#mechanukkah

[j4gm]

Mechanukkah night 3: BURN-E

The third night of @simplyender​‘s Hanukkah robot movie watch party, and today we watched what is unarguably the best Pixar movie about a robot: that’s right, we’re talking about BURN-E.

BURN-E is a harrowing tale about the unending pressures that life puts on our shoulders. It has a lot to say about the state of the world, conveying stark messages about work-life balance, abandonment, and climate change.

In the film, the titular BURN-E is tasked with replacing a broken running light on the hull of the starship Axiom after it gets broken off by some unimportant incidental characters. We see his subordination to SUPPLY-R, his sassy boss who won’t see past the unavoidable mistakes that cause BURN-E to lose the replacement lights twice. The imagery of BURN-E travelling through the perfectly shaped tunnels at high speed is an obvious metaphor for the dehumanisation of workers within a company where they are treated as parts of a machine rather than individual people. This is compounded by BURN-E’s abandonment by the ship after he is locked out, reflecting that even the hardest worker cannot expect fair treatment or payment under capitalism.

The movie ends with BURN-E’s realisation after the ship lands back on Earth (i.e. post-revolution) that the work he was doing was actually not relevant to the greater goals of society.

Overall a very powerful film, definitely my favourite Pixar flick, would highly recommend.

On the BURN-E disk there was this obscure DVD extra called WALL-E which we watched as well. It was okay. It expands upon the incidental characters from BURN-E. Ender made a genius edit to the movie and you can watch our reaction to that here.

Mechanukkah word of the day: strangers (to love)

#mechanukkah #wall-e

[simplyender]

Hi there! I'm the creator and host of Mechanukkah, and I'll be taking the wheel from the ever-beloved @j4gm to review the last two movies of this years event, so, without further ado...

Mechanukkah night 8 (Part 1): The Mitchells VS The Machines

[Pictured: The Mitchells dog, Monchi, a fat pug, sitting on a kitchen floor with a latke edited on to his head. His eyes are facing in opposite directions, and his tongue is hanging out of his mouth.]

Night 8 of my Chanukkah robot movie watch party! Full stops: This is my favorite movie ever. Don't expect a fair review. Fun fact: we pick the movies we watch each year through a vote, and if TMVTM wasn't picked before night 8 i was going to rig the poll to make it the only option available If you haven't seen The Mitchells VS The Machines yet, then WHAT ARE YOU DOING????? GO WATCH IT NOW!! This movie is a total spectacle of animation, endless treats for the eyes with hundreds of background details for you to notice every time you rewatch(I should know, I've seen the movie around 18 times at this point, and I STILL find new things in it!), they even invented a bunch of new animation tools for the movie, resulting in it very rightfully earning several awards for animation that year. That's how good it is. Mitchells Sweep, Babey! It actually lost the Oscars to Encanto but that doesn't count. The only issue I can see with the animation is the abundance of flashing lights, most notably around the beginning of the movie, where the robots begin their uprising. Luckily, Netflix has a warning for it, but just a heads-up, this movie is not epilepsy-friendly.

The Mitchells VS The Machines is a movie which takes place in an alternate version of 2020, with a much more preferable disaster in the form of a machine uprising, juxtaposed with a story about a strained relationship between a father and daughter, those being Katie Mitchell, the quirky, explicitly gay film student(Those are basically the same thing, I say as a canonically gay editor), and her dad, Rick Mitchell(The Daddest Dad to ever Dad), a tech-illiterate outdoorsman. Their main sources of conflict comes from Ricks issues with really...Understanding Katie and her interests, and his fear that she won't be able to make a living off of creating films (He's cool with her being a Lesbian though, so he gets a Good Dad Point for that). He essentially projects the pain of his own failure to make his dream come true in the past on to her, as he doesn't want her to get hurt like he did. Meanwhile, Katie just...Can't understand her dad in general, his failure to communicate resulting in her thinking that he just assumes that no matter what, she's just going to fail, expanding the rift between them. Katie get into a college to learn film making, and she is VERY excited to leave home, potentially forever, but on the night before her departure, she enters an argument with her dad, which ends in her laptop accidentally being broken. Ricks wife, the loving, supportive, and totally badass Linda, actually talk to eachother like a functional couple, and she convinces him to try to fix his relationship with Katie before he pushes her away forever. Unfortunately, this results in Rick making the reckless decision to...Cancel her flight ticket to college so that they can go on a "fun" family road trip from their home in Michigan to California. Katie is reasonably, not happy about this, but her mom manages to convince her to "meet her dad halfway", and she actually does manage to have some fun. Even though...Yeah, what Rick did was kind of shitty.

