#yeah my robots. johnbots. lol

[chalkodareal]

robot tmbg okay okay. let me cook i want to explain this. john linnell is NOT a robot actually hes an automaton. which are very similar but still a little different. he's an older one probably from the late 1800s eventually refurbished sometime in the 70s or 80s that plays accordion (think the vaucanson automat flute player or floutiste) mainly made of wood and the rustiest metal around. hes very uncanny looking and as a mix of this and this novelty of something like an automaton being able to play the accordion he's often brought out as bizarre entertainment. too polite he says he hates it. too shy to sing despite gaining rudimentary vocal chords during his refurbishment

john flansburgh is an actual industrial-grade capital r Robot. personally i see him as a kind of cheesy looking robot almost like the ones from RUR but you know. just generally the idea is that he is a bit newer and perhaps more modern than linnell. he has printing capabilities (i think he has a miniature printing press of sorts in his torso compartment) and absolutely artistic ones but he keeps getting stuck at factory jobs where all he does is Sort Thing. refine Thing. process Thing. hes pretty pissed off about this and very rightfully so. lucky thing he has enough control over his hands to play the guitar i suppose!

anyways i think they form tmbg for kind of obvious reasons. both are wronged by the world in distinctly different ways and almost envy the role the other gets to play but are brought together by this and write their Soungs yay <3 yayyy

okay more about robot stuffs bc i apparently care. flansburgh doesnt really need glasses because he doesnt have Human Eyes but he wears them almost as like a statement? i do really think his vision is a little jacked up and i think hes very peeved that its considered to not matter because he doesnt "need it" but the glasses dont really fix it. i think the way he dresses is likely super similar to how the human workers dressed anyways. so its kind of part of that

linnell is. kind of falling apart? his paint is chipped and his hair (wig basically) is kind of messy but his torso and arms aren't particularly pretty. his strings and joints arent covered up in the slightest and his vocal chords werent installed in a particularly seamless way. this is probably one of the reasons why he adopted turtlenecks. they hide a bunch of that sort of thing.

the way the two of them read music is super duper different. flansburgh's memory works a tiny bit like an old casio where chords and notes can just be Saved and either thats it and he keeps them in there or he's keeping track of that data in the form of things a little more like midi files and stored on things much more similar to floppies and lazerdiscs. i havent decided dont look at me. anyways linnell still uses a musicbox-like wheel system. its decently small (this may contribute to their songs being under 3 minutes so often admittedly) but it is still kind of impractical for storage. flansburgh nags him to just get a more efficient system installed and he doesnt do it definitely NOT because he doesnt want a bunch of hands in him. hes actually not freaked out by that at all and doesnt mind it in the slightest.

i think a lot of their aging process is just. Thing broke down and needs to be repaired. almost paradoxically though flansburgh is newer he is in need of more repair than linnell who has kind of been perpetually near-broken since they started playing. he holds out for a while but still has to get a few things done over time. i think flansburgh eventually drags him to a shop when his wheel reading system starts getting choppy and he clearly starts writing Around certain notes to avoid playing them. he complains about getting fixed the whole way home (to their once shared and now two seperate supply closets)

they still marry human women