#android fiction

[the-five-bright-stars]

Writeblr Intro: The Five Bright Stars

Writer's Alias: Muse (they/them)

Writer Demographics: 30+ years old, white, aroace and agender

Writer History: I've been writing since I was about 10 years old, on and off, mainly in gen fanfiction and collaborative roleplay settings, though I've always had original characters. I've run a few creative blogs in the past, though this is the first one completely dedicated to an original project.

The Project: The Five Bright Stars is queer dramatic speculative fiction, set in a world parallel to real life where sentient automata were invented in the late 1910s, then created en masse post WW2. The novel focuses on Riker Venczel, a middle aged human trying to escape the controlling grip of his cousin, and Taps Bettencourt, an Antique-class robot who, upon losing his job and home, seeks to reconnect with his estranged family. While the present action follows the pair as they flee New Amida, the Rusty City, frequent flashbacks show much of their lives previous.

Themes: Recognition of abuse, Moving forward without forgiveness, Queer acceptance, Systematic entrapment under capitalism, The value of anger vs passivity

Aesthetics and Vibes: The Rust Belt, ghost lights in dusty old theaters, long empty roads, grime under fingernails, denim clothing, satellite dish fields under the stars

Specific goals for this first draft under the cut:

Goals for First Draft of 'The Five Bright Stars' (Subject to change)

Do's -Robots as allegory for disability, queer identity, objectification, working class struggles -Give equal time and depth to Riker and Taps-- Taps currently has fewer character flaws -Figure out a more realistic structure for robot self-advocacy organization(s) (CoACT) -Flesh out the first period of Taps' life, including Demetrio's rivalry with other wealthy property owner(s) -Flesh out backstories for the other Stars -Find balance of sexual themes; acknowledge sex's role in characters' lives in both positive and negative ways without shying away due to personal fears of judgement -Represent maligned identities -Flesh out the plot past the midpoint/return to New Amida

Don'ts -Avoid robot = race parallels -Do not "sand down edges" of character personalities, conflicts -Avoid villifying more militant or self-denfense oriented groups in relation to moderate ones -Be mindful of tokenism -Don't hold too tightly to established or old story elements simply because they've been around for a while -Avoid making Todd's physical disability seem without challenges as opposed to Riker's mental disabilities

[celialowenthal]

hesitation

[koyoriin]

[ s y n t h e t i c ] // personal cyberpunk works from this year!

https://twitter.com/koyoriin https://patreon.com/koyorin https://instagram.com/koyori_n https://bsky.app/profile/koyorin.bsky.social

[neoncitynights]

@ Synthetic Studio

[whereserpentswalk]

Your new roommate is an android. You could tell when you saw them, their skin is pretty obviously artificial material, their eyes glow a little, and they have that voice and those mannerisms that a lot of them have. They're warm to the touch, warmer than any human, most androids are warmer than humans despite the serotypes. This isn't surprising, you've met a lot of androids before, and you know a lot go to this school.

What is surprising is that they don't admit it. They call themself a human, act dismissive towards the idea of androids as part of human society, try to avoid anything that's part of android culture. You adapt pretty quickly to referring to them as a human, but you'll always know they aren't. You assume it's because of bigotry, you know androids still face a lot of social issues, but bigots can still tell they're an android as much as you can. And it's not like things are like they were back in the 21st century, especially in a college in a large city, bigots can't just openly say they hate nonhumans, they're subtle in ways that make pretending to be a human hurt even more. But you are human, so you think it's best not to say anything.

You see how much your roommate sacrifices just to look human. They never show any skin other than their face and hands, which makes overheating even worse. They waste hours trying to fake sleep, when everyone knows they can't sleep, they always make excuses as to why they can't eat any given meal. And you can't even mention nonhumans around them without them being dismissive of anyone openly nonhuman. They don't have solidarity with any other androids, can't participate in any of the things on campus specifically designed for people like them. You want them to be happy, and you know they'd just be happier if they admitted being what everyone knew they were.

There's a lot of nonhumans in your friend group, a lot of clones and cyborgs, and one or two androids. Most of the time you don't think about how they aren't human. But not your roommate, you always think about how they're an android because you have to in order to pretend you think they're human.

And they become so proud of their humanity. Humanity they don't even have. Like they're loving the fact that they can say that they're human, that they can say they're part of the most privileged group in the solar system. It's almost like they're larping as a character, they've mentioned family on Mars at this point, family that you know they physically can't have. It's best to just pretend.

Your roommate knows a lot about certain places, about how certain practices work, places and practices that are horrifying to think even still exist. Places where android suffer in ways that make you feel guilty just to be a human. Places only someone whose been there could know about. It's a miracle this person is in college at all. They don't want to be an android, don't want to be able to be hurt the way only their kind is hurt.

Eventually they cut their face. Cut it deeply enough so that you can see they don't bleed, so that you can see the metal under their plastic skin. They have to walk around like that for a while, they can barely go to class, barely talk to anyone, knowing they can't pass for human. By the time they get the cut fixed everyone knows, well everyone always knew, some people are confused because they didn't even know your roommate wanted to be a human.

When you talk to them again you realize they expected you to want nothing to do with them. They're still uncomfortable around other nonhumans, they don't want to be one of them, but they can still talk to you. They're not even wearing clothing, they don't need it, their only skin is on their head and hands, everything else is raw steel, but they still look themself despite everything. They expected you to see them differently, if anything you see them as an android less now.

