but they are all unified by two things: they all demand human sacrifices ('a god must feed' as Carpenter puts it in the opening episode) and they all inflict dramatic body-horror transformations (a process known as 'hallowing'), associated with their theme.

nevertheless, the idea of not following a god seems to be pretty alien to the people of this world. and you don't really get much choice: if, as in episode 7, your advertising company's restructuring decides that the weakest performers need to be sacrificed to their new 'sponsor', you don't get to opt out, it's in your contract and no doubt the police will catch you if you run. we see over and over how the gods (and their chief devotees) pick out the vulnerable, drive their believers to spiral down into life-defining obsession - by stringing them along with vague promises of some kind of final answer or fulfilment, then turn away and discard them as soon as they've served their purpose.

it is a very, very productive theme, and the writers have a gift for furnishing it with evocative words and nasty details so it doesn't get stale. so of course I reflect on the metaphor.

in nier automata, the childlike machine lifeforms search for purpose in a world that doesn't seem to offer any. the answers they find are their 'treasures': small, seemingly insignificant objects which individual machines devote themselves to protecting.

for example, one machine may devote itself to cultivating a flower (as in the second episode of the anime), or looking after a broken doll (as in the story of pathetic failmachine Plato 1728 seen in the DLC/the Deserving of Life single by Amazarashi). other sidequests lead you to encounter machines who obsess over fighting, or travelling fast (easy challenges to implement in a game engine).

the machines' behaviour seems inexplicable and even random to others, but the pointlessness is kind of the point: somewhere the chain of 'why' has to terminate. i choose this one.

sometimes i think about 'art' in the sense of a set of behaviours exhibited by humans. i don't have any interest in demarcating art vs non-art, just to understand what this phenomenon is, why it should be so compelling.

one definition that keeps sticking around in here, despite it not really working, is that 'art' is a word for the thing we devote ourselves for no other reason. you could spend your time drawing, but equally you could spend it speed cubing. we are obsessively optimising creatures so, presented with a defined scope of an activity - something like the rules of a game - we refine our skills within it, pushing the bar further and further, changing the rules as we go to keep it interesting. the art forms that stick around tend to be the ones that continue to be productive and evolve. but it's all, in a sense, pointless - and that's why it's the most important thing, because it's done for itself, not in service of some other goal.

this is not actually a good description of the thing it claims to describe. many things we celebrate as 'art' are done for extrinsic, not intrinsic motivations, like commissioned paintings. indeed, far from being purely intrinsically motivated, there are many extrinsic functions that the various activities we call 'art' perform: communication, entertainment, distraction, a tool to reason with, a safe zone to explore emotions, ideological propaganda, historical memory.

nevertheless, the idea of a thing done for its own sake, defying justification, continues to compel somehow.

art does not escape the logic of sacrifice. if you sacrifice your time, your health, your social connections in pursuit of your art - why, does that not prove the art is more important than your time, your health, your friendships? there's a romance in the narrative about burning up in pursuit of something 'great' - and if you want to undercut that narrative, you likely claim that the object is not particularly worth the effort. it's just videogames. it's just cartoons.

the slogan of The Silt Verses is the sarcastic line of Carpenter (originally her friend Vaughan, part of episode 7's corporate hecatomb): "you get to choose the thing that eats you". a very succinct statement! don't we, indeed.

not that sacrifice is always for some abstract intrinsic goal. in the story, the feeding is often done in exchange for some straightforward, material advantage - and in a sense that is the same in our world, with the threshold adjusted so you have to sacrifice a certain amount to just stay alive.

here's a calculation, because i'm fond of numbers: if you start working full-time at, say, age 21 (a conservative assumption, most people start earlier) up until the UK retirement age of 66 (currently, set to rise), working 40 hours a week (conservative, but then again most people don't actually work the hours they're paid for), the current price of a full human life is 114,793 hours to the gods of capital - pick your fave. if you sleep eight hours a night, the god of sleep gets 160,710 during that same period. harder to fit parameters on the demands of the gods of food, cleaning, caring for others, travelling to and fro, and 'being too tired to do much of anything', which certainly have their own demands.

