#or something about engineering of cyberpunk robots??

[3d-made-by-paws]

Is anyone else did research for info abt engineer-mehanic robotic pices for their 3d projects by DAYS?

I need this for some parts of the model that most likely won't even be visible

how to stop worrying about small details?

[artbyblastweave]

Would you mind talking at all about steampunk as a genre? I strongly feel like for it to properly become a genre, more than an aesthetic, it needs to shed the historical milieu of being in 18th-19th century, but the most that people ever do with it is place it in China or something, which is great, but I'm convinced, falls short of its potential.

My apocryphal understanding of the origins of Steampunk (and understand that this isn't my wheelhouse, so I'm going to be talking at least a little out my ass for the rest of this post) is that a lot of it can be traced to William Gibson's 1990 novel The Difference Engine- where the point-slash-gag was to transfer well-understood cyberpunk tropes into a historical milieu, to demonstrate that Scramble-for-Africa participants and the Dutch East India company would not be significantly better behaved than 1980s-flavored megacorps if they were in possession of anachronistically powerful computing technology. That Cyberpunk was about hegemony and how advanced technology can be used to reinforce or subvert that hegemony, and that if you were hung up on the surface level aesthetics of leather jackets and cyberspace, or little details like "does this technology actually remotely make sense," you were missing the point by a mile.

If you strip out the specificity of the time period, there frankly isn't a lot left- you're back to cyberpunk, or dieselpunk, or atompunk, or any of the other decade-linked sub-breeds. There are a lot of steampunk works that run with the original idea that giving 19th-century great powers the keys to a mech would be politically catastrophic - often in conversation with turn of the century seminal science fiction like Wells or Verne- and there are also a lot that reproduce the original criticism of cyberpunk by leaning into the aesthetics of airships and brassy robotics without giving as much thought to the political dimensions. If you're just gluing gears onto a tophat, you aren't necessarily doing it wrong but you're certainly doing it superficially. What are those gears doing

[nyxtickled]

I kind of can't get over you studying freakin' *robotics engineering.* Now I'm picturing you as the cool engineer on some sci-fi show. Whaddaya think? Star Trek? Something with giant robots? Maybe something grittier and more cyberpunk?

Maybe this is making too light of what you're working so hard for. Follow-up and/or substitute question: what's one of your dream projects or goals? What kind of robot(s) does Nyx most want to create, or work on?

🥹🤭 awww jeez don’t make me all fricken bashful on main i’m supposed to be tough !!!! CYBERPUNK PLEASE AAAAH

ok ok but to answer seriously, so far in my academic career i’ve worked on autonomous cars (1/10 scale autonomous racecars built essentially from scratch, a full size autonomous EV gokart, and i’ve even been fortunate enough to work on a fully autonomous indy 500 car…essentially the most advanced autonomous vehicle in the world. shit was one of the most mind blowing things i’ve ever been a part of), i’ve worked on some cool solar stuff (solar water heater for an orphanage in Tijuana, solar carport concept design for a nonprofit who wants to propose the idea of charging EV cars while they’re parked outside at work all day and distributing leftover power to the building), and my personal favorite was this project i did for a class i took where i designed an autonomous campus rideshare prototype on one of the 1/10 scale cars that was able to use facial recognition to identify the student who requested the ride and would essentially drive itself to the drop off location!

the last one was the most fun for me bc it was the first time i really got into the programming side of robotics. the car would have a starting location where it waited for ride requests, then when you submitted one it would drive itself to the location using LiDAR for collision avoidance and GPS path training. but the real doozy was the pickup stage bc i had to develop the facial recognition code to be able to scan the student’s face upon arrival with computer vision in live time with a camera that was attached to the car, and then match it to a photo of the student that was stored in a database, and then try to match the name of that student to the name of the student who requested the ride! if it matched, the screen would be like “rider verified! hop in!” and proceed to the next stage of driving itself to the drop off point. if it didn’t, the screen would read “sorry, we couldn’t verify your identity with the ride request” and drive itself back to the parking spot where it would wait for the next ride request! and the database of faces would basically come from your student ID picture, cuz the rideshare service would be around campus for students only!

god it was so fucking challenging but i had so much fun with it. so uhhhh to avoid writing 18 more paragraphs about all the cool robotics shit that i’m obsessed with, i would say my dream project is definitely something that combines machine learning software, robotics operating systems programming, and mechanical design all in one. something that could take the technological advancements that we have made and turn it into something useful for everyone. fuck i’m such a nerd i’m sorry i did NOT mean to go on like this ahahahahaha

[usagirotten]

Why Mr. Robot Is the Cyberpunk Masterpiece You Didn’t Know You Needed

Mr. Robot: The Show That Made Hackers Cool Again (But Also Sad, Real Sad) Alright, fellow sci-fi heads and tech romantics, let’s talk about one of the most underrated psychological thrillers of our time: Mr. Robot. If you’ve ever wished Fight Club had more code, fewer abs, and a darker, glitchier aesthetic—this show’s for you. It’s not just a drama about hackers. It’s a deep, moody exploration of mental health, capitalism, and whether we even control our own lives in a surveillance-obsessed society.

