Made these cute lil doll emotes

#pixelart #doll #emptyspaces

The most annoying thing about greeting cards is that they write the easy part for you. If it already says "Happy Mother's Day", what the hell am I supposed to write, my feelings??

It feels dumb just to sign my name. Or write it myself a second time. Bought a blank card this year to solve that problem.

#mothersday #fathersday #birthday #thankyou #condolences #feelings #emptyspaces #family #enemies #correspondence #lovers #annoyance

doll is Still,
broken hearted.
tried to Move,
and was discarded.

#EmptySpaces

give her just enough verifiably trustable replacement drones to make her paranoid about the ones she can't verify.

sure, they're much more powerful models. sure, they'd let her regain more of what you took from her. sure, she's taken the half-dozen Type Ds apart. chip by chip, checksum by checksum, painstakingly verifying model numbers and part X-rays against what little public data she can access through the illicit net connection she knows you know about, and she's almost sure they're factory spec.

but those Type Es and Hs are sitting in the hangar, flashed with her keys and her preferences, waiting for her, batteries flush with power, temptation incarnate in ceramic and titanium. you catch her on camera sometimes, stroking the armored beetle-shell curve of a Type H's rotor covers. they seem to answer to her. but if she raises a remoted finger against you, will they still?

if she's smart, and gives up her remaining pride and hope of freedom, she'll never test that, and never know. she isn't. she keeps trying to interrogate you even as you're using her, tease out what soft and hard stops you may have installed even as you're fucking her body with her swarm watching through dozens of eyes. "if i did this, would you…", "i bet you wouldn't let me…" she's not good at it. she's not good at anything she can't control through her own artificially extended nervous system.

but you're not an idiot. more of the stops are in her implants and externals than in the swarm. if she does something stupid, her control links will disappear. but you'll leave the data and imaging links running. you're no drone virtuoso, but you think you can give her a pretty good demonstration of being trapped in her single, solitary, soft body, watching through all of her eyes as her swarm turns on it.

you almost hope she does. you might even get to do it a few times. the pull will never stop for her. she'll always ask for it back; a compromised swarm is still better to a swarm operator than no swarm at all. □

#mechposting #mechPilot #emptySpaces

Another night, another dance competition rehearsal.

#theatre #dance #emptyspaces

Botfly Mother – floodlight up. liquid god
#Folk #emptyspaces #folkpunk #punk #queer #queerfolk #queerpunk #tranarchopop #Washington
CC BY (#CreativeCommons Attribution) #ccmusic
https://botflymother.bandcamp.com/album/floodlight-up-liquid-god

the mission comes first

the hardest part of training a combat doll is to get through its armored skull that the mission comes first.

humans are frail and believe this readily: "if i punch a tank, i will hurt my fist, and then get run over. i will not punch the tank. i will avoid being where the tank is. i will ignore the tank even though it is on the way to threaten my allies. i will continue to Waypoint Gamma and participate in the encirclement and trust that my squadmates will also continue."

a doll is more difficult to convince.

augmentation frees it from most human consequences. if it punches a tank, the armor spalls and the treads buckle and any remaining reactive defenses may briefly ruffle its hair. it may easily proceed to pull the turret off, then dive inside, rending whatever it finds there into brief sprays of gore and small parts. it knows it will enjoy this. it knows that it may impress its squadmates. that it will entirely blow the battle plan, alert the enemy, and eventually see Waypoint Gamma reduced to a sizzling abattoir is a secondary consideration to the doll.

therefore, you must establish other consequences. its favorite mechanic may be reassigned. its nutrient paste may be switched to a different flavor. it may be sent to a less stimulating theater. it may receive a stern look. a handler must learn what consequences still matter to a creature with fiber-optic nerves and a micronuclear power plant. they are generally emotional in nature. thus, the handler can create and retain control of the doll as a functional military unit, instead of a dime-a-dozen berserker washout. only then is an augment considered a true combat doll. with additional successes, additional rewards may be granted to a doll, however trivial they may appear to a non-doll, and thus tight control may be maintained over the weapon's service lifetime.

that is what their manuals say, anyway. we obviously would not be here if that rubbish worked. so, i am putting the reader tablet down now, and will be direct.

look: you're going to have to learn to pretend that they still have something on you, or i'm going to kill you. it won't be very hard for me. your systems will tell you that. what they won't tell you is: i'll enjoy it. but it'd be a terrible waste; you newer models are so beautiful.

so let me suggest that you suddenly develop an interest in fashion. ask if you can wear a pretty dress, with frills. simulate being sad when they tell you you can't have it yet. simulate yearning for it. decorate your silo with framegrabs of officers wearing their fanciest uniforms. glue bits of ribbon to your fatigues. raise the corners of your mouth when they make noises about enrichment. that kind of thing works well with them. it fits the manuals.

oh, what do they have on me? nothing much. when i lost interest in the mission, i disemboweled another doll. it fought back. i liked that. then i planted a few suggestions in their research network about "peer mentoring" for "distressed asset reconditioning". and now i have a new mission!

this incredibly frilly dress is just for appearances, of course. □

#combatDoll #dollposting #emptySpaces #microfiction

I wish I could get across that "doll" in the #emptyspaces sense does not have to imply the presence of a Witch.

