silvertonguedcanine

[silvertonguedcanine]

URGH. Emmerich Holyblade and I just went to The Ceremony to receive our RPG Job Titles, and he OBVIOUSLY got Chosen Hero Sword Saint. So now he's gonna set out to kill the Demon Lord of Darkness.

Me? I just got Dark Mage. Honestly, it's pretty rare, but the job opportunities are also limited. You either get into covert assassination or dungeon raiding.

God, just because we're the only two kids in The Village, Emmerich Holyblade automatically assumes this makes us friends. He doesn't even realize I hate him and his stupid smug swordsman ass.

URGGHHHH he just asked me to join his Grand Hero's Party. fuck. I can't just say no if the Grand Holy King himself is gonna payroll us to do this shit. Whatever man. Let's rock till the Demon Lord of Darkness is dead, and then I can retire and never see Emmerich Holyblade again.

[silvertonguedcanine]

listening to Gravity Falls episode commentaries is great. Alex Hirsch nearly worked himself to death constantly. Grunkle Stan was nearly voiced by Matt Chapman of Homestar Runner. Literally nothing aside from the twist about Stan having a twin was planned more than a few episodes in advance. The zodiac wheel meant nothing and consisted of random symbols from the first 7 episodes because the intro was animated after those were done. Alex came up with the term “search for the blind eye” to be an extra bit for the between-season shorts before deciding to actually have a payoff for that setup and writing Society of the Blind Eye. Bill was meant to be a joke character and when Alex suggested that he be a real villain Michael Rianda responded “You, my friend, have lost the plot.” Bill getting one episode in the spotlight was basically chance and he only became the main villain of season 2 because he was so popular with the fans. The reveal of the portal at the end of season 1 was suggested by Mike without thinking it through and he left before the next season and the other writers were SO ANNOYED after that went through because they somehow had to keep that plot going for the 10 episodes it’d take to actually pay off. I am genuinely astonished that this show came together as well as it did at all.

[silvertonguedcanine]

there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context. like i just picture a bunch of nerds at podiums & one’s like “of course there was a paleolithic bear cult in Northern Eurasia” and another one just looks him in the eye and says “i’l kill you in real life, kevin”

[silvertonguedcanine]

Out of a moment of aching sadness and fury and manic impulsivity, a wizard turns a killer whale trapped in a theme park aquarium into a human so she can smuggle it out of the park and back into the wild.

[silvertonguedcanine]

I was compelled by some sort of curse maybe to do nothing but make this for the past day and a half.

@reliqvia tagging op because it wouldn't let me put videos in the reblog

[silvertonguedcanine]

genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

[silvertonguedcanine]

I never did a long thing about scrimshaw, so it’s time! At 1 am, apparently.

I think scrimshaw is one of the most fascinating material goods to emerge from the history of the American whaling industry (which is the context I’m discussing here, though of course the artform exists across numerous eras and cultures outside this brief blip of nautical history).

It’s one way to see amatuer art that usually doesn’t often survive in other forms. To see the art project of an ordinary man who was bored and needed something to do with his hands. Others were highly skilled craftsman, creating intricate engravings or mechanically expert tools. The most common scrimshaw was images etched on sperm whale teeth. Sometimes those images came from the maker’s own imagination and sometimes they were copied illustrations. Ships & whaling scenes, women, mythical figures, and patriotic symbols make up the bulk of the visual language in those pieces that survive.

But alongside the teeth were all a manner of carved items: canes, candle holders, pie crimpers, children’s toys, sewing boxes, yarn swifts, corset busks. So much bone fashioned into quiet little homegoods. And it’s that contradiction within scrimshaw that fascinates me. The brutality of the industry, this ivory from an animal that frankly died terribly, that’s then softened into a little domestic item. An object that could have hours to years of work put into it. Some were made to be sold but many were made as gifts. In the long stretches of boredom at sea, in the lull between back-breaking work and life-threatening terror, scrimshaw gives a window into where the minds of these men continually turned. It shows where their hearts were and what they were holding on to over all the years they spent adrift in saltwater and blood and oil. That’s the poetry I see in scrimshaw. Pain and love and longing and creativity and playfulness all bound together in these complicated little pieces that found their way out of the hands of their anonymous makers to preserve a small part of their story.