Sounds heavy? It is. But stick with me, because it’s also one of the smartest shows you’ll ever binge. 🧠 Meet Elliot: Our Favorite Unreliable Narrator At the core of Mr. Robot is Elliot Alderson, a hoodie-wearing loner who’s basically the Batman of the darknet—if Batman had social anxiety, insomnia, and a serious dissociation issue. Played by Rami Malek (yes, that guy who crushed it as Freddie Mercury), Elliot is equal parts genius and mess. And then there’s Mr. Robot—his rebel mentor, played by Christian Slater—who may or may not be real. I won’t spoil anything, but if you like plot twists that make you question everything, you’re in for a ride. The rest of the fsociety crew? They’re misfits with purpose. You’ll love Darlene’s punk energy and curse the name “E Corp” every time it flashes on-screen. (Seriously, it’s Evil Corp. Not even subtle.) 🎥 What Makes Mr. Robot Hit Different? Fourth Wall? What Fourth Wall?Elliot talks to us—yep, you—like we’re part of his broken reality. It’s trippy, unsettling, and incredibly effective. Cinematic AFWeird angles. Silent tension. Haunting scores. You don’t watch Mr. Robot. You experience it. Actual Tech AccuracyForget movie hacking with 3D cubes and blinking lights. Mr. Robot keeps it real—Linux terminals, Python scripts, social engineering. It respects its nerds. When it premiered in 2015, it looked like another cyberpunk thriller. But what creator Sam Esmail delivered was far deeper: a complex narrative about mental health, capitalism, surveillance, and identity—all wrapped inside the story of a socially isolated hacker trying to bring down a corrupt conglomerate.

🚧 The Flaws (Yeah, It’s Not Perfect) Okay, even masterpieces stumble. Some episodes in the later seasons slow to a crawl. Dialogue gets... philosophical. Occasionally, you’ll yell “Just hack something already!” at your screen. And a few side characters? They fade into plot devices. Still, the emotional and thematic payoff by the finale? Worth every minute. 🧩 Themes That Stick With You Mental Health ≠ GlorifiedElliot’s mental illness isn’t a superpower. It’s raw, painful, and treated with care. Late-Stage Capitalism Gets RoastedFrom debt culture to surveillance to Big Tech overreach—Mr. Robot isn’t subtle about the system being broken. It’s here to smash it. Morality Isn’t BinaryHeroes make bad choices. Villains have sympathetic motives. You’ll be questioning who you’re rooting for the entire time. 📺 How It Stacks Up If Black Mirror had a long-lost, emotionally tortured cousin with a vendetta against capitalism, it’d be Mr. Robot. Unlike the anthology format of Black Mirror, this show follows one wild, spiraling plot across four seasons. Fans of Fight Club, The Matrix, and even Breaking Bad will find plenty to obsess over here. 👾 Should You Watch It? If you: Love tech Are fascinated by mental health Like stories that don’t spoon-feed you Appreciate stylish, smart storytelling Then yes. Plug in. Hack in. Fall in. But if you’re looking for quick payoffs or feel-good fluff? Maybe not this time. 🧠 Final Thoughts Mr. Robot isn’t just a TV show. It’s a layered, brain-breaking critique of everything from data privacy to the illusion of choice. It’s dark, it’s demanding—and it’s absolutely worth your time. So the question is: Are you ready to wake up? In an age where data is currency and algorithms shape behavior, Mr. Robot isn’t just relevant—it’s prophetic. It asks the big questions: Who owns your identity? What is real in a curated digital world? Can individuals still disrupt systems? For anyone working in a space influenced by tech (which is all of us), those questions aren’t fiction. They’re strategic considerations. 🖥️ Have you watched Mr. Robot? What did you think? Drop your thoughts below or hit me up on Discord—we’ll debate capitalism and keyboard shortcuts all night.

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[skullsandfeathers]

Reflection Ruesday

I was tagged by @nineblackgoatsart and thank you so much my friend I've never actually participated in one of these before <3 Tagging: @daledikarios (no pressure you're just the only other fic writer I actually know >.>)

How to Play: Go through your writing, art, gifs, etc. that you started but never finished and find something you love. Brush it up a bit if you want and share it.

I've only really recently started delving into writing fanfic after 27+ years of RP writing, so I don't have a lot of unfinished works BUT

I do have an outline for a Emmrich x Lucanis Futuristic/Tech is Magic/Cyberpunk AU that I'm excited to hopefully start writing the first chapter of this weekend.

The outline is under the cut, mostly world building and a basic plot. I'm super excited to do this and I can't wait to start writing it up.

Outline

Does not follow the events of the games, but uses the lore of the world as a basis.

Set in a Thedas equivalent to Earth in the year 2050, this isn’t the future of Thedas, but rather what if Thedas had a modern setting?

Magic has all but disappeared, taken over by advanced technology, there are still pockets of it in some places, most notably Arlathan Forest, Nevarra, and Minrathous. What magic is left is highly controlled and regulated.

Lucanis x Emmrich centric, but other pairings will be: Neve x Bellara, Taash x Harding, Rook x Davrin

Emmrich is a Robotic Engineering Professor in Nevarra, while also doing research on android development involving using traces of what is left of the Fade to teach the AI. One day he is working on a new prototype model, M4N-FR3D (affectionately called Manfred). Just a skeletal robot to begin with, some sort of spark in his AI happens, causing some sort of sentience in the machine. Emmrich makes it his responsibility to teach and protect this amazing phenomenon, hiding him in his campus apartment. The University he teaches at is lovingly called the Necropolis, because all the students feel like they’re gonna die before they graduate.

Lucanis is a top assassin from Treviso. He went through an experimental program that involved having an AI chip implanted in his temple, which was supposed to help him be a more effective assassin. The chip malfunctioned, and the AI turned malicious, calling itself Spite. Lucanis has been able to reason with the AI and come to an arrangement to allow them to live and work together, though it isn’t always easy.