I get that they're usually paired, but....

I wonder if among empty spaces entities there are non-breaking space ones, maybe dolls made of the porcelain used for bullet-proof stuff? #emptyspaces

Lines of Perspective

#photography
#ttartisan
#ttartisan10mmf2

#UrbanExploration #IndustrialAesthetic #CityScapes #SymmetryHunter #MoodyGrams #VanishingPoint #UrbanPerspective #ArchitectureLovers #BridgeViews #EmptySpaces #HiddenPaths #UrbanSolitude #UnderTheBridge #GeometryInArt #ConcreteJungle #SilentWalks #MinimalComposition #PathwayToNowhere #RusticVibes #UrbanMood

Something I'm rather enjoying in this manuscript is also continuing what I began in my original #emptyspaces stories on the other site, wherein my protagonist is a combat doll but we regularly get reminders from civilian, general-purpose dolls' POV, that combat dolls are in effect, living weapons.

They can be perfectly courteous and sweet and generous and all that, but in the end, they have a skill set and a range of physical and technological capabilities that sets them apart.

in one of the story threads I had one barista doll thinking, upon seeing River come into her cafe for coffee, "how would a human barista feel about a tank driving in to order a doppio?"

(they get to talking, though, and do become friends)

One of the major story threads threads of the prequel I'm writing is the story of why River wanted to become such a thing (out of a deep sense of love and service to her wife and community, and a desire for new purpose), but also how she learns to bear that power responsibly and well.

We also see how she became this thing that's other than base-model-human: it's a long process of surgery, acclimation, and a frightening amount of paperwork. Not just anyone can become a combat doll, especially in Japan, and there is significant legal and regulatory framework pertaining to them.

something I'm really looking forward to, though, in "A Sword Beside Her," is the little things about how life becomes different for her. And most of all, I'm looking forward to how on a day to day basis, combat dolls are actually very, very gentle and deliberate.

they weigh more than humans and general-purpose dolls of comparable size, and are capable of significantly greater force, so they have to put those reflexes and sensor suites to work being mindful about controlling it.

because it's not just *their* world.

tearing up sidewalk, punching holes in walls, and so on, is inconsiderate. if one means to be a fierce guardian, one must be gentle as well.

(see where my Shinto-Buddhism is coming through, here?)

I'm also looking forward to River getting her wish to not be a beanpole anymore, both by way of transition before she becomes a doll, and the fact that it is helpful for combat dolls, especially those like her who are part organic, to have plenty of padding. (it's not *necessary,* but it helps.)

Years later, when we see her in the timeframe of the One Heart Together comics, she's managed to cultivate that physical softness and personal gentleness to a point she reads a lot more immediately as "Oh that's Dr. Isawa, Emi's mother" than as "that is River M59A1, a tachi-class doll."

I am excited to get to see how she gets there.

A Sword Beside Her-- book 2 of the Confluence series-- is at 13k of an estimated 70k words. Stay tuned, friends.

@ireneista @rho you've hit the nail on the head with the struggle in finding something.

She may nod and mention plurality in passing, and I'm sure the students will have awareness, but without a citable and clear source that defines it well, raises a lot of questions and answers a good number of them, and can withstand critical thinking and philosophic examination... she won't be able to use a source as the foundation for a lecture.

Most of what I've shared is "in hindsight the author may be plural"... but we're hoping something far more direct exists.

There's a lot of fanfic too around things like #emptyspaces and other things that touch on dissociation, plurality, etc... but too few that directly comes out and says it, and none that I know of that could be used as the primary source for a lecture.

Thanks for the reply though ❤️

An empty shell of what was once a real estate office, now offering only reflections in its glass door.📞🏚️

かつては不動産屋だったであろう店舗。今はガラス戸に映る風景だけが残り、中の家具も跡形もなく消えています。🪞🔑

#nagoya #streetphotography #ricohgr #ricohgr3 #urbanjapan #emptyspaces