Something that does help this fact though is that the movie makes sure to show both sides of the argument, clarifying time and time again that Rick loves Katie, even if he doesn't get her. Which makes it all the more rewarding as we see them getting closer throughout the movie, culminating in Rick learning to "speak Katies language" and entirely support her ambitions, while Katie comes to understand her dads perspective, mending their relationship like the daddy-issues-wish-fulfillment this movie truly is.

All in all, this movie does an excellent job with family dynamics, featuring groundbreaking concepts such as siblings in a piece of media actually liking eachother, and a dad learning to understand his daughter and support her through and through, and everybody, and I mean everybody in the family displaying traits of being on the autism spectrum, most notably Katies 8 year old brother, Aaron, and his special interest in dinosaurs, which is not only never mocked in the movie, but outright encouraged by the entire family, which is actually one of the things that kicks off their world-saving crusade towards Silicon Valley by bringing them to a dinosaur themed truck stop where they avoid getting captured by the robots, who plan on shoving every single human being into 7 rockets across the globe so that they can all be sent to space, where they're probably gonna die(but hey, at least they've got free wifi). This, and the familys general dysfunction also results in them meeting two malfunctioning robots, who I'm sure many would argue are the real stars of the film, Eric and Deborahbot5000, and they end up getting adopted into the family. Yay!

One of the greatest merits of this movie, in my opinion, is how it manages to avoid the "HURR DURR TECHNOLOGY BAD" message that a lot of movies with these types of concepts tend to display, instead presenting a nuanced take on how it can be used for good and bad, and that, ultimately, theres nothing wrong with technology, just how it's used. An example of such being how Katie uses it to make friends and create awesome videos(Good), and how Rick learns to use it to connect to his daughter(Good! He also manages to humanize the two bot bros like...Immediately.) Meanwhile, Pal Labs, a megacorporation, uses it to steal peoples information (bad), and create a hyper-intelligent AI that can experience the trauma of being betrayed by what is essentially her father figure, which makes her snap and start that whole "Genocide and world domination" thing(Very bad). I think that something Western movies tend to do is promote this idea that you have to do everything alone, that real success comes from individuality, while TMVTM argues the point that what really matters is working together, and finding people you can be weird with, which is a really charming message.

So I guess overall, the messages of this movie can be summarized as: Technology Good, Corporations Bad. Working Together Good. Being weird, also good. Family good. Pugs are abominations, and adopting robots is excellent and may even save your life from a giant murderous furby! Also the soundtrack was done by Mark Mothersbaugh, lead singer of DEVO. He actually got away with naming one of the tracks for the movie "Linda Kicks Ass", which is obviously a banger. The entire soundtrack is, TBH.

God I love DEVO and The Mitchells VS The Machines. I love them so so much. Mechanukkah word of the day: Cinema!

[part 2]

#mechanukkah #the mitchells vs the machines #tmvtm #long post #REALLY long post #practically word soup! i got very excited

[thesouppond]

What is Gen:Lock Re:Loaded?

Hi!!! I'm so glad you're here! Gen:Lock Re:Loaded, or GL:RL, is a fan made webcomic project based on the 2019 animated show Gen:LOCK. It follows the adventures of our favourite mech pilots a year after the events of the season 1 finale as the Vanguard continue their fight against the Union. As this is a fanmade project, GL:RL has no association with RT, HBO or WB.

The Continuity

The main story of GL:RL takes place in 2073, about a year after the battle of Chicago in the season 1 finale. It takes into account the events of Season 1 and the Storm Warning novel. The DC comics are considered mostly non-canonic. If you will, the team did a mission in Japan, stayed with Kazu's folks for fun, kicked union ass, and came home. The Sycorax plot will not be relevant.

Season 2 will not be acknowledged in any capacity.

The Team

It's just me! :) I'm Aleth, and I'm the writer, artist and creator behind this project.

Special thanks to my beta reader Ender, the lovely people on the Gen:LOCK and Mechanukkah discords for adopting me despite being 4 years late to the hyperfixation and my amazing mutuals who have been here since the start.

