#reading machine

[scatterbrainedbot]

cass, a professional: order of badass donbot, extra dramatic entrance!

me, nodding, banned from most kitchens: leo drama and angst, heard chef!

(shoutout to @somerandomdudelmao for yet again making feel emotions i cannot fully explain)

#my art #cass apocalyptic series #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #future leo #future donnie #this is super rough and sketchy cos dude i RAN after reading that update #spectacular donbot design of course #but also #bro this circular timetravel shit has got me Feeling Emotions #like #leo stood in that room and wept and BEGGED for some echo of his brother #some proof that even in death #he wouldnt leave them alone #that he was as unwilling to fade from them as they were to let him go #the man had failsafes for failsafes on top of failsafes #plans ontop of plans; surely hed planned something for this? #and heres the thing #donnie did #he built this machine #to house his spirit and allow him to be with his family #but when leo asked for it #the room was already empty #idk its really hard to articulate #you can fix the past but the past still happened #you relieved the grief but you still had to go through it #schrodiners cat but sadder #he is dead and alive all at once but always gone from you #donnie will never be there (with you then) because he has always been here (with you now) #IDK BRO TIME TRAVEL MAKES FOR FUN CIRCULAR LOOPS

[stil-lindigo]

the machine.

a comic about being a 'creator' online.

creative notes:

#in light of recent online 'success' i feel like this may come off as ungrateful #just wanna say that all the comics i make in this series are written about experiences i felt in 2022 #which was a rough year personally and creatively #and i very luckily don't feel this way anymore #and this also isnt to shame anyone who DOES feel this way #its easy to start to feel like all you are is a vending machine of art #and like thats all you are to people #theres nothing human to you #it can be a bit of a pit #and on some level this damage is self inflicted but social media really doesnt help that feeling #this wont work for everyone but having friends around you who you can talk to about stuff that ISNT art #going outside for dinner #maybe walking around #its good for when you need that feeling to go away even a bit temporarily #youre a human being #not a mindless content creation machine #and i hope anyone who feels like this now can get to a place where they have a healthier relationship with their own work #good luck to all of you #and thank you for reading #comic art #its 10pm #stillindigo art

[eyenaku]

FOOL MASK (GITM BY @venomous-qwille)

Handbuilt porcelain with slip, overglaze, glaze, and gold lustre accents. Paint and lacquer detailing added post fire. Handsewn fool's cap and bells added post fire.

This mask is a part of a (loosely connected) mask series, all hand-built and fired using a range of different temperatures and techniques.

My favourite mask to date, Fool from Ghost in the Machine by the wonderful @venomous-qwille !! GITM is absolutely incredible and I cannot put into words eloquently how much I adore it and Fool so instead I made this mask! Hi!

My word was this mask a struggle to make. The mask itself is entirely one piece, and entirely porcelain!! That's right, those long thin rays are solid porcelain!! The eyes and tips of the blades are done in 22 carat gold lustre. All colouring save for the black and the satin sections of darker red on the face were done with only slips and underglazes. The red colour was correct without the paint, but I thought a contrast from the rest of the gloss would look nice :)

Made to scale, the mask measures 50.8x60.96cm without the hat, and 50.8x116.84cm with it! (20x24in without hat, 20x46in including hat). He is Large, but turned out absolutely lovely and I send my many many thanks to the kiln gods for producing him unscathed.

(naku & wall for scale)

(he's so big guys i have large walls (the top of my head is only slightly above the top of the bookcase beneath him) look at him at the wall it's nuts)

#eyenaku #proudnaku #seriously so proud of this naku please interact with this my magnum opus of porcelain i hate porcelain but i love fool #my prof. encouraged me to make THE REST OF FOOL?? LIKE HIS BODY?? thats so much. i'm not gonna but that was a funny thing to experience #ANYWAYS HI QWILLE IF YOU'RE READING THIS THE TAGS!! #fool is such a guy #thas all! love ur stuff btw #art #pottery #ceramics #mask #masks #decorative masks #porcelain #fool #fool gitm #fool ghost in the machine #ghost in the machine au #fool eclipse #ghost in the machine #gitm au #gitm fool #eyenaku masks #hehe happy fool day #I think the funniest part of making him was the tactical smooch I had to make to save his face it’s a whole thing #clip next.

