Absolutely Excellent Tags By @glacierruler YOU GET IT

Scavengers art! I imagine this one would be pretty early after Desmona joins them, before she has the armor and all that. None of them really know what they're doing yet, they're just trying to coexist as best as they can. Glass and her do a lot of the cooking around here, but Sprocket likes to help pick the ingredients. She needs her nutrition, goddamnit!

Tags and text transcript below the cut

Sprocket: It's bone broth, from an aurack. It has calcium in it.

Desmona: Oh cool. That's nice.

Sprocket: Did you know calcium is good for your bones?

Desmona: Uh, yeah.

Sprocket: That's good.

Taglist: @glacierruler

glass

The sun of Deslotair burned bright above. Stark white blended into yellow, infecting the sky around it. Rays of light stabbed the sky like burning knives, searing the air, cutting through that which crossed their path. Anything that stood in their way bled shadows, patches of darkness spreading from their touch.

The glass robot did not bleed shadows, ey did not feel the burning heat of the sun. Those deadly knives passed through eir translucent skin, shining off the machinery inside, swallowed by the burbling liquid that flowed through eir body. The tip of a spear was held low at eir side, its point gleaming.

No sun stabbed through the skin of the glass robot, but sharp gazes burned holes in eir back.

Whispers floated in the footsteps of the traveler. Suspicious words accompanied by fleeting glances trailed after the figure like wisps of smoke. The glass robot returned their glances with a blank curiosity, unbothered by the restless murmurs of discomfort. Ey simply observed, and walked.

The wooden doors of an old saloon swung open with whining creaks, announcing the presence of the traveler to those inside. Few heads turned, all new blood (the regulars were accustomed to the creaking of the doors, and to the uninteresting passerby they so often brought). Yet they started another round of whispers, and more heads turned to the glass robot, boisterous conversations morphing into a suspicious hiss at the arrival of the newcomer.

The glass robot turned eir head this way and that, returning the gazes of staring strangers with eir own gleaming eyes. Outside the eerie glow was swallowed up by the sun, but here it cast a white halo around the traveler’s face, surrounded by the gentle green glow of the vitrel  that flowed inside of em.

Ey walked.

The glass thudded against wooden floors, steps going unbroken as the small crowd parted to make room for the traveler. Ey nodded eir appreciation, and approached the bar. The bartender stood up straight. The robot she had been talking to, sitting on one of the hourglass stools with an untouched drink in front of him, remained perfectly still.

“Well,” the bartender started. She set down the empty glass she had been holding, put it upside down on the counter so its rim kissed the wood and left a ring of moisture. “What can I get ya?”

“Nothing to drink, thank you.” The glass robot spoke with eir hands, the fluid inside of them twisting and shifting with each movement.

The bartender eyed em warily. “Uh, sorry, I don’t know what you’re sayin’...”

“Nothing to drink, thank you.” The glass robot repeated the same motions as before, only slower, hands making clear arcs through the air.

“Ey doesn’t want anything,” the robot spoke up, nodding to the bartender before turning to address the glass bot. His eyes glowed a faint blue, piercingly contrasted with the hazy brown light that filtered through dirty glass bulbs above them. Tubes curled around him, jutting out from the fabric of his vest and wrapping around his joints. “What are you here for, then, if not a drink?”

Saloon

Glass and Sprocket's first meeting, way back when. Added a couple of ports for Sprocket's tubing to flow through, which makes a hell of a lot more sense than them just kind of sticking out at his joints or junctures in the plating. Better for consistency's sake too.

Tags: @glacierruler

"Deslocar? Have I heard of it? Yeah of course I've heard of it, it's the planet over for fuck's sake. Have I been? Ha! Do you think I'd be standing here if I had?"

Deslocar - The desert planet misfit of its system. Ravaged by dust storms and pockmarked with pits and craters, Deslocar sits apart from its more hospitable neighbors.

The harsh weather of the planet and high winds of its upper atmosphere provide harsh conditions to any ships attempting to cross the border into space- whether they plan to enter, or are trying to leave. This has created a planet left behind, a world scavenging the broken vessels from the outside world, and trying to put together technology decades behind the rest of the system.

The craters of Deslocar are a relic from a younger, less stable universe, but they have refused to spend all that time sitting idle. Meteorites have cracked open the ground, and they bring Deslocar's contents flowing forth, trickling up from the dusty soil...

As someone who is trying to write their own story, I'm so happy that there are author's out there who have written books with disabled rep, who have written books with queer rep. Because I am both of those things, and it really helps to know that mine won't be the only one like it.

Okay I fixed all the old Deslotair posts so now you can ACTUALLY scroll through the #planet deslotair tag to find them. Shoutout to good blog organization and all that

The more I write Deslotair stuff, the more I inevitably have to figure out things like themes. Robot media is cool to me in large part because it can get into some really cool themes, and how really every story about robots is still a story about humanity, in some way. Really every story is about humanity, in some way.

And when writing robots, the most obvious question to ask is "What makes us human? When you strip so much away, is what remains a person?" Which is a GOOD question that so many people have done VERY good things with, but I think the main question I would like to answer is:

"In a world where robots exist in such a capacity, why is humanity still the deciding factor?"