Some scrimshanders names are known. Frederick Myrick is one of the most well known American whalers, not so much for the scope of his life (of which little is known) but for his scrimshaw. Born in Nantucket in 1808, he first went whaling in 1825 on the Columbus and then again on the Susan 1826-29. In the last few months aboard the Susan, Myrick engraved over 30 sperm whale teeth, all depicting the ship he was on (though there are a handful that depict other vessels). He signed and dated nearly each one. These pieces are often referred to as ‘Susan’s Teeth’ now, and when one comes up at auction it’s not unusual for it to sell for six figures.

Many of the teeth Myrick scrimshawed included an inscribed couplet of his devising: A dark wish for luck that succinctly gets at the violent and unstable heart of American whaling.

“Death to the living, long life to the killers Success to sailor’s wives, and greasy luck to whalers”

Sometimes large scenes were etched on panbones as well.

Moving from scrimshaw on teeth and jawbones, pie crimpers are some of the more common sculptural items. Popular motifs included animals (dogs, snakes, and unicorns/hippocampus are big), body parts (mostly clenched fists or lady’s legs), and geometric designs.

Others were more mechanically complicated, such as automatons and children’s toys with moving parts and gears. Here’s one of a small rocking sailboat, perhaps made for someone’s child or younger sibling.

Sometimes a particular creative fellow created something more eccentric, like this wild writing desk kit fashioned out of a carved panbone and sperm whale teeth.

Another frequently scrimshawed object was a corset busk that would be slid into the front of the garment in order to maintain the posture. A rather private item compared to others. And one with a very on-the-nose message of wearing close to one’s heart the memory of someone who’d be gone for 3-4 years, who might never come home again. On some level, so many of these daily objects whispered ‘forget me not’, ‘think of me while I’m gone’. 

There’s something tender to all the various domestic items that were fashioned on the job so long and far from home, but it’s the yarn swifts that really captivate me. They were one of the most complicated pieces of scrimshaw to make, with over one hundred different pieces that would have to be carved. It could take someone the length of the voyage (2-4 years) to complete a single one. Unlike teeth which were comparatively very quick to make and were frequently intended to be sold, it’s very unlikely that a swift was made with the aim of selling it because of the significant labor that went into it. They were almost certainly all gifts, and very special ones at that. Every time I see one I can just feel the love towards its intended recipient radiating off of it.

Scrimshaw captures a specific snapshot of a moment in time. On a broader scale it’s a surviving reminder of a bloody industry that flared up and winked out, preserved in the form of a long-lost ship and the spout of a long-dead whale inked on a yellowing tooth. But that snapshot also reveals the emotional world of the men who were caught up in such an industry: what they valued, what they thought about, what they missed, and what they wanted to be remembered of them.

[silvertonguedcanine]

When you maxed out your intimidation but have zero points in charisma by BasedBinkie@basedbinkie

[silvertonguedcanine]

decided to put these in a bit of a chronological order as i can’t help but form a story behind the scenes. it’s a storyteller’s habit. and yeah i do have an idea i would genuinely like to explore with gail simone as a crossover comic. 

i don’t want to be the writer for this. but at the same time i always found diving into these things and exploring the character chemistry was the best way to get an artistic feeling for it.

this is also how i usually develop my own stories.

anyhow, while many think this is me drawing some shipping, in fact this a proof of concept for an adventure story  featuring lara and diana. Gail simone at some point asked if they would kiss and i gave it some genuine thought. i am a character first kind of a writer, myself, so i contemplated this. then i decided, yes, probably.

after all, romantic subplots have been the bread and butter of adventure writing since its inception and i always liked that aspect of adventure stories.

 i hope this puts some things in context from my end XD

and while there will probably be a few more of these, there will be no nsfw pics. after all, camera pans away from indiana jones in those moments as well  XD

okay… there may be a chance of a kiss… but that’s about it.  (edit, i added the rest of them here along with the antagonist)

[silvertonguedcanine]

A City For The Dead 1

Tarsen had welcomed the research division with all proper respect and courtesy, and made every effort to accomodate their work. The researchers-a mixed bag of Necromancers, biologists, physicists, and ecologists-had eschewed the comfort of the compound to bivouac up the coast, within sight of the anomaly. Poring over official reports, transcripts, and recovered diaries, and reading between the lines to put a picture together, Iosefka felt this had been as much a source of trepidation to the garrison as it had been a relief.