Johanna Hezenkoss, somehow getting word of Emmrich’s discovery with Manfred, is hell bent on getting that technology for herself, after an accident left her more cybernetic than human. She is a former colleague of Emmrich’s, and a rival robotic engineer. 

She hires Lucanis to take out Emmrich and secure a ‘package.’ The package being Manfred.

Lucanis is targeting Emmrich one night when the professor decided to take Manfred for a walk in the gardens around the University’s grounds, and sees the father-and-son bond and realizes that Manfred is much more, and Spite is very interested in the other AI.

Instead of completing the contract right away, Lucanis decides to get to know Emmrich a little better, learn about Manfred, and try to find out what could be so valuable about the android that Johanna was willing to pay a hefty sum for its creator’s death and the machine’s head.

[heartfulselkie]

tell us about sad machine please 🤩

So this was a fic idea that...went a little off the rails. (You should know, its in the littlebug files somewhere)

I've started writing it already and I do intend to share the fic at some point, so I'll not go into too much details for now. But I can certianly give a quick overview!

It's essentially a semi-futuristic cyberpunk au. In this au, Gabriel runs a massive company that specialises in augmentation, cybernetics and other technology (so think Alliance from the show but a lot more products). His brand is at the forefront of technology and is constantly updating and releasing new products for consumers - but this also leads to a lot of waste and things becoming obsolete. This is something that Adrien absolutely hates.

Adrien is very skilled in programming and mechanical engineering, but has yet to really be involved in his father's company beyond being a public face/model. And he's doing a lot to avoid becoming ensnared in the company because he'd rather use his skill elsewhere.

Which is exactly what he does! With the help of his friend Nino, Adrien uses the pseudonym 'Chat Noir' and works to help repair the items and parts for people who depend on these things but don't have the means to keep upgrading to the constant rollout of new models (so things like prosthetics and body augments and things that people literally need for their quality of life).

Of course Adrien does this all without Gabriel's knowledge - which means Adrien has to source parts for his repairs outside of the company. Luckily with the constant progression and changeover in technology and machinery there's a lot of scrap. So Adrien often spends his time salvaging for parts.

It's during one of these salvaging expeditions that he comes across a very curious little thing. A piece of machinery that appears to host some kind of AI. He doesn't know if it had been some kind of robot, android or just some assistant programme, but he's very quickly intrigued why such a complex and sophisticated AI would be thrown away (even if she is a little bit glitchy and buggy).

So he takes her in and calls her Ladybug.

Who/what is she? Where did she come from? What's hidden behind her corrupted memory?

Obviously there's a lot of questions but... you'll just have to wait until I post the fic!

[WIP Ask Game]

[bigmsaxon]

Good morning! I hope you've been well.

First off, I love your art! I am curious about something though. In trying to design my own cyberpunk / shadowrun characters, when it comes to the joints on prosthesis, specifically the shoulder joint's connection with the body. How do you imagine that? For some reason I get caught up on how the bulky shoulders I see on some designs would be limited with regard to movement because it would just get in the way. I keep telling myself not to worry about it. Rule of cool reigns supreme! ... but my anatomy brain is fighting against the rule of cool XD.

Thank you! That is a good question - there is nothing wrong with wanting to draw practical looking cyborg limbs of course, though personally speaking I try not to think too hard about it and just draw whatever looks neat. If I do want a cybernetic limb to look feasible I'll usually draw the limb with the joints and muscle groups blocked out first and then reverse-engineer the cybernetics from that.

Otherwise studies and reference are my best advice, stuff like manufacturing machinery, soft robotics and even bug/insect limbs can be great inspiration for how a prosthetic might look and move. And always remember that you don't have to show how it works - from an angle it might not be clear how a joint functions but the imagination will fill in the gaps.

Hope that helps!

[siennamoth]

transhumanism (2022) - a reflection

fig. 1: greed this is one of seven panels from my 2022 work "transhumanism". it was my visual arts HSC final body of work. i ended up coming second in visual arts and getting nominated for artexpress which was fire. but looking back at this work there are many things i would change. the title, "transhumanism", exemplifies to me the shallowness of the work. transhumanism itself is an ideology that promotes the enhancement of humanity by developing futuristic technologies that supposedly improve us as a species. some examples could be AI, bionic limbs and genetic engineering. all of which does sound a bit like eugenics and a bit elon musk-like. my work wasn't really exploring these, or even critiquing it, it was just using the cool bionic limbs for the cyberpunk-esque grimes 2020 miss anthropocene aesthetic. another thing about it was the heavy use of naked or partially clothed female bodies. thinking about the guerrilla girls' poster that states, "do women have to be naked to get into the MET museum? less than 5% of the artists in the modern art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female." i feel like i contributed to the epidemic of people drawing nameless, sometimes faceless naked women in compromising and sexual positions just for the sake of beauty and aesthetics. this is especially evident in the photo above, with the references to bondage wear in her various limb attachments. again, this wasn't some criticism on the objectification and subjugation of women, it was another crude sci-fi sexualisation that looks like something a man drew. let's be real - the female gaze is nowhere to be found in this, and was unfortunately never given a thought during the process. as a person of colour, i wanted to show a more diverse range of bodies and skin tones, but i feel that this fell flat. to me, these are some of the more unforgiveable aspects of this work.