that leaves you with a certain number to use for your own arbitrary ends. in theory, you get to choose what will eat those ones. in practice? a unified will? consistent intentions? ya joking mate. how many hours go to the god of 'responding to the thing in front of me', known by its sacred name, Aydeeaitchdee?

i used to feel jealous of people, some of them my friends, who seem to have some kind of unique vision, some sort of captivating identity to the creations that they express. the 'spark' that makes that special. i wondered - still wonder - if i will finally find my spark, a reason i'm here, a unique contribution i'm poised to make to the world, the value over replacement - the thing that all this mess was building towards all along, the thing that will make all the efforts so far feel less faltering and haphazard. but why should there be such a thing? if one day i live long enough to, by chance, find something that feels like it's an answer, it's just a retroactive reframing of the chaos - because that's what brains do. convince someone they made a decision they didn't, and they will justify it to you.

there is a song by Sassafrass, an incredibly nerdy a capella band who otherwise largely sing about norse mythology, called 'somebody will'. when i first heard this song i honestly kind of hated it (you can probably find that post if you dig hard enough). it felt like a tragic cope: facing the blatant reality that you will never be an astronaut as you (apparently) desire, to insist on narrativising your life as being part of the great project space colonisation - even if it's so remote as clerking a funding organisation or working at a scifi bookstore or attending a convention (it's from quite a specific milieu), you can claim to be one of the 'sailors' helping to 'conquer' that 'ocean'. i hated it, because why should the space program be all that? somebody will walk on mars someday - so fucking what? what then? job's a good 'un, everybody? is that really worth sacrificing shit ('sacrifice something i don't have for something i won't have') for, here and now? surely your life is about more than putting 'somebody' on Mars one day?

but considering it again today - i mean it might as well be the space program as anything else, right. you need a direction to move in. it doesn't matter what the direction, as long as it keeps you moving. change is life and stillness is death, don't you know. perhaps you drag others along with you and you get a current flowing that way for a while, until the energy driving it runs out, or it runs up against the overpressure around an as-yet uneroded bank. so we all move around and the dynamics of it all, invisible to us, build a delta, which becomes a rock, and against that flows another river one day, grinding down the rock to move it to another delta, all by the nearly-random movements of the water molecules. shit i think i lost the thread of the metaphor and now i'm just talking about geophysics

it seems... almost laughably tedious to be circling this existential drain still. in my milieu: douglas adams cracked his joke about 'the ultimate question of life the universe and everything' 30 years earlier in 1977. randall munroe uploaded 'i'll get the super soaker' in 2007. but navel-gazing has been a joke for much longer, surely at least as long as there have been people to question what the point is.

funny how it always comes back to water metaphors.

[thunderheadfred]

Im sick and crabby and don’t have a healthier outlet so I’m gonna a rant about a bunch of random shit okay? Cool

The world

Do I have to? It’s horrible. Every day it’s more horrible

Why is America like this

Why are all these powerful despots doing the shit they are doing

Why are literal children being exploded

Why is the earth on fire

Just stop

I think about Jesus a lot

Like a lot a lot

I’m not Christian but sometimes you just gotta think about Jesus

The fact that we gotta just like… do the day to day rigmarole despite the global panopticon broadcasting suffering directly into our consciousness, to the point that if you don’t take up volunteering or meditation or healthy religion or radical love you will in fact go insane

How do we fix it? Without becoming what we fight against

Jesus Jesus Jesus

Anyway. Breastfeeding

It’s ironic because I was so afraid of breastfeeding triggering body dysphoria. It’s triggered a lot of things, but not that

We have a bad latch, and I underproduce milk, probably because of my CFS

So whenever I try to breastfeed her, she ends up miserable and crying in a way you can only understand if you’ve been in this exact situation, and it feels like I am holding a knife and stabbing my own heart again and again

Because I can’t breast feed exclusively, we feed 50/50 formula and pumped breast milk, and she’s perfectly healthy and so so so happy, but I still feel like an axe murdering psychopath

These days I pretty much don’t directly breast feed her at all, and if you’d asked me before baby, I’d have thought that would be ideal. But no. I just feel guilt.