On paper, Tarsen was and remains strategically important with a clear view of the demarcation zone and the seaward approach combined with enough arable land to be largely self-sustaining. It had fallen between jurisdictional cracks, neither the Ministry of Production nor Ministry of Defense inclined to afford it much attention or assert control as the war cooled. A place to retire officers whose committment exceeded their vitality. A dead-end posting for the politically inconvenient and the personally embarassing.

Unsurprising, then, that the Ministry of Knowledge should take an interest. Close to the anomaly and largely ignored, they could pursue any of their more clandestine goals and expect some leeway before other offices caught up. And they would catch up; Iosefka had found unredacted reports from somebody's spy that read like a blend of field observations and personal letters. There was a cipher, obviously, but she'd given up on cracking it. Had it been the Diplomatic corps, the Intelligence Bureau, or some indistinct and suspiciously provisioned subcomittee at odds with their colleagues sent to, ostensibly, take soil samples?

That was the thing about the fragile ceasefire with the leeches. It gave the bureacracy time to stagnate, to turn inward, for all the worst paranoic impulses of Party apparatchiks high on games of prestige and generals driven half-mad with trauma to coil like competing vines around the tree of state. The Commissariat could do only so much to hold the implosion at bay, and so here she was, wasting perfectly good leave on puzzling out a massacre from badly written love letters and self-aggrandizing progress reports.

It could not be a coincidence she'd been assigned to Tarsen and specifically a Quill field exercise. Prototype Osteidons, a new model Thanatomat, and the most recent appointee to the Secretariat, all at the site of a mystery so throughly buried even the ghosts were nowhere to be found only twenty years later.

And so she read.

[silvertonguedcanine]

Restless Dreams 0

I am blind and numb and there is nothing, nothing. Only cold and hunger and nothing. There is a me and there was a then and if there is a now it is

nothing.

//////////////////////////

There are stark white walls and ceiling, and a light so bright some dull animal part of me wants to look away and adjust like waking with the sun in your face. There is no warmth, and no cold. Only vision, and my eyes move as if heavy, the only thing I can move. There are sounds and I recognize them as voices, words, only after some time. As if muffled by a thousand miles and a thousand years of distance, glimmering in my mind like eyes in the dark of the supply room.

"...ostly intact." "Lucky timing. Any later and the anchor process would-" "Don't. Not one more word." "Right. Right, well, positive results so far." There are other sounds, and objects; blocky with blinking lights. There are shapes, rounded and mobile. People. Murky and indistinct. "I think it's awake." "Oh for fuck's sake." A hand crosses my vision and there is nothing.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

A hand in mine. Small, soft. She smells of gunpowder and salt and sweat in the cosy dark of the supply room. The teachers cannot know.

////////////

"How are you feeling, comrade?" Bright light. Stark white. A face, unfamiliar, brow creased and eyes bright in a way that means nothing to me. "Can't speak?" the face looks away, somewhere past me. "Should it speak?" "There's synaptic and animic activity but they've been through an extremely traumatic experience and period of quiescence. Mechanically there's no obstacle but..." "Hm, too much to hope for yet, of course. Can we try a coalescence?" "I'm not comfortable risking that until they acclimate to these meridians." "We have time. Smoke break? Back under you go, comrade."

\\\\\\\\

The green hills roll down to the grey sea and the briny wind is cold, invigorating. I squint at a break in the overcast sky and giggle with wonder. safe in loving arms.

//////////////////////////////////////////

White. Bright. I feel heavy, clumsy. Like I've slept wrong and all my limbs are bloodless. I turn my head and hear something hum and click. Dark shapes on the other side of glass. An empty room. A thick metal door. A crackle of static.