[thepotentialof2007]

I can see how it warps the mind, the perception of the world and our place in it. Power is enticing. Like Lewis Hamilton? You can eat steaks that cost the same as your electricity bill and meet him again. You, too, can bask in the balding aura of Prince Harry and the fake glow of Instagram models. Any wealth and status you lack, you can perform. What I received wasn't a crash course in Formula 1—in fact, Formula 1 only became more mystifying to me—but journalism, as viewed by the other side. The great irony of the other side is that they need journalism. The petrochemical companies, deeply powerful institutions, need journalists to write about all the things they attach themselves to that are not being a petrochemical company. Formula 1, on a rapacious tangent for growth and new markets, needs journalists to spread the good word of the richest sport in the world. Unfortunately for the other side, journalism still remains a double-edged sword.

This article by Kate Wagner, published on 1 Mar 2024, was removed from Road & Track later that same day. Link goes to archived copy.

#f1 #sponsors #motorsport journalism #kate wagner #she did indeed like lewis #long read #behind the scenes #women in motorsport #wayback machine #new york magazine described this piece #as having been aggressively disappeared

[truly-sincerely]

Obsessively reading everything in game by and about Gortash and the dude is

On a philosophical trajectory that ends in immortality thru technology / the machine

Doesn't have an original bone in his body, but he can backwards engineer anything

Halfway to being a decent scientist but doesn't have the education and is deeply impatient

Overconfident in the veracity of his own results and conclusions

Accurately predicted that the brain would metamorphose and become more difficult to control and then did nothing about it

Outsources his propaganda / arts and humanities

Charming, but he got there in a Pavlovian way (learned from trial and error and probably doesn't consciously know how he does it)

Vindictive af (learned / reinforced)

Darwinian (in the worst way)

Sociopathic, obviously, but extremely Rationalist about it

Never asks questions he doesn't know the answer to and probably thinks this makes him sound more authoritative

Completely incompetent as a strategist (but doesn't know it)

Not nearly as narcissistic / full of himself as he pretends to be

Thinks what he wants is praise but it's never enough because it's not actually what he wants (he wants to be wanted)

Bane makes him feel wanted (conditionally)

Durge made him feel wanted (unconditionally)

Understands intellectually that Durge got ambushed, but he feels abandoned

See also: thematic parallels between Gortash and

Silouv Yali (the Adamantine Forge & the construct Grym)

Oliver (in the shadow-cursed lands)

Astarion and Gale, obviously

#bg3 #Gortash #bg3 gortash #Enver Gortash #bg3 spoilers #'The Ultimate State' reads like it was written in reaction to Durge's disappearance #Yeah if everyone's tadpoled nobody will be able to abandon you ever again #Durge's job was to do murders in Baldur's Gate #but their REAL job was to tell Gortash not to keep the brains of all of his mechanical soldiers in one location #Oliver thought Thaniel abandoned him so Oliver created new friends to play with *eyebrow waggle* #This man wants to abandon the flesh for the machine so bad #He is in for a bad time no matter what #Awfully obsessed with control for someone who has absolutely no control over his current situation #I do not think that word means what you think it means #Absolute moron (affectionate)

[yourlocalcorviddad]

Ok Ok so.

In dpxdc stories. Danny always gets assumed to be sick or uses it as an excuse or whatever to hide his powers right?

What if he wasn't lying?

It wasn't something easily noticed, not when half a dozen other things could explain it after all.

The shakes lingering? Well he'd used his ice powers a lot the night before fighting Skulker.

The faint feeling and lightheadedness? Well his mom had a good shot when people didn't interfere, and while he healed fast, it wasn't from nothing; he felt better after he ate anyway.

Heart racing suddenly? Probably just attempting to regulate the low beat on reflex again to seem normal but over shot it.

But the getting out of breath or spotty vision hadn't really been easily explained.

It was Mr. Lancer who asked about it after he'd gotten up from his seat in detention-happening less and less for actual reasons and more an opportunity to safely do his work and rest, after the truce with the ghosts to leave him and the town be during certain hours-only for the next thing he knew he was on the floor, head pillowed on Mr. Lancer's sweater, and a cool wet paper towel on his forehead and neck.

POTS. Post orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Not uncommon for those who had had injuries too their hearts to get.

It made sense when the teacher asked if he could have it. Apparently a friend of his's daughter had it.