fig. 2: sloth in one of the other panels of this work, lays a woman on the floor, with her back turned to the viewer, her robotic-looking prosthetic legs strewn across the foreground. it's evident that i used the aesthetic of limb differences to make some surface level observation about transhumanism as a concept which i feel is very insensitive and a bit corny.

as you may have picked up by the names of each panel, there's a bit of a 'seven deadly sins' theme which is one of my least favourite aspects of this work. i guess i was trying to go for some kind of critique of humankind but it doesn't really come across that way and the whole thing is a bit gimicky. especially in the following:

fig. 3: lust like girl what is this! did i predict character.ai?? i just feel like this is so surface level and doesn't communicate any deeply intellectual concepts to the viewer. and it should have because i was working on this body of work for almost a whole year.

fig. 4, 5, 6: gluttony, wrath and envy; respectively i don't remember why i made them eat a baby but whenever i see babies in art it gives pro-life to me which i'm not supportive of. there's this generic robot figure that looks suspiciously like the security bots in FNAF: Security Breach. i feel like it was meant to be a personnification of AI but it falls flat because it doesn't really communicate any of my actual opinions on AI. it's portrayed as more of a passive figure, which would be fine if there was a point being made about humans misusing AI, but there isn't. there really isn't much of a point at all. there's one more panel which is of course "pride" but it doesn't really have any references to transhumanism or AI or anything - really just a nothing burger. it was also the last panel i completed and was on a time crunch at the time so the quality is significantly lower. i know that everyone hates their old art, but this work still gets brought up to me every so often and it just really does not align with my values anymore. this whole thing has been very negative so i'm gonna name some things i like about it! i still do really like the robot aesthetic of all the cables and whatnot. i use cables a lot in my current work and am constantly drawing robots (transformers!!). i also like the damp, algae-covered tiled backgrounds i used for each panel, they were fun to draw and they tie all the panels together nicely. i think i did a good job at rendering some of the skin and hair of the figures. and my favourite panel will always be "greed" despite all the bdsm gear randomly strewn all over their body. anyway, let me know what you think!! SIENNA, OUT!

[northwest-cryptid]

I think there are (at least) 3 kinds of mech game nerds I'm aware of...

Now I need to prefix all of this by saying I'm not claiming any single one of these to be better than another; just different interests for different people.

There's the people who just like big mechs, and the clunkier the better; these people are not keen on even really making the mechs, they just want to pilot them. It's mostly about the aesthetic, it's about "hey cool big mech go brrrrrr" more than anything else.

This kind of individual tends to enjoy games like Bulk Slash or Love & Destroy for the PS1. The more elaborate sci fi games with colorful neon lights and cyberpunk cities.

Anything with those classic bulky mechs is gonna be right up their alley since they tend to have a lot of that weight to them. People want to feel like they're trying to maneuver a clunky mess of a bipedal tank because when you actually get it down and understand it, the feeling of actually getting it to do what you want it do becomes enjoyable. These sorts of people probably also enjoy games like Steel Battalion but only those who really enjoy the specifics of like, complex systems working to make something move. This is where I feel like it becomes less about the aesthetic of "oh boy big mech" and more about the aesthetic of "oh shit I'm gonna pilot that big mech"

The game is pretty infamous for having a whole controller set up that even included pedals, and a UI interface that was pretty damn immersive all things considered:

These players also tend to be your MechWarrior types, but there's a good bit of overflow between people who like MechWarrior and people who like games like Armored Core, which brings my to the second type of Mech nerd I am aware of...

The people who really want to make their own mech, like they don't just want to pilot mechs, they want to build something entirely their own. They want to not only feel like they can flawlessly pilot the mech in a way others can't, but specifically they want to pilot a mech that is unique and undeniably suited to whatever specific style they go for.

It's not enough to just know it goes fast, or that it's light weight; or that it's heavily armored. A lot of these players enjoy the specifics of paying attention to all the minor details, the internals are as interesting as the externals. Sure you can slap a really big cannon on this mech, but that's not nearly as interesting as all the finer details of WHY you can slap a giant cannon on this mech. Tell me all about the engine and the weight distribution and what that allows for you as it's pilot, that's the good stuff.

This:

Is as interesting to these players, as this:

Because the two go hand in hand, with the first allowing the second to really shine.

These people do have some overlap with the last, because those big clunky parts moving around mean a lot more when you know what they are and why they are there.

I think this is most noticeably seen in MechWarrior fans, who are fittingly somewhere in the middle,

Not just the look of the mech matters, it's statistics are important, because a really stylish mech doesn't mean much if it gets shot down immediately; reputation is as stylish as cosmetics, and this is one of the few times when I'd argue a good mech pilot blames their mech; you can't make a shit mech perform on par with something well built if you and your opponent are of equal skill.

And the last type of person branches off from the first but instead of leaning heavily into controlling a mech and what makes a mech tick, and caring about all the finer details, they more heavily lean into that first mention of "the bright neon lights and big clunky mechs fighting giant robots and aliens and shit." Basically you have the "oh fuck yea, mechs!" Category of people, people who literally do not care about the specifics of the mech, they don't care how it works, they don't care how it feels to move it around a map, they only care about how it looks because holy shit look at that thing it's a giant fucking mech. These people are going to enjoy basically all mech media, but specifically they're going to hone in on the bright, flashy, colorful, explosive stuff. We're talking about shit like Xenogears, yea; an RPG.

But look at those mechs man!

They're so clunky and crusty it's hard to know what's what just by looking at it.

You've got brightly colored pink mechs with swords, you've got karate mechs, you've got pirate mechs, good shit man you've got so many mechs!