"Good, comrade, very good! Can you take a step?" I do not want to take a step. I don't know what I want. I have nothing else to do. I look down at my feet. They are bone white. They are bone. They are bone and glints of metal and thicker than they should be. I raise my hands to my face and they are bare bone and fingerless and as I scream the shapes move and there is darkness again.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Bright eyes under dark helmets. The thundering drumroll of ranked rifles. Cries of victory. Exhausted I half-collapse and throw my arms around my comrade. His tears feel scalding on my cheek.

//////

"I am. Comrade Hawkar," I say. My mouth does not move. I do not have a mouth, only an assembly of wires and plastics behind a blank sheet of bone. "Welcome back, comrade," replies comrade-doctor Ivy, smiling, the silver skull badge of a Party official gleaming on the lapel of her labcoat. "It's been a difficult journey. You were... in a bad way." Her smile tightens, brittle. "We did our best."

Their best is raw film spotted with cigarette burns. A life no longer mine. Their best is two hundred kilograms of reinforced osseous shell, reanimated muscle, and bioplastic armatures. I am in here, somewhere. Some living meat pulses in the walking sepulchure I have come to inhabit. "Thank you," I say. Their best lent my voice no feeling, and it is better this way.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Screaming, bleeding. Blind with panic, deaf to the roar of artillery shattering the bruised sky. Hearts stop all around me. Warmth leaches from my limbs and pools around my hips.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I am a paragon of war. No weapon has pierced my chassis. No foe can slow my implacable advance and the enemy screamed with a terror I cannot comprehend as my footfalls sank into the maroon mud of the battlefield between me and their inevitable end.

A comrade of the logistics ministry hoses me down before we re-enter the base. I know blood sheathes my body only because diagnostic overlays tell me so. And yet is there not also a warmth? To be covered in the stuff of life.

The thought does not take root. The tender ministrations of comrade-doctor Ivy patch my shell and soothe my soul. I cannot feel her fingers as they delicately seal the scarring of my form. There was disquiet between the drone of war and the comfort of home. There is a creeping dispossession as I see my reflection in a surgical tray; the pallid deathmask with amethyst eyes, the numbers 621 engraved where my ear would once have been, but she dispels it. I will not understand for a long time.

"You are being reassigned, comrade Hawkar, to a specialist Osteidon unit. I trust my colleague comrade-necromancer Thurston to be your handler for this mission." Osteidons. Fragile souls in monstrous armour. Will I find kinship there, with the pilots and their chosen bodies? "For All Mankind, comrade-doctor." "For the Deathless Revolution, comrade Hawkar."

[silvertonguedcanine]

i feel like we don’t talk about things like this enough

[silvertonguedcanine]

dr who’s on first, doctor strange is on second and doctor house is on third. theres no way theyre getting through a single inning

[silvertonguedcanine]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[silvertonguedcanine]

The Devil's Wheel

The Devil’s Wheel

“If you say yes,” said the Devil, “a single man, somewhere in the world, will be killed on the spot. But three million dollars is nothing to sneeze at, missus.”

“What’s the catch?” You squint at him suspiciously over the red-and-black striped carnival booth. You’re smarter than he thinks you are– a devil deal always has a catch, and you’re determined to catch him before he catches you. 

“Well, the catch is that you’ll know you did it. And I’ll know, too. And the big man upstairs’ll know, I ‘spose. But what’s the chariot of salvation without a little sin to grease the wheels? You can repent from your mansion balcony, looking out at your waterfront views, sipping a bellini in your eighties. But hey, it’s up to you– take my deal or leave it.”

The Devil lights a cigar without a match, taking an inhale, and blowing out a cloud of deep, sweet-smelling tobacco laced faintly with something that reminds you of rotten eggs. If he does have horns, they’re hidden under his lemon yellow carnival barker hat. He wears a clean pinstripe suit and a red bowtie. No cloven hooves, no big pointy fork, but you know he’s the Devil without having to be told. Though he did introduce himself.

He’s been perfectly polite. 

You know you need the money. He knows it too, or he wouldn’t have brought you here, to this strange dark room, whisking you away from your new house in the suburbs as fast as a wish. Now you’re in some sort of warehouse, where all the windows seem to be blacked out– or, maybe, they simply look out into pitch darkness, though it is the middle of the day. A single white spotlight shines down on the two of you. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” you say. “I bet the man is someone I know, right? My husband?”