From there, it made things easier to an extent. Salt was pretty easy to add, he figured out a wrist brace that he could extend into a cane if needed to.

In ghost form he didn't need it at all, but human form had its limits.

Despite all that he'd gone through, he graduates and even gets accepted to a college near jazz, hers was in Metropolis but Gotham had the ambient ectoplasm that he needed, and it was a day trip away.

And so Gotham U became his home, especially after his parents couldn't take that he wasn't "their son" anymore when he told them-after moving everything and getting his cheap apartment set up just in case. He considered it lucky that they loved their son enough they couldn't hunt "his ghost".

Last he'd heard they were working closer with the GIW but hadn't had much luck since the portal strangely closed soon after he left and the other ghosts didn't feel much reason to visit Amity anymore without him there.

It was Gotham U where he met Dick by literally fainting into his arms after a long day where he'd forgotten to eat and the early dinner the night before plus the going down the stairs at a quick pace and leaning forward with gravity.

"sorry, couldn't help falling for you~" the cheesy pick up line was the only thing his foggy brain could comprehend before he fainted.

#dpxdc #me giving Danny my own conditions cause i can? #more likely than you think! #but it can cause a lot of the same issues he has from being half ghost. heart rate can be really slow sometimes #bp can be really low heck I've read as dead on machines before lol #and other stuff #in phantom form it doesn't actually go away #it just gets healed fast enough that he doesn't notice #he deserves a bit of a break in it I'm not heartless #death defying

[kyoshi-lesbians]

sometimes I think about how my possibly favorite atla fanfic is from 2006

#you gotta be logged into an ao3 account to read it tho #if anyone's really interested try using the wayback machine #there's a lot of info you can get (& sometime paywalls or login) you can get around) w/ that tool

[bamsara]

The amount of b-grade/miscut/misprint stickers I get when making batches is goofy

What's in my hand is usable and can be sent out, the boxes behind it are all ones with imperfections/ damage but can't bring myself to throw away because it feels like I'm being wasteful. I might make 'scrap baggies' for each fandom and offer them on kofi for like 7-10 stickers for the price of one or something again

#sara shush #sticker stuff #on the up note i switched paper type and it has a better time reading the lines #but all my machine mats are lowkey destroyed and unusable because of use and cutting damage #none of them are sticky ive been using scotch tape to put the page on there #ordered some more #still deciding between manufacturers

[leehallfae]

“i think there’s something about being a young woman that feels very murderous. that’s what i was trying to get with a song like ‘dream girl evil.’ it can be dangerous for people to think you’re incredibly nice. when you get, ‘you’re an angel,’ that seems like such a high place to fall from. when i see messy or violent or terribly behaved women, especially young women, there’s a liberation. to not have to try and survive by being good.”

— florence welch on her song “dream girl evil”

#florence welch #florence + the machine #florence #quote #womanhood #girlhood #my reading #mirrors #dream girl evil #dance fever #greatest hits #gender #fatm

[logicpng]

i have um. caved and read a fanfic for once. hi

ghost in the machine / soleil are @venomous-qwille's

[Image Description in ALT]

#fnaf #dca #fnaf dca #dca au #fnaf daycare attendant #fnaf sun #fnaf sundrop #gitm au #ghost in the machine au #soleil gitm #the funniest thing is shortly after reading the fic i had to actually find out what it's like to get your arm squeezed uncomfortably hard #repeatedly. almost 90 times. for blood pressure measurments. for 24 hours #my arm is also bruising goddammit. crushing my dang limb and for what #why do of all the characters i ended up liking the one who's actually kind of a dick.................. #eye contact #tw eye contact #eye contact tw

[skizabaa]

Magma Doodles of Ghost in the Machine! AU by the wonderful @venomous-qwille <3

#skizabaa scribbles #gitm au #fnaf daycare attendant #ghost in the machine au #ruin eclipse #eclipse fnaf #sundrop #others ocs #friends ocs #im not entirely sure what to tag for these haha! but go read qwilles amazing fic <3 so many lovely characters and excellent writing #qwille puts so much work into this au! its so inspiring to see!! #dca fandom #fnaf sun #sunspot mk1

[brother-emperors]

revisiting crassus, clodius, and the bona dea scandal! but this time with a new composition and a limited color palette

originally when I drew the first version of this idea, it was back when I thought that crassus would be a week long fixation at most (lmao), and instead he just. took up permanent residence in my mind. it seemed like a fun thing to go back to an earlier idea and see what changed now that I've spent a lot more time with everyone involved in this era!

also the way these two interlocked politically. I am. biting into it.