Oh fuck dude you can't fight a giant dinosaur on foot that's stupid...

If only you had like, I don't know-

OH FUCK YEA A GIANT MECH SEE NOW I'M HYPE.

Yea it's like that.

And again that's not a bad thing!

I don't want people to look at this and go "oh okay so there's smart nerds who are valid and good and right because they care a lot about the media and the mechs and they play the right games and they enjoy it in a smart and sophisticated way; and then you have the bad nerds who just like the pretty colors and bright flashy lights and think everything needs to have mechs and oh boy mechs are so cool... I get it I understand, I will be one of the good mech fans!"

Like no that's not the take away, that's literally such a bad way of looking at it. There are so many different kinds of ways to enjoy this sort of media, these are just the two branching paths from "I enjoy mechs" to "I enjoy mechs because I love to know what makes them tick, and getting to fly a mech around in Armored Core or skirmish other players in MechWarrior is rewarding because the time I put into my mech paid off with my performing well." And "Oh shit oh boy big mech holy shit look at the big mech that's so cool! It's such a cool giant fucking mech! Holy shit I want to pilot that thing!" Respectively.

Like Xenoblade X? Skells? Fuck yea dude sign me up! Look at this shit!

Also yea the skells are named Dolls in the original Japanese version, I'm assuming they were renamed for American audiences because they wanted to make them sound "cooler" or whatever, and also because the joke of the "Skell-eton Crew" doesn't make sense in English if they're the uh "Doll-eton? Crew???" So yea that makes sense I guess.

Don't even get me started on CASTS from like PSO/PSO2 like they may be small mechs but they're still mechs!

Oh and speaking of PSO you also have the AIS

These are all fine mechs! Very snazzy I like them a lot!

I think I exist somewhere between the two extremes, I enjoy the vibe and aesthetic of big fuck-all mechs with over the top rockets and big ass wings and guns and swords and glowy bits and neon lights and the whole nine yards. But I also just as much enjoy piecing a mech together in Armored Core and really tuning it to my exact liking because it feels so personalized when I can sorta just go "wow this new engine is really making all the difference in my movement"

[falsetraditions]

Well, speaking of the previous post.

I think I'll start with Twinkle and Gene, since Ruby's and Alex's design is still in processing.. not the point is important.

So. The world in this au is divided into two key parts. Steampunk and cyberpunk.

The Enchanted Island and Technopolis belong to Steampunk (although Technopolis should probably be renamed..). Technopolis has never been hidden by a dome from the rest of the world, which allowed him to build a relationship with the Enchanted Island.

Let's go directly to the characters!

Twinkle, being a student of the Great Fairy, goes with her (and other fairy students) to Technopolis, at the invitation of Dr. X to exchange knowledge or something like that.

There she lagged behind her group and got somewhat lost in the corridors of the Main Tower. In one of the rooms, she comes across a disabled (not that it looked attractive) robot. (You can guess who it is)

She, noticing how he looked, and considering that she could decorate him with her magic, uses a spell on him, however, as usually happens, gets confused in spells.

The robot turns on. He seems to be looking around uncomprehendingly.

Twinkle is scared that she did something wrong. She grabs the robot by the arm and leaves the room, continuing to wind through the corridors until she comes across an emergency exit.

Deciding that she should get away from the island, she takes the nearest transport and escapes from there. Having already arrived in Kingsland, they meet Alex and Ruby, but about them in the next post.

Gene transforms his body over time (after all, let's be honest, Doc is not the best engineer and Gene was constantly breaking down literally because of nothing) and eventually became who he is.

Like last time, I say that I am always ready to answer questions if they arise!

[wilanserulia]

I love making OCs, but as I keep refining the design of my newest one I feel the struggle of giving good representation to all of them.

Some of them I haven't drawn in forever, while some are new and need more art to express themselves. Some are old favorites of mine who I'll draw every now and then, and some used to be favorites of mine but I haven't had new material for them in forever. Some were fun to design but they were used in short adventures and I never explored them too much. Some I used to like but I look at today and feel they'd be in need of a re-design. And some were conceptualized for adventures that haven't yet took off the ground, and maybe never will. I'm ashamed to say there's even some others I sometimes forget about.

I've decided to compile a short list, more or less in chronological order. Most of them are from DnD games or other TTRPG settings ranging from Fantasy, Cyberpunk and even Steampunk, but I'm including my two FFXIV characters in here as well as honorary OCs because of how much I've written about them.

Sorcerer of draconic descent, whose family has been killed in the Crusade's effort to close a gigantic planar rift over the Abyss, leading him to swear vengeance against demonkind.

A veteran traveling paladin, who despite his old age still puts himself in harm's way for what's right.

A swashbuckling adventurer, whose tongue is as sharp as his sword. Second-born to a rich family of bankers, he left home to pursue a selfish desire of indipendence.

Born from an accomplished barbarian king and his spellcasting trophy wife, the young McLut is slowly being overcome by a creeping sense of inadequacy as over the years he keeps failing to live up to his family's legacy.

Warrior of Light and hero of the people, Wilan slowly buckles under the ever-increasing weight of the responsabilities that come with his many titles, despite having become an adventurer over a decade prior simply moved by a simple desire of seeing the world.

Refugee from a colony of the totalitarian empire of Garlemald, Delen is slowly trying to rebuild her life in the free realm of Eorzea, where she would forge meaningful connections and, once she's come out enough of her shell, embrace the adventurer's lifestyle.