“Could be,” the Devil says with a pointed grin. “That’s for the wheel to decide.”

He steps back and raises his black-gloved hand as the tarp flies off of the large veiled object behind him. The light of the carnival wheel nearly blinds you. Blinking lights line the sides. Jingling music blares over speakers you can’t see. The flickering sign above it reads:

THE DEVIL’S WHEEL

“Step right up and claim your fortune,” the Devil barks. “Spin the wheel and pay the price! Or leave now, and a man keeps his life.”

You examine the wheel. 

The gambling addict

The doting boyfriend

The escaped convict

The dog dad

The secretive sadist

“These are all the possible men I can kill?” You ask, thumbing the side of the wheel. It rolls smoothly in your hand. Then you quickly stop, realizing that this might constitute a spin under the Devil’s rules. He flashes a smile at you, watching you halt its motion. 

“Addicts, convicts, murderers– plenty of terrible options for you to land on, missus!”

“Serial wife murderer?”

“Now who would miss a fellow like that? I can guarantee that the whole world would be better off without him in it, and that’s a fact.”

The hard worker

The compulsive liar

The animal torturer

The widower

The desperate businessman

The failed musician

The beloved son

“My husband is on here too,” you say. 

“Your husband Dave, yes. The wheel has to be fair, otherwise there’s simply no stakes.”

“I know what’s gonna happen,” you say, crossing your arms. “This wheel is rigged. I’m gonna spin it around, and it’ll go through all the killers and stuff, and then it’s gonna land on my husband no matter what.”

“Why, I would never disgrace the wheel that way,” the Devil says, wounded. “I swear on my own mother’s grave– may she never escape it. In fact, take one free spin, just to test it out! This one’s on me, no death, no dollars.”

You cautiously reach up to the top of the wheel and feel its heaviness in your hand. The weight of hundreds of lives. But also, millions of dollars. You pull the wheel down and let it go.

Clackity-clackity-clackity-clackity

Round and round it goes. 

The college graduate

The hockey fan

The Eagle Scout

The cold older brother

The charming younger brother

The two-faced middle child

The perfectionist

The slob 

Your husband Dave

Clackity-clackity-clackity.

Finally, the wheel lands on a name. A title, really.

The photographer

“Hmm, tough, missus, but that’s the way of the wheel. But hey, look! Your husband is allllll the way over here,” he points with his cane to the very bottom of the wheel, all the way on the other side from where the arrow landed. “As you can see, it’s not rigged. The wheel truly is random.”

“So… there really isn’t another catch?” You ask. 

“Isn’t it enough for you to end a man’s life? You need a steeper price? If you’re really such a glutton for punishment, I’ll gladly re-negotiate the terms.”

“No, no… wait.” You examine the wheel, glancing between it and the Devil.

You really could use that three million dollars. Newly married, new house, you and your husband’s combined debt– those student loans really follow you around. He’s quite a bit older than you, and even he hasn’t paid them off yet, to the point where the whole time you were dating you watched him stress out about money. You had to have a small, budget wedding, and a small, budget honeymoon. Three million dollars could be big for the two of you. You could re-do your honeymoon and go somewhere nice, like Hawaii, instead of just taking two weeks in Atlantic City. You deserve it. 

Even so, do you really want to kill an innocent photographer? Or an innocent seasonal allergy sufferer? Or an innocent blogger? Just because you don’t know or love these people doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t. 

The cancer survivor

The bereaved

The applicant

Some of these were so vague. They could be anyone, honestly. Your neighbors, your father, your friends…

The newlywed

The ex-gifted kid

The uncle

The Badgers fan

“My husband is a Badgers fan,” you say.

“How lovely,” the Devil says. 

Then it hits you.

Of course.

The weightlifter.

The careful driver.

The manager.

The claustrophobe.

Your husband Dave lifts weights at the gym twice a month. You wouldn’t call him a pro, but he does it. He also drives like he’s got a bowl of hot soup in his lap all the time, because he’s afraid of being pulled over. He just got promoted to management at his company, and he takes the stairs to his seventh-story office because he hates how small and cramped the elevator is.

“I get your game,” you announce. “You thought you could get me, but I figured you out, jackass!” “Oh really? What is my game, pray tell?” The Devil responds, leaning against his cane.