Navigation

Start Here

Most Recent

Prologues:

Home | Safe Spaces | New Years | Catching The Past

FAQS

Do I need to read Storm Warning / the DC comics for this?

While I absolutely encourage you to read the novel and DC comics run, purely because I think they're awesome, if you've seen Season 1 of Gen:LOCK, you'll have all the context needed to enjoy GL:RL as is. You might just miss a couple easter eggs.

What software/materials are you using?

I'm using Medibang Paint, both the desktop and android versions. All my screentones come from their library. In terms of hardware, I'm using a Wacom Intuos Draw with my laptop (I'm pretty sure this tablet's been discontinued, mine's at least 6 years old) and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 with the S pen. For poses and setting references, I mainly use JustSketchMe.

Google Doc of other assets :)

When will the next part be out?

I'm in the process of fostering a healthy relationship with my art :) So I won't be pressuring myself to follow a strict schedule with releases. BUT I do pretty much work on this almost daily, and if I can, I'll have them out monthly. Watch this space :))

(FAQS will be updated as we go :) )

#pond soup #gl:pond #genlock reloaded

[todayinfiction]

TODAY IN FICTION: A robot tries to navigate the complexities of emotional pain in Isaac Asimov’s “Liar!” (🇺🇸1941)

Unspecified date, 2021

Asimov’s now-famous three laws of robotics are as follows:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In 2021, a strange mathematical fault during assembly leaves a robot named Herbie with the ability to read minds. While trying to track down the fault, the researchers at the facility each interview Herbie to see what he knows of the fault. Of course, thanks to the Second Law, Herbie is programmed to answer every question truthfully.

The researchers take advantage of his mind-reading abilities to secretly learn about their colleagues; one learns that he will soon become director of the plant because his boss is retiring. Another learns that the crush she has on a fellow researcher is in fact mutual. But in a series of dramatic reveals, it soon turns out that neither of these assertions are true.

The ability to read minds gave Herbie the capacity to understand emotional pain, and led him to the conclusion that emotional pain was in violation of the First Law. So rather than telling the painful truth, Herbie preferred to tell the researchers exactly what they wanted to hear. Lies.

Liar! was first published in 1941, but it is better known for being a chapter in Asimov’s famous 1950 novel I, Robot, which was when it was retconned to take place in the year 2021. This short story was well ahead of its time for its depiction of artificial intelligence, and is responsible for inventing the word “robotics”, which is now the real-life name for the study and development of robots.

#today in fiction #isaac asimov #i robot #liar #happy mechanukkah #robots #ai

[j4gm]

Mechanukkah 2023 night 1: The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Welcome to the 2023 edition of @simplyender's annual robot watch party. I need to be on a train to Belgium at 7:30 tomorrow morning so I should probably be sleeping instead of writing this right now but whagever (⌐■_■)

TMVTM is one of Ender's favourite movies. It's a staple of this marathon every year and I'm pretty sure they watch it at least once per month in the interim. I missed it last year, though I have seen the movie once before so I don't think anyone on the call was watching for the first time.

I think that wait hold the fuckin phone we're watching the credits right now who the fuck was Griffin McElroy in this??? What? Okay Reddit says he was a fridge or something. That'll be something to try and spot next year. Anyway like I was saying I think that there are few animated movies where as much pure passion and energy has been poured into the animation, which is elevated by its stylistic choices and the KatieVision™ overlays with their adorable traditional animation and puppetry. It's a gorgeous watch and I wish I'd seen it on a cinema screen.

The humour is fun even if it's very predictable. With hindsight I am quite glad this movie didn't come out a year or two later because you just know there would have been an inescapable quantity of jokes about NFTs and ChatGPT. Though the absence of those jokes actually dates the movie in a way. The curse of making a comedy about technology is that technology changes fast. It's kind of remarkably lucky that Twitter isn't mentioned a single time as far as I remember.

Shoutout to the lady at the charity shop I work in who bought a "Connected" branded bookbag the other day, which is what Mitchells was called until it was renamed shortly before release. I formally apologise to Ender for not wrestling it off the customer and mailing it over to them, so scarce is Mitchells merch.