WHY DOES IT MAKE YOU SO SWEATY?? No one warned me about this, but apparently everyone gets postpartum sweats for like. months and months. it's so gross. I'm just moist. damp. wet. all the time. I thought I was going insane but no. it's just another one of those Pregnancy Things. thanks body

Child Free People vs. Pro Natalists

Why these new terminally online identity categories???

I didn’t get the idea of declaring myself “child free” before kids, even when I MYSELF thought I could never want kids

Calling children “parasites????” WTF unhinged

Calling childless people "psychopaths????" equally without hinge

Yes pregnancy is pure body horror but that doesn’t make it the BABY’S FAULT. A fetus is not some kind of malicious alien, it’s a human being in progress??? All human beings are consumers in nature but that doesn’t make us inherently evil, especially those of us who are the most tiny, ignorant, and vulnerable. A baby is just… trying to survive

Yes childbirth is transformative and awe-inspiring but why are a certain subset of rich imperialists so fucking gross about wanting to impregnate as many women as possible. Shut up until you can push the baby out yourself, then get back to me

Look. If you don’t want kids, don’t have kids? Don’t think about kids? Move on and solve world peace or something. Why is there a subreddit pathologically obsessed with hating children and shouting it loudly as part of their bio? I get that the world is full of horrors and it’s hard to imagine the future sometimes. “How could you bring children into the world” Yadda yadda. Climate change or WWIII or whatever existential threat appears tomorrow, every human being dies eventually. Death isn’t really an excuse to give up on the continuity of life writ large

but also? a declining population isn't the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, Elon you ketamine-addled incel shitface. It just means capitalism might break under the strain of the way we devalue and fail to care collectively for elders. even elders who currently HAVE children

You can just. Ignore children and live your life. Making it an identity reeks of insecurity, doubt, and a weird nihilistic doomed mindset

If the counterargument is “well parents make parenting their whole identity and that’s equally stupid and annoying” no it isn’t.

Unless we're talking about the equally deranged opposite end of the spectrum. Everyone is unhinged about kids these days, almost as if capitalism and individuation and the "nuclear family" have imploded the basic inter-generational human village that makes having children desirable and healthy for people on the whole

Having children is a huge amount of labor, never mind the emotional importance of family to uhhh most people? So yeah, it’ll be a huge focus for most. Whereas being childless is just. That. Focus on something else more interesting, since you don’t have to worry about kids. No need to make a thing of it. It seems counterintuitive. Don’t like kids? Stop thinking about them so much

For women especially, having an unnecessary hysterectomy or doing other damage to yourself seems so… self harm adjacent? You truly DONT know if you will change your mind (I did) but even more importantly, removing or altering your organs can have consequences on your hormones and quality of life. There are other forms of birth control that seem far less invasive and destructive. Your body your choice, always. But. These seem like unnecessarily harmful choices.

I’m not interested in confronting anyone about this trend which is why it is all behind a cowardly “read more” cut but I just find the whole aggressively child free identity mind boggling

Anyway back to thinking about childless MVP Jesus again

Jesus

Fuck. Did not expect having a baby to make me so conscious of Christ.