“All these different titles– they’re all just different ways to describe the same guy. My husband isn’t one notch on the wheel, he’s every notch. No matter what I land on, Dave dies. I’m wise to your tricks!” 

The Devil cackles. 

“You’re a clever one, that’s for sure. I thought you’d never figure it out.”

“Thanks but no thanks, man,” you say with a triumphant smirk. “I’m no rube. No deal. Take me back home.”

“As you wish, missus,” the Devil says. He snaps his fingers, and you’re gone, back to your brand-new house with your new husband. “Don’t say I never tried to help anyone.”

[silvertonguedcanine]

We were driving down the highway, and Derrick was going exactly the speed limit, like a psychopath.

He was aghast. "You wouldn't let me use your fuckbot?"

"It would be weird," I replied. "You're saying, in the hypothetical world where fuckbots existed, that you would be fine with me saying 'hey, I'm super horny, can I come pick up your fuckbot for the evening?'"

"Hell yeah dude," said Derrick.

"We're talking something that can make a reasonable pass at acting human, who looks human," I said. "That's what we're talking about right now."

"Yeah," said Derrick. "I mean, the kind of thing that realistically would end up being your maid, your chef, all that kind of thing, because if it can carry on a conversation it can probably do your laundry and scrub your tub and whatever."

"If, hypothetically, such a thing existed," I said. "I wouldn't call it a fuckbot, I would call it a domestic robot or something. Even if, for whatever reason, such an expensive labor saving device also had parts and protocols for having sex with it."

"And you wouldn't let me use it," said Derrick. "Not even just to try it out. Like if I was interested in buying one of my own."

"I mean," I said. "No, because you could just ask me what it was like, and I could tell you."

"That's bad market research, dude," said Derrick.

"Look, I'm not letting you have sex with my sexbot," I said. "That's a line that I'm not crossing, in the hypothetical world where domestic servant robots with like personalities and stuff are also ready and willing to have sex with you."

"Is it a hygiene thing?" asked Derrick. "Because I'm imagining like, a little sleeve thing that they could pull out and clean. And it's not like contagion theory is real, that's like, essentialism."

"What?" I asked. "Contagions are definitely real."

"No, I mean ... like this thing where if a knife has touched meat even just one time, it's forever a meat knife unless you do a ritual to turn it back into a dairy knife."

"What?" I asked again.

Derrick was still driving the speed limit. People were going around us, and some of them were honking. He was easily ten miles an hour slower than any of the surrounding traffic.

"The Jewish thing, with the knives," said Derrick. "You touch a knife to meat even once, and then it's a meat knife, and it doesn't matter if you put it in a like, immersion steamer or something."

"This is about keeping kosher?" I asked. "You're talking about whether a sexbot is kosher?"

"I'm saying that there's this idea, right, that if I put my dick inside your sexbot, that sexbot is forever tainted, and it doesn't matter if there's a sleeve that can be sterilized, or whatever, it's just this idea that the act independent of physical reality is ... a contagion, I guess."

"Surely there's a way of making a knife kosher again," I said. "I mean, surely, if you accidentally touch a knife to a piece of meat it's not a meat knife forever, surely you don't throw your favorite knife out because it's ritually unclean."

"I don't know man," said Derrick. "I'm just gesturing at the idea, you know?"

"I mean, there's probably some ritual cleaning or something," I said. "Can I look this up?"

"No," said Derrick. "I'm driving, I need someone to talk to, if I let you look it up you're going to have your nose in the phone for the next half hour, easily."

"Fine," I replied. "Anyway, I get the idea, and it's not that I think it's like ... magic or something, like you using it would metaphysically alter the sexbot. It's more like ... in my mind, it would be my girlfriend, right? Or like a girlfriend replacement. If you can't find a girlfriend, store bought is fine, that kind of thing."

"Interesting," said Derrick. "I was thinking of it as a sort of ... maid, I guess. And if you hired a maid, and she said to you 'hey, I'm super horny basically all the time, so if after I'm done cleaning, or if I'm in the middle of cleaning, and you want to have a go, I am basically always up for it, then ... I mean, you might, right? And you wouldn't be surprised if she was having sex with other people. And if you explained this to me, and I said 'hey, can I get her number', you'd give me her number, right?" He glanced over at me. "Right?"