The Defeat of Rome: Crassus, Carrhae and the Invasion of the East, Gareth C. Sampson

Crassus: the First Tycoon, Peter Stothard

Crassus: A Political Biography, B. A. Marshall

Crassus, Clodius, and Curio in the Year 59 B.C., Robert J Rowland, Jr.

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost

#for example. i even know who catulus and caelius are now. i did Not know who the fuck they were when i drew the original one #now im like. wow. those sure were some allegations. goddamn #i forgot that ive drawn crassus and clodius fucking before. i'll revisit that someday. ANYWAY. time for some organizational tags #marcus licinius crassus #publius clodius pulcher #roman republic tag #do i. have a tag for the bona dea scandal. i should #drawing tag #ALSO the first tycoon book. it's not a good reference point. i disagree with uhhh like a good third of it. BUT it is an EXTREMELY sexy #read. i would love an HBO show using this book as a point of inspiration. im not kidding. id watch it so fast #i was reading something that implied clodius role in the bona dea scandal was actually partially crassus' machinations #to undermine both caesar AND pompey. and once i finish digesting THAT thought. i will. draw a comic probably

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

#squiggposting #pharma apologism #i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain #so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash #i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent #what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving #is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt #and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists #so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character #so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of #'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him' #but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid #and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like #the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of #being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths #then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part #and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts #and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine #this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer #and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like #how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil #and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit #like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma #but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel #and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple #bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed #but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal

[darkfire359]

#blackhands #lonelyeyes #izzy hands #edward teach #edward teach x izzy hands #elias bouchard #peter lukas #scorptra #kind of #jonelias #I suppose scorptra and jonelias aren't divorcecore though #jayvik #specifically the LoL kind after Viktor becomes the Machine Herald #actually I wouldn't call them a toxic dumpster-fire even if they're divorcecore #blackbonnet and jonmartin and catradora and violyn are perfectly good though and I read them sometimes #they just aren't my favs #I do think 'healthy' is an overstatement for the canon ships #But I think they're probably 'healthier' at least

[otrtbs]

this isn't gonna make a lick of sense if you haven't seen the tiktok of the girl talking about the hunger games fanfiction she read where a tribute gets gifted a machine gun but i'm sorry .... i'm rocking with fanfiction that's "implausible" like, wdym??? wdym a tribute with a machine gun makes you want to quit the story because it took you out of the fanfic???? it's just getting good bro. strap in. things are about to go wild in that arena. "it's not believable :( " if i wanted believable i'd read the actual published book. go ahead and throw renee rapp into the arena while we're at it, i wanna see where this goes.

#to me in essence this is the point of fanfiction #i know i talk about this all the time but like i genuinely don't understand #i thought it was common consensus that fanfic was just wack as hell like that #for fun reasons..... because.... yk. ... it's fanfic #honestly sometimes i think this is why no one is embarrassed anymore to admit they read fanfiction these days. they just go on tiktok #with their whole name and face and say 'i was reading this one piece fanfiction...' #and they're okay doing that bc they're not reading fanfic where people just whip out machine guns anymore... like god. is nothing sacred??? #nat speaks

[spiritunwilling]

ROBOT LIAISON

Cyborg (Wikipedia) / our lady of the flayed motherboard (techscore) / CYBERSEX IS HOLY / (meanb0ne) / Turing Test (Fiona Lu) / ATLAS Detector (CERN) / Rick Deckard Comes Home (Kanami Ayau) / ANDROID TOP SURGERY (0) (spiritunwilling) / Mini Gender Changer / fucked up toilet (ohmrbandy) / (impossible.realities) / Android (Wikipedia) / Anna May Wong Stars as Cyborg #86 (Sally Wen Mao) / Silicon Cities, 2017 (Heiko Hellwig)

#web weaving #robots #many of these are from my s: machines tag #ur gonna have to zoom in to read some of these. dorry #super super super fond of the atlas detector + rick deckard comes home part #ON ME IT PASSES RIGHT THROUGH!