My unmedicated labor was a religious experience, so now I have to Deal With That

Still not Christian, but increasingly a fan of Buddy Christ

Christian nationalists need to get his name out of their mouths

Trump is the Antichrist. If not THE Antichrist, at least AN anti-Christian

How do we reprogram all these people who think they are heroic righteous saviors when they are about as violent and power seeking as it is possible to get

See “how to fix it without becoming the bad guy”? (Real Jesus had answers. Sorry MAGA, but most of them involve being forgiving, generous, vulnerable, introspective, or gentle)

They have so many guns

The idea that you could think Jesus is with you while you talk about rounding up migrants and killing criminals and hating your neighbor like. Jesus was very much not a fan of these things?? Jesus did not have an AK-47, he um. He rode a donkey.

Jesus liked to sit with kids under trees and wash feet and famously rejected power and wealth and kings and uhhhhh KINDA DIED ABOUT IT

LEAVE JESUS ALONE

I’m having a normal one, clearly

Here’s a happy baby

[codecan]

List of every robot/AI character I can think of:

(Mind you it’s what I could think of , ik there’s more!!!)

Hal-9000 (2001: a space odyssey, 2010 the year we make contact)

DATA (star trek)

Bagley (watchdogs:legion)

Wrench JR (watchdogs 2)

Edgar (electric dreams)

K1-B0 (Daganronpa 3)

The majority of the Detroit: become human cast (around 30?)

Kinito (Kinito pet)

The cast of DDLC

Mother Board (cyberchase)

The majority of the cast of Indigo Park

The majority of the cast of FNAF

GLaDOS (portal 1 and 2)

Wheatley (portal 2)

Giffany (Gravity falls)

Ponco (Ace attorney)

Basil (Ace attorney)

Terminator (terminator)

Caine (The amazing digital circus)

The cast of murder drones

AM (I have no mouth and i must scream)

The majority of the cast of I Robot

PAL (Mitchells vs the machines)

The robots (Mitchells vs the Machines)

The majority of Deltarune ch2

Mettaton (Undertale)

Kronos (singularity)

Billy (Zenless Zone Zero)

The Bangboo (Zenless zone Zero)

Boothill (Honkai Star rail)

Cyborg (teen titans)

Ultron (marvel)

Karen (spongebob)

Prototype (regretevator)

Scag (regretevator)

Reddy Razbear (regretevator)

Most of every FNAF Spin off and FANGAME

Tartar (splatoon)

The singularity (dead by daylight)

Aigis (persona 3)

Codsworth (Fallout 4)

Calculester (monster prom)

Chiaki (daganronpa 2)

Sophia (Persona 5 Strikers)

Katheryne (genshin impact)

Clockwork Meka (genshin impact)

The ruin enemies (genshin impact)

Coppelia and Coppelius (genshin impact)

Astro (astro’s playroom)

Bender (futurama)

R2-D2 (star wars)

The majority of the cast of Transformers

Marvin (hitchikers guide to the galaxy)

Gir (invader zim)

C-3PO (Star Wars)

The cast of Robots

Bishop (Alien)

BB-8 (star wars)

Robocop (robocop)

Baymax (big hero 6)

Siri (the Apple ai assistant)

Alexa (the google ai assistant)

Clonco (Ace attorney)

Metis (persona 3)

Labrys (persona 4 A)

YTTD AI (your turn to die)

[lbibliophile-sw]

AI-less Whumptober 2024 - Masterpost

Another year, another Whumptober completed! This time, using the excellent prompts from @ailesswhumptober

My posting schedle was a bit of a mess this year, with about half front-loaded to the beginning of the month so I could cross-post with Corrie Guard Appreciation Week (13 fills, Fox was having a bad time... as usual), but I did manage the full 31 prompts by the end.

I ended up focusing more on ficlets rather than cutting them down to drabbles this year, which was fun. I also surprised myself by turning one of my headcanons into a comic, and completed my Fox plushie for 10.10 day.