A half-elf girl who, in spite of a harsh childhood of domestic abuses and a delinquent adolescence, has managed to grow up into a cheerful, optimistic young woman thanks to the positive influence of her found family.

First-born daughter of an old aristocratic family and latest bearer of a family curse, Jane dedicated her life to academic studies and became an accomplished archaeologist. The only thing preventing the curse from taking effect is an old pact with a devil, the same devil who whispers in her ear to temp her into accepting more power.

A once successful arcanotech engineer, Roy's life fell apart after a tragic accident led to the death of his very young daughter and, subsequently, losing his job and divorcing his wife. Suffering from depression, he's adopted an unhealthy, self-destructive lifestyle both as a way to feel something and to put himself through punishment.

Hailing from a remote archipelago in the middle of the ocean to the east, Chiyu is an elf who is training in a temple that curiously fuses martial arts with percussion music. Chiyu took a sabbatical decade away from her training because she wants to experience more of the world before she's 100 years old.

Known as "Don Raskar", he's a militaristic cleric stripped of his rank and relocated to a different region of the world for abusing his authority. Determined to rise the ranks again, Raskar is not shy to throw the weight of his social status around to get what he needs.

A nomad barbarian of the robot-infested wastelands. Being born too close to a planar rift made her into a tiefling, granting her an appearance resembling a balor and command over electricity. Despite being one of the many freaks of the region, she's nonetheless an accomplished mercenary and capable fighter.

Heir to a prominent family in the airship industry, Julian has witnessed his father's empire being ripped apart by competing families following his early death. He appropriated one of the airships, the Luminaria, and fled the city to live outside the law as a sky pirate.

Despite being a naturally creative and imaginative girl, Hoshiko has put aside anything she considers too childish to meet the many, many expectations placed on her and dedicated herself to the academic study of magic. That is, until a botched familiar summoning ritual conjured forth an otherwordly magical cat, who is bound to bring chaos into her life and maybe help her reconnect with her more genuine self in the process.

[thecelestiallegacies]

GeekCon with Minerva Byte The sun shone brightly over San Myshuno, casting warm golden light over the bustling city. GeekCon was in full swing, a paradise for tech enthusiasts, cosplayers, and gaming fanatics alike. The air was filled with the scent of overly spicy festival food, punctuated by bursts of excited chatter and digital beeps from the countless game booths. Minerva’s screen face lit up brightly as she stepped into the festival grounds. Her metallic frame gleamed in the sunlight, and she marveled at the energy of the event. Cosplayers roamed the area dressed as intergalactic bounty hunters, cybernetic warriors, and legendary heroes from games she had only read about. It was a place where reality and fiction blurred in the best way possible. Her first stop was the observatory. She practically sprinted to it, eager to peer into the endless void of space. The powerful telescope whirred as she adjusted its settings, zooming in on distant stars and planets. Despite being an advanced robotic being, there was something undeniably magical about gazing into the great beyond. The screen on her face flickered to display wide, sparkling eyes, a rare expression she reserved for moments of true awe.

Feeling an itch for something more hands-on, she made her way to the rocket-building station. The engineers and hobbyists there were deep in construction, fusing metal plates, welding thrusters, and running diagnostics. Minerva tilted her head. "Rocket science can't be that different from robotics, can it?" she mused, rolling up her metaphorical sleeves. It turns out that rocket science is very different from robotics. Her first attempt at securing a fuel tank resulted in a minor explosion (harmless, but incredibly loud). The second attempt had her confused about the placement of aerodynamics, which, according to her knowledge, should technically not matter in space, yet somehow absolutely did. Her LED faceplate displayed a scribbled expression as she backed away from the project. "Not for me," she concluded, shaking her head.

Undeterred, she made her way to the hacking contest. This was more her speed. A dozen coders sat in front of sleek terminals, fingers flying across keyboards, trying to outmatch firewalls, crack encrypted puzzles, and manipulate simulated systems. Minerva’s screen flickered to a determined expression as she took a seat. The screen before her blinked with cascading lines of code. She flexed her fingers and got to work, her robotic mind processing data at an astounding rate. She bypassed weak encryptions, rerouted security loops, and built backdoors with a casual ease that made some competitors glance at her with wary amusement. Halfway through, a fellow hacker leaned over. “Hey, aren’t you Minerva Byte? The author?” Her screen immediately switched. "You recognize me?" "Of course! I love the Elijah Byte series! The idea of a cyberpunk ghost kid with digital powers? Genius!" Minerva’s screen glowed a delightfully "Well, thank you! It’s all thanks to my son. He’s the real inspiration." The competition continued, but Minerva found herself more focused on the conversations than the challenge itself. The joy of meeting people who appreciated her work was unexpectedly heartwarming. By sunset, as fireworks began to crackle overhead, Minerva sat back and took it all in. GeekCon had been a chaotic, wonderful mess. She may not have been cut out for rocket science, but in the worlds of technology, creativity, and storytelling, she had found her true calling. Her screen displayed a warm, contented look as she whispered to herself, "I can't wait to write about today."

Start The First Gen Start This Gen

[angeliqueshelleyartist]

Major Study: Pre-Production

Post # 1

Solar-Scrap: Initial Planning and Research

There are far too few Utopian futures in media which I think is a real shame as I believe imagining and visualising positive futures can create them. For my major study, I wanted to explore a green, sustainable future that is rich with the cultural diversity that exists on earth in a blend of solar and scrap aesthetics. The closest, and possibly only, example of this is a yogurt advert called "Dear Alice" by THE LINE, which in itself is noticeably ironic due to its capitalism driven incentives.