When you hug them, it's warmer than any human hug could be.

[habitualspatula]

kissing your android/robot f/o and their internal cooling system starts to whirr

[balrog-slayer66]

Cover art by Jim Steranko for Marvel Comics' Blade Runner (1982)

[lil-tachyon]

Outlaw ANN1E was an android from the Inner Systems who became notorious for overriding her emergency shutdown protocols and absconding with her body (still listed as stolen property by Albion Networked Neurosynthesis) to the Oort autonomies. For generations she worked as a hired gun for various smuggling operations, pirate FTL transmitters, and iceball communes before eventually fading from the historical record.

[ichimakesart]

I strived for perfection.

But my sight was too unjust.

What I made was warped and misshapen...

~☆◇Prints◇☆~▪︎~☆◇Commissions◇☆~▪︎~☆◇Kofi◇☆~▪︎~☆◇For inquiries: ichimakes@gmail.com◇☆~

[shloen]

[mervynbunter]

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

[steakout-05]

happy birthday to my favourite little android in tha whole galaxy!!! :D

additionally:

[koyoriin]

[ s y n t h e t i c ] vol. 2 // service units

https://twitter.com/koyoriin https://patreon.com/koyorin https://instagram.com/koyori_n https://bsky.app/profile/koyorin.bsky.social

[rootsinthefuture]

[whereserpentswalk]

You're an android. A humanoid robot with a mechanical interior, but an outer layer of biological flesh. You were created to be a greeter and assistant at a large corporation in the late 21st century, but it's been a long time since you served that role, the company no longer exists and you serve yourself now.

You were created to be someone who the company finds pleasing, and it still effects you a lot. You were given a body meant to look like a petite youthful woman, someone people find pretty but not someone they'd think of as sexual. You're also physically limited in certain ways, you don't have any body parts considered offensive, not even nipplesq. Your voice is always calm and quite, unable to yell or seem at all harsh. Your limbs are weak in specific places that make most acts of violence almost entirely impossible.

Your most extreme modification is that certain things are censored for your eyes. You can't observe sex, nudity, gore, or hear or read any profanity. You can physically look at these things but it will be censored out by a black bar. They're not even really black, they're gaps in vision, like the things you can't see out of the corner of your eye.

It disturbs you. It didn't when you were young but it's disturbing now. It's hard to describe why. When you were young you were so happy and innocent, and you didn't really understand what you were missing. But now you're older than most humans even though you look basically the same as how you did when you were born. It's not like you really want to do most of these things, you don't have sexual desire, you don't even think of yourself as hurting people, you don't really want to raise your voice. But you want the option, you want the same options as all your human friends, or all the robots you know who don't have those restrictions.

It won't always come up but it hurts when it does. It hurts when you want to talk with the same tone as everyone else, but you're restricted to a calm tone, and can't use profanity, so you can't match the vibe of a conversation. It sucks to try to watch a horror movie and just see void where you know there's meant to be blood. You took an art class once where they drew nude models, and you had to explain that you couldn't draw the woman in front of you fully because of the black bars over her chest and pelvis. The instructor, a gruff former mining robot with a thick streel carapace, patted your head, and called you cute, and called you lucky to be made in such a peaceful environment. You don't feel lucky, you don't feel cute either.

So many humans and scarier looking robots consider you cute. You're always the nice one. Always the sweet one. Everyone treats you like this pure little thing. You've had so many bigger, less human like robots and cyborgs, talk about how they'll protect or, or how they want to protect you. You think they're trying solidarity but they aren't trying it well. You're not innocent, you know what all these adult things are, you're certainly old enough to. You don't need protection, you've been protected too many times.

You've tried to go to an engineer about it, but it's so hard. It's very hard to find someone who'll take your request to let you see genitals and violence seriously. It's not uncommon for ex factory robots to want to have their assembly line instincts removed, or for ex combat robots to want to not have weapons on their bodies. But it's way harder to tell someone who'll be working on your body that you want the physical ability to punch people, or that you want your body to have nipples. People don't understand why you'd want genitals if you won't use them for sex, but you've been a woman for so long, you want a body that reflects that. You tried to get someone to fix your voice, probably the most simple part of you to fix, and they gave you the mechanical equivalent of suger pills, they didn't think it was something someone like you would actually want. They thought they knew better.

There is the option of putting your mind in a new body. It's rare but it's not unheard of by any means. It's expensive, and it takes awhile to learn to use a new body. But you can do it. You have the money and the time. When it does happen it's useally robots less humanoid than you wanting to get bodies more like yourse that have more pretty human parts, but that's not all that can happen.

You've seen a few bodies that have been emptied of minds that you can swap with. You've been thinking about it for awhile. There are some space exploration models and some sex work robots who you've come close to working on swapping with. But there's one that trumps all of them for sure. It's this empty millitary robot body, that everyone other than you finds creepy. It's very elongated and spindly with a lot of limbs and a metal black and gold exterior, it looks a bit like a giant praying mantis, especially with that combination of agression and elegence. It's beautiful to you, but in this alien art deco way. Just the idea of being inside that body makes you excited. It still doesn't have genitals but thats less weird for a body like that. You want so badly to be that tall thin metal woman covered in built in weapons, you want so badly to be something people are afraid of, something meant to know all the dark and upsetting things of the adult world.

[neoncitynights]

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