Why are we asking the initial question? Who stands to gain from drawing the lines in the sand? And what does that say about society today, about who gets dehumanized and who gets to stay? What happens to them?!

1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice shows a Pioneer probe using the gravity of Jupiter to slingshot its way to the outer planets.

My latest cartoon for New Scientist.

Lineart for what will eventually be a painting of my latest DnD character, Xylem!

Xylem is a wooden robot traveling through a post-apocalyptic, mushroom filled landscape. As they go from town to town, they write down what they see, interview locals, and record the story of a world living in the shadow of what it once was. She's accompanied by a weevil friend, Phloem, who has decided she's close enough to a tree, and bores holes in her outer casing to reside inside.

DMed by the great @glacierruler :)

OCtober Bingo: Multilingual

“Come here,” Glass signed.

Sprocket shifted forwards, sand sliding over and into his joints, tubes bending to follow the movement. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, hands folded in his lap. Opposite him, Glass kneeled in the sands.

The mid-morning sun fell through eir body, refracting and splitting through the glass, shining brilliantly on pieces of metal and bulbs of green liquid before falling onto Sprocket. It would be warm, if either of them had the skin to feel it.

(Natural heat was lost to Sprocket in the storm of his own whirring processors and grinding motors. He just had the vague impressions offered to him by an internal thermometer ticking up or down: 42.3°C.

He’d once asked Glass if ey could feel warmth, could feel the sun beating down on them.

Ey said it felt like life, which sounded very different from 42.3°C.)

Glass pressed eir palm against Sprocket’s chest, warping the way the light fell, and hummed three notes.

They slid together like the gradient of a sunset, each higher than the last. They sat somewhere in the middle of Glass’s vast spectrum of sound, a neutral sort of tone that shook around in Sprocket’s chest but didn’t quite stay there. He raised a hand from his lap to grab onto Glass’s forearm, fingers clinking into place. Another point of connection, without the leather of Sprocket’s vest separating them.

“Go again,” he said.

The same three notes played. Sprocket could feel the vibrations humming against his sensors, sound washing through him. It brushed over those parts of him designed only to detect pain, to alert to problems, gently passing by without alarm.

The sweeping rise in pitch felt whole in some way, complete. Someone with more musical knowledge than him, with more knowledge of the language Glass was trying to speak to him, could have had the right words to describe it. Sprocket had neither of those things, so all he had to offer was-

“It sounds nice. What does it mean?”

Glass nodded. Ey pulled eir hand away from his chest, and Sprocket followed suit, disengaging.

“It’s supposed to sound nice,” ey signed. “It means ‘to give comfort.’ We have many words like this, that represent concepts, that can be used in many different ways as long as the emotion is there.”

Those bulbs of liquid rolled around in Glass’s chest, occasionally colliding with each other to become one, other times clinging to the clear walls surrounding them. A pool of it splashed in eir head, right behind the pair of white, glowing eyes that watched Sprocket intently, making sure he understood. Glass continued.

“It means ‘it’s okay.’ It means ‘it’s alright.’ It means ‘it’s over.’ It means ‘I’m here.’ It means whatever it needs to mean.”

“And does it… work? Do you feel comforted by it?”

“Of course. That association has been well-established for me. The same will be true for you, eventually.”

Glass hummed the notes again. Ey nodded at him to do the same.

Sprocket took a moment to find the first pitch, letting it hum in his speaker before he climbed to the next, and then the next.

Glass tilted eir head at him. “You’re climbing stairs.”

“What?”

“When you move from one syllable to the next, you find in betweens and jump to them, instead of sliding up the scale. Here, try it with me.”

Ey reached out, pressing a hand against his chest, the globs of liquid in eir fingers twisting and reforming. Sprocket reached back, grabbing onto eir arm. The tubing that coiled loosely around him flexed and shifted, filled with that same blood.

Glass held the first note, leading the way for him to follow. Sprocket could hear the vibrations, could feel them thrumming in his veins of tubes, buzzing where cheers of metal met each other. The sound rattled discontentedly while he tried to find the right note, warping and grating until it fell into place.

Glass raised eir pitch, and Sprocket clumsily followed em up the scale, resting together at the three notes along their journey. When Glss nodded, Sprocket already knew what ey meant, and they starting over, and he led the charge.

They traded off like that several times, taking turns to find the right notes to play, each time getting closer to each other’s rhythm. Until the need ceased for a lead at all, and Sprocket and Glass spoke as one.

Liquid danced in Glass’s body, bulbs of it twisting in eir chest, all surrounded by singing glass.

Sprocket’s metal sang, carrying waves of sound. Gentle hands, not ones that poked or prodded, cupped his sensors, pressed against his vest.

They reached what Sprocket knew would be their final iteration and grew silent together, the last of the sound fading out of reach. Only when every last bit of it was gone, when Sprocket couldn’t possibly feel it, did Glass pull away. Sprocket’s hands fell into his lap.

“Like that,” ey signed.

“Thank you,” Sprocket responded. “I understand.”

@glacierruler

Another square down! I actually wrote this story a while back, it was one of the first things that went into my Deslotair notebook. Just some thoughts on the glass bot language and how we can communicate even when we're so different. Languages are very important to Glass (ey used to be a translator) so this was a really good prompt for em!