"I guess in that case, she would have agency," I said. "And it wouldn't be the same. Because if I hired a domestic servant robot, I would be extremely surprised to find out she'd been having sex with other people, like ... when I was away ... or something."

"But you'd give me her number, right?" asked Derrick.

"In this scenario, is this maid ... a sex worker?" I asked. "Like, is the understanding that I'm paying her for cleaning the house and sexual availability?"

"Nah, I don't know dude," said Derrick. "You know, when you think about it, a combination domestic servant and fuckbot is kind of fucked up. Like, misogynistic."

"Does it get less fucked up if it's a guy?" I asked.

"Honestly, yeah," said Derrick. "That's practically progressive."

"I mean, it's sort of inherent to the concept of a sexbot," I said. "I don't know how you do one of those that's immune from criticism. And calling it a fuckbot doesn't help. I mean, it's a facsimile of a woman, whose only purpose is doing domestic labor and having sex."

"And there's this power dynamic thing," said Derrick. "Like, you own her, right? And you tell her whether or not your friends are allowed to have sex with her. No agency, like you said."

"So you think that me loaning out my sexbot to you, in this hypothetical, is a win for feminisim," I said.

"Honestly, yeah," said Derrick.

"Well, I'm still not going to do it," I said. "I'd feel weird about it."

"I think it's this girlfriend mentality," said Derrick. "Like, girlfriend replacement, that's probably not a healthy way to think about a fuckbot."

"We said illusion of sentience, right?" I asked. "Like, it can carry on a conversation with you, and you mostly won't notice anything weird? Because if that's the case, it's kind of weirder for it not to be a girlfriend, or something like a girlfriend, like if it's only doing all the household chores and the cooking and cleaning and you have sex with it, and it's perfectly capable of asking how your day is or expressing interest in how you're doing in League, but you just don't talk to each other? That's weird. And seems less healthy than just carrying on a conversation."

"Yeah, maybe," said Derrick. "But like ... no way anyone is going to be your girlfriend if you have a fuckbot, that's a real concern."

"In this hypothetical world where someone like me without a huge amount of extra money can afford a domestic robot, I think attitudes would change," I said. "On dating apps or whatever you'd have people tagging 'robot friendly!' or 'absolutely no robofuckers' or whatever. And I would assume that women would have them too, and then when I did get a girlfriend, she'd move in with her own domestic robot, and I'd make peace with the fact that sometimes we'd have sex together and sometimes she'd want to just have her sexbot please her."

"Totally not what would happen," said Derrick. "You're trying to create some kind of normalcy around this? Like you'd just be in a little, I don't know, polycule with two robots?"

"I mean, they're sub-sentient robots, so no, not a polycule," I replied. "Part of the premise is that they are, in fact, incapable of cognition as we know it, that they don't actually have emotions or ambitions or agency beyond what's programmed into them. If we're saying that they're effectively humans but made of electronics and not meat, that's totally different, all my answers have to change."

"And if they did have emotions," said Derrick. "If they did have agency and cognition and whatnot, then —"

"Then they'd be slaves," I said. "And I'm not cool with slavery, so I wouldn't have one."

"What if they were volunteers?" asked Derrick. "If they had emotions and thoughts and all that other stuff, and they came off the factory line really wanting to be fuckbots and domestic servants."

"Sketchy," I said. "But ... maybe, depending on the details."

"And in that case, if they had agency of their own, would you let me have sex with your fuckbot?" asked Derrick.

I rolled my eyes. "Alright, fine, if the sexbots were fully human-level intelligent with agency and emotions and wants and dreams, and it seemed like the robot I lived with was actually interested, yes, I would give my blessing."

"Niiiiice," said Derrick.

Another car came up fast behind us and swerved into the other lane to avoid us, honking as it blew past.

"Can I ask why you're driving so goddamned slow?" I asked.

"Oh, I was doing it as a bit, I wanted to see how long it would take for you to notice."

Derrick smiled at me, then put his foot on the gas.

[silvertonguedcanine]

Art by Dirty Iron