Some stats:

30 works - 3 fanfics (600-1130w) 12 ficlets (180-550w) 9 drabbles (including one double drabble) 4 poems (150-265w) 1 comic, 1 craft

8,545 words - 305w average 475w average (fanfic/ficlet only)

Featured characters - Fox (13) Palpatine, clones as a collective (4 each) Anakin, Cody, Thire, Thorn, OC clones (2 each) Bail, Boil, Dooku, Echo, Fives, Plo Koon, Stone, Wolffe (1 each)

Fills:

This year, sorted by angst level into Crack, H/C with a happy ending, H/C with a sad ending, and Hurt No Comfort.

Crack

Formally-arranged Anidala  (AO3) | day 29: “Everybody will know that you’re mine” | Jedi Council & Anakin/Padme

Fox Needs a Hug | day 12: “Can you feel me, I’m right here?” | craft (plushie) | Fox

Proof of ID (AO3) | day 20: accidental de-aging, “I’m absolutely not qualified for this shit: | ficlet: 710w | Fox & Thire & Thorn

Lightning on Coruscant (AO3) | day 26/28: electrocution, “I didn’t think the wound was that bad” | double drabble & comic | Fox & Cody

H/C with a happy/neutral ending

Conduit (AO3) | day 15: “Don’t break down on me yet” | ficlet: 360w | Cody /& Obi-wan

First-time Reunion (AO3) | day 10: “You don’t need to earn this” | ficlet: 600w | CG OC & 212th/501st OCs

Hermit-crab Shells (AO3) | alt 4: zombies/eldritch | drabble | Coruscant Guard  

Hypothermia of the Soul (AO3) | day 9: hypothermia | ficlet: 210w | Fox

Multilingual (AO3) | day 30: “You’re not making sense” | drabble | Coruscant Guard

Names and Numbers (AO3) | day 7/13: “Hold on, we’re going to have to improvise”, defiance | ficlet & poem : 200w | clones

Reaching and Finding (AO3) |day 17: abandonment | ficlet: 260w | Fox & unidentified CG

Safety Line (AO3) | day 3: shared trauma, survivor’s guilt, co-dependency* | ficlet: 540w | Plo & Wolffe

Soundscape (AO3) | day 21: “This will make you feel better, ok?” | fanfic: 1130w | Fox & Bail (pre-Fox/Bail/Breha)

Taking the Bait (AO3) | day 13/alt 8: whumpee using themself as bait, kidnapped | Darth Sidious & Obi-wan Kenobi & Cody & Boil

Terminal Velocity (AO3) | day 24: relapse | ficlet: 810w | Anakin & 501st

H/C with a sad ending

Butterfly Effect (AO3) | day 19: I wish I could get your back | poem: 150w | Obi-wan

Close (AO3) | day 16: hostile environment | drabble | Fox & Wolffe & Cody

Fox's List (AO3) | alt 10: “If you weren’t around, I’d be long dead by now...” | drabble | Fox

Heart of War (AO3) | day 23: “Hey, stay with me, ok” | poem: 265w | clones

Just an Echo (AO3) | day 11/14: hallucinations, concussion | ficlet | 245w | Echo & Fives

Loyalty (AO3) | day 5: migraines, “take me instead”* | ficlet: 400w | Fox & Thorn & Palpatine

Rearguard (AO3) | day 6: multiple whumpees, self-sacrifice, “I’m the only one who can do this”, “You need to get out of here”* | ficlet: 180w | Thire & Stone & Fox

Sunrise or Sunset (AO3) | day 25: betrayal | drabble | Cody

Hurt No Comfort

Chain of Command (AO3) | day 22: Forced to kneel/watch, whipped | drabble | Fox & Palpatine

Cry for Me (AO3) | day 1: “If you cry, we’ll go easy on you” | ficlet: 225w | Fox & Palpatine

Faith (AO3) | day 4: painful transformation, “You’re a monster” | poem: 185w | Dooku

Monochrome (AO3) | day 27: before vs after, alternate universe | drabble | clones

Naming Conventions (AO3) | day 18: mind control | drabble | Palpatine & Fox