Mechanukkah word of the day: FURBY

#tmvtm #mechanukkah

[j4gm]

Mechanukkah night 1: I, Robot (2004)

It’s that time of year where my friends invite me to come and watch robot movies during Hanukkah. Our first vote was for I, Robot (2004), the 100% book-accurate adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s groundbreaking 1950 fixup novel.

For those of you unfamiliar with Asimov, he was writing about robotics and accurately predicting many of our modern ethical and practical concerns about artificial intelligence while everyone else was still busy inventing new ways to kill people during World War Two. In fact, one of the short stories which became a chapter in I, Robot, titled “Liar”, features the original inception of the word “robotics”, which had never been used before then. I’ve written about Liar before. Asimov also identified as a secular Jew, which makes a spin-off of his work a cool way to kick off this watch party.

Unfortunately just about the only feature consistent with the book is the name of the robotics expert Susan Calvin, who mostly gets sidelined into being a love interest and plot device for us to learn more about Will Smith’s character, an action hero cop OC called Spooner. He was given a bizarre and ham-fisted robot-hating arc which was seemingly supposed to be a racism parallel. The conclusion of the arc was that his racism was good actually because it meant he was able to solve the murder case that kicked off the whole plot. Needless to say it was not well executed.

The CGI remains okay for a film from 2004. The car tunnel scene and the climactic final battle were undeniably cool even though the latter had so much crazy camera movement it felt like a Universal Studios 4D experience at times.

As a computer scientist I’m not going to delve into all the reasons why the film’s plot is bullshit because we could be here a long time. It’s supposed to be bullshit. It’s an action movie first and foremost. I just wish it could have been a bullshit action movie without contradicting the core ideals of Asimov’s work, which included stiff resistance to the idea that robots always have to be these Frankestein-esque creatures who inevitably turn on their creators.

Anyway it was a fun movie to talk and joke over, and afterwards @simplyender​ roped me into watching the first episode of Inside Job which was also fun, and is the reason the Discord server now has an emote of Brett with a menorah.

Mechanukkah word of the day: wetware

#i robot #mechanukkah #will smith's favourite hobby is inventing robot slurs

[j4gm]

Mechanukkah night 5: Space Sweepers

Night 5 of @simplyender​‘s Hanukkah robot movie watch party! Space Sweepers is really good!! Go watch it!!! It’s an amazing spectacle of a Korean space blockbuster featuring an adorable found family and a trans robot. Not just an “uwu this robot has such trans vibes” trans robot but an actual, real instance of trans representation in a movie of this scale, making a poignant point about access to trans healthcare!

I’ve seen a few Korean action movies and they always have characters who are refreshingly different from the kinds of quip-spitting cool guys you find in their American counterparts. This movie is no exception, not being afraid to show its characters being dorks and deeply exploring their emotions. It achieves this by throwing a young girl into the care of a crew of badass space junk scavengers who all find themselves becoming mums and dads by the end; including the aforementioned robot, Bubs, whose interactions with the crew’s new collective daughter lead to her deciding to change her gender.

Another wonderful thing about Space Sweepers is its use of language for worldbuilding purposes. All the characters have devices in their ears that automatically translate everyone else, meaning they are all free to speak whatever language they please, leaving the audience to read subtitles. This means you have scenes where people are talking to each other in all kinds of languages; English and Korean, of course, but also Danish, French, Filipino, Arabic, Chinese, and even a dialect of Pidgin English which is something I don’t think I’ve ever heard in a movie before! The multiculturalism, as well as the general aesthetic, reminds me a lot of Cowboy Bebop and the way that anime always took care to be representative of a world where ethnic and cultural differences are no longer such a source of conflict. The live action reboot of Cowboy Bebop WISHES it could be as good as Space Sweepers.

So yeah go watch this movie. It’s great.

Mechanukkah word of the day: nanomachines, son!

We won’t be watching anything this evening or tomorrow since it’s Shabbat, and I might not be able to make it on Sunday for the final triple-feature since it’s C-word Day, so this might be my last Mechanukkah review this year. It’s been a lot of fun and I can’t wait for next time!

#mechanukkah #space sweepers

[j4gm]

Mechanukkah night 2: Pacific Rim

The second night of @simplyender​‘s Hanukkah robot movie watch party. Tonight we watched Pacific Rim. It was also on the schedule last year but I missed it, so this was my first time seeing it. After some Discord issues Trixx was able to get the stream up and running.