Because of the lack of content out there, AI doesn't have a lot of source material to pull from, which is ideal as I can be creating something new.

I want to learn Unreal Engine 5 as part of my major study as it's become a highly desirable skill for concept artists and I've noticed concept artists using it to generate underlays for their concept art.

For my final deliverables, I want to create character, creature and possibly animated environment concept art. I'm planning on using Unreal 5 for the environment pieces.

Even though the AI resource pool for solar/scrapunk is limited, I ran some prompts through Midjourney to visually explore some existing aesthetics.

This is an example of a prompt I used: "futuristic scrap punk solarpunk utopian homestead lab, sharp angles with water wheel and futuristic designed solar panels and garden watered by tech with vegetables and fruit trees, house is built on the hillside and made of recovered parts of giant battlemechs with solar."

A key note about these Solar-Scrap homes is a visual hint at modularity for customisation, which could be a creative addition to the player’s base. Something supremely peaceful can promote clean energy and the harmonious intersection of humans and nature working symbiotically.

A key example of modular-looking home with interesting angles and accents.

I want to include elements of agriculture/resource farming similar to Dear Alice, key design notes are elevated walkways. Also note the personal craft landing pad structure in the second image.

Perhaps I can have ruined robots as a background element for story telling, perhaps some have been taken over as habitations, as seen is a larger image below:

I also prompted this harmonious solar array in MidJourney, the juxtaposition between nature and jagged tech is striking to me.

This work by Pietro Bernardi is wonderful as it combines recognisable scrap with sci-fi, which is a great example for some of the designs I want to encorporate.

GCV Solaris - The Sky Guardian, Pietro Bernardi, 2020.

As part of my research into the architectural aesthetics of Solarpunk, I cam across this video by an Architecture and Design YouTuber called DamiLee.

In her video SolarPunk Cities: Our Last Hope? (DamiLee, 2023), she compares the popular Cyberpunk aesthetic with the less popular Solarpunk, looking at the key, defining brutalist architectural designs in cyberpunk with the less-defined Solarpunk. While there are settlements and towns that could match a Solarpunk aesthetic, there is currently no clear architectural language for Solarpunk cities. Most of the example images she showed were generated by AI and had a very Ghibli-esque flavour, just like Dear Alice, or had earth-ship home designs with solar panels "stuck" on top. She also considered the psychological tendency for humans to find safety in catastrophising, which could be a barrier to audiences finding appeal in a Solarpunk game.

Reading the comment section of her video was also a great source of community-led discussion as some contributors mentioned that Solarpunk's aesthetic was about the ways the buildings interact with the environment and would differ region to region, there were also comments about how each culture may add a unique architectural blend to the aesthetic. These were factors I was already thinking of incorporating into my concept art, which is really great. The video also helped me to think about ways I can make the game more appealing to a wider range of audiences, and try to stay true to the social and political values of Solarpunk.

A screenshot of comments on SolarPunk Cities: Our Last Hope? (DamiLee, 2023).

References

Bernardi, P. (2020). GCV Solaris - The Sky Guardian. [Online]. ArtStation. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8eeNWm [Accessed 02 April 2024].

DamiLee. (2023). SolarPunk Cities: Our Last Hope?. [Online]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVlBmdvIC6s [Accessed 23 April 2024].

THE LINE. (2021). Dear Alice. [Online]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4 [Accessed 15 April 2024].

[itsbenedict]

flabbergasted by the 18.4% of you who have apparently read all the The Light Marathon books, considering it is a franchise that does not exist except as a background detail in Cordyceps TCFTOG.

not that there isn't a right answer! this is a post that Gavin Batra would have made, and so in-universe would have an actual truth value. here's all the wrong answers:

Zack Mainframe used to work for Dunkin, sure. That part is kind of a small background detail and otherwise he's a hotshot cyberpunk hacker space pilot protagonist guy who you might expect to blow up supercomputer gods. Not surprising nobody picked that.

One of the more mundane things the protagonist's tsundere cyborg love interest might do. Also unsurprising it's real.

Zack's ship totally does have an engine malfunction due to forgetting to feed the cat, because you shouldn't let an animal whose response to hunger is "destroy something to get the human's attention" into your engine room.

The Plausibilist conspiracy can't agree on whether feeding false information to Perfect Minds to force it to reason in probabilities would make it weaker or stronger, and since the author doesn't know any statistics they are incapable of discussing this question in terms that make any sense.

I don't know what character the robot-twist one would be about, but I have to assume most of the cast of this cyberpunk space thriller series gets one or two of them. This one's probably a product of the author changing his mind a bunch of times.

The plot has a lot to do with incontrovertible prophecies from hyperintelligent supercomputers, and the one that kicks off the main plot has to do with the timing of the arrival of a spaceship that happens to be mainly carrying cottage cheese.

The author is under various misapprehensions about what "electricity" is all about, and assumes that electrical impulses in the nervous system are basically the same thing as current flowing through wires, so if you Know Some Hacker Tricks you can just jam wires into your body to control electronics. That's how it works, right?

The entity legally known as "the planet Jupiter" is a hivemind of mining drones that inhabits the entire planet, and is currently under house arrest for a laundry list of hacking crimes up to and including hentai piracy. House arrest doesn't mean a whole lot when you are a planet, since those are stuck in orbits, but what else is the law going to do about a living planet?

The president thing is a deliberately mundane gloss on "the Plausibilist conspiracy uses one dive bar regular's drunken ramblings as a neutral source of unreliable information to train a competing god-AI that reasons under uncertainty, in a very technical sense "controlling" the Imperfect Mind that's president of an evil corporation".

The author loves to write about computers without unnecessarily constraining himself by learning a single fucking thing about computers, so this happens loads of times. These supercomputers can process megabytes of information every day! (It's not like it was written decades ago, either- he just has no excuse.)

The black holes one is fake. Light Marathon is more cyberpunk than, like, cosmic alien sci-fi where weird shit happens to black holes. The whole premise is that there is no magic convenient FTL tech and the space colonies are all administered by Perfect Minds that sync up to coordinate transit and communication delays via perfect analyze-the-shit-out-of-a-deterministic-universe prophecies. Y'know, the ones that involve entire megabytes of surveillance data.

[cypress-punk]

Thinking about Eclipse Phase, a cyberpunk ttrpg with a focus on transhumanism and one of the ideas it brings up in the form of post humans.

So in the setting "transhuman" refers to three groups of beings. The first is humans, like you and me, but in this world basically everyone has a cyber brain and a genetically engineered body or inhabits some sort of fully synthetic robot body but their mind is that of a human. The second is AGI, artifical general intelligences, which are designed to remain at roughly human levels of intelligence and a are engineered to have human like perspectives because AIs allowed to become too smart nearly wiped out the human race fairly recently in the history of the setting. The third is uplifted animals, apes, cetaceans, corvids, parrots, octopi, and pigs which have been genetically engineered to have human like minds and intelligence along with modified bodies that make them more human in body plan (for the apes at least).

This broad and somewhat contradictory set of beings are what you can play as and make up most of the intelligent beings a player might encounter though there are some rather odd aliens and even a weird race of mantis shrimp murder creatures engineered by the bad AIs I mentioned earlier. There are all sorts of contradictions about the category of "transhuman" that the game positions you to explore and challenge in game. Its a very interesting setting in general and worth looking into though the actual rule set is rough (in the first edition, I haven't played the second edition and only skimmed the rules briefly when I read the book)

Anyway that really long preamble out of the way I want to talk about another category of being that exists in the world: post humans. That is to say, if the majority of intelligent beings in the world have become something more than human as it was once understood, these guys have abandoned it entirely. Post humans come in two major flavors from what I recall, Minds, which are people who engineered themselves into enormous brains with equivalently staggering, though alien, intelligence; and Predators, which have abandoned human nature to become pure hunters, highly versatile killing machines that target transhumans as prey, or in some cases have weird space habitats engineered as massive ecosystems over which they are the Apex predators.

Both of these are presented as the result of sort of egoist/objectivist approaches to evolution. In a world where the technology exists to basically engineer a whole viable organism these people have chosen to become something completely unlike what they were. The Minds can be taken as an attempt an organic super intelligence, a piece of meat that can rival the god like AIs that devastated the earth. The predators strike me as a very fascistic view of nature taken to the extreme, seeking to become machines that kill, bending all that you are toward being a weapon. Its almost in line with some Futurist ideas about the body in an industrial world. They also serve as basically stand in for some classic DND monsters. Minds are a lot like Beholders or Elder Brains, Predators can fill many "monster" roles depending on the type of body they've built for themselves.

Anyway I like the post humans because they express an interesting ethos within the setting. Theyre a believable fringe that adds something to the world and provides an interesting element for the players to interact with. But there is one other being in the setting that strikes me as very post human.

There's a description in one piece of fluff of colonies of "barnacles" on certain space ships or habitats. These are extremely stripped down synthetic bodies that are equipped with the tools to affix themselves securely to the hull of some man made object in space and then point a lens at the void of space. A body built for complete isolation and meditation upon the cosmos. A sort of ultimate asceticism. I like the barnacles a lot conceptually.

[wufflesvetinari]

i don’t think i’ve mentioned my latest SFF story publications, so here they are:

“Informed Consent Logs from the Soul Swap Clinic” in Clarkesworld. A short script-format piece that follows conversations between a bodyswap technician and two women (an actress and an ex-engineer) who have murky reasons for swapping with each other. i think i fleshed this idea out with some people in the Detroit: New ERA discord, actually? score one for the robots

“Ms. Höffern Stays Abreast of the News” in Dark Matter Magazine (you do have to pay to read this one, unfortunately). follows a cyberpunk phone psychic and a cyberpunk televangelist who are cyberpunk frenemies and have a lot to say to each other about the coming AI singularity. this one was shortlisted for the james white award for new writers but had not been published until now! i wrote it in 2015 and despaired of ever selling it

EDITED TO ADD: 

“Timecop Mojitos” in Diabolical Plots. while you were out, your flaky roommate took care of that sexy Viking timecop who keeps coming after you. don’t even worry about it! The problem is solved

“Shining Bursa and the Listening Post” in Clarkesworld. god, this story is absolutely the the most uhh…fanfiction-brain thing I have written? Space fantasy featuring hideous alien romance and a fearsome galactic warlord sulking about being forced to experience even the slightest emotion! If you’ve watched Wander Over Yonder and think you’re seeing something…….uh, no you’re not. you’re definitely not.

“Letters from Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade” in Diabolical Plots. Kid voice and epistolary form. What if the whole world knows there’s an alien generation ship on the way, but it won’t arrive for a century, and nobody knows what will happen when it gets here, and you are just a humble third grade teacher trying to come up with a creative lesson plan. What then

And my website is here if you’d like to see more!