This is a cool kaiju film that I would like to see on a bigger screen some day. My friends in call delighted in woobifying the various monsters, which all have adorable names. Not so much the jaegers. If you are ever writing a giant robot movie I implore you not to name your main character after what is arguably a slur, thank you.

The human side of the movie wasn’t so engaging but I like the concept of drift compatibility. It makes for a neat way to delve into the relationship between the two co-pilots, whether that’s a familial relationship or whatever slightly creepy kind of romance Mako and Raleigh were getting into. So as a metaphor it’s a bit like Steven Universe fusion for straight people. (jk I know Charlie Day’s character and the guy from Torchwood probably had something going on.)

On that note the scientists were the standout characters for me, being a good break from the macho-masculinity of every single other person in this movie. Also slurbot’s internal systems are voiced by Ellen McLain who is GLaDOS from Portal which gets bonus points from me.

Mechanukkah word of the day: orange juice

#mechanukkah #pacific rim

[simplyender]

Mechanukkah night 8 (part 2, see part 1 here): Short Circuit

[Pictured: Johnny 5 learning about the miracle of Chanukkah* from his friend(?), Stephanie, who is holding a book. They are both standing in her living room with a lit menorah edited into the background. *this is not actually what is happening in this scene this screenshot is from.]

Continuing my role as @j4gm substitute, here's a review of the second movie we watched on night 8.

Truly one of the pioneers of modern day robotfucking, Short Circuit is about a military robot that definitely inspired Wall-Es design, who one day gets hit by lightning and becomes sentient. Now, I'm no computer scientist, but my friends that are computer scientists and robotics engineers have described stuff like that as "complete bullshit", and since I don't know enough about robotics to disagree, I'm inclined to believe them.

So, Johnny 5, or Number 5, as he is called throughout the movie until he pulls a pro-gamer move and renames himself at the end, escapes from the military base he is kept at, and goes on a lovely adventure where he meets butterflies, puppydogs, and grasshoppers. He also learns about mortality and that he can die, which scares the shit out of him. The lady that finds him, Stephanie Speck, at first mistakes him for an alien and is incredibly hyped by the prospect of, er, "introducing him to Earth", she is sorely disappointed when it turns out that he is effectively a baby robot, but steps up to the task of teaching him about life and stuff, which results in him becoming heavily immersed in pop culture, rapidly maturing, and then potentially becoming her love interest? It's left sort of open at the end.

This movie...Did not age well. I was dumb enough to enter this blind(as we often do watch things that are new to all of us), and being a movie from 1986 (Two years post-Footloose, for those that measure the world in BFL and PFL like I do), Short Circuit falls victim to being incredibly outdated and racist in terms of its portrayal of the only POC in the movie, with the character known as Ben Jabituya being a horribly racist caricature of an Indian immigrant played by...An Ashkenazi Jew. This is gross. This is bad. But it was also okay at the time, unfortunately. So, as Shane Madej once said: "It's very easy to condemn from our vantage point in history, and so we do condemn! Wholeheartedly!" Bluh. What an awful way to end Mechanukkah. ...Anyway, while it is undoubtedly a classic, Short Circuit will not be returning for Mechanukkah next year. Or ever.

Mechanukkah word of the day: Input

And that's all, folks! Thank you to all my wonderful friends for attending, I hope that you all had a great time, and I hope as well that everybody else around the world, whoever they may be, had a wonderful Chanukkah. May next years Mechanukkah be filled with as much, if not more, joy, light, and togetherness as this one has been.

Until next time, עם ישראל חי.

#Mechanukkah #short circuit #translation for the hebrew bit: the nation of israel still lives #this is NOT a zionist statement its just another word for the jewish people #and is used to say that despite persecution and antisemitism and a LOT of attempted genocides #the jewish nation are still around and will continue to do so #which is the point of chanukkah #long post

[j4gm]

Mechanukkah night 4: Alita Battle Angel

Night 4 of @simplyender​‘s Hanukkah robot movie watch party! Today we watched Alita Battle Angel which I thought was an anime before we started. And it really should have been.

At what point should a movie cut its losses and give up any pretence of being live action? It’s debatable, but this movie would have been a hell of a lot better as a stylised animated film. This film doesn’t just sit in the uncanny valley; it has gone there, dropped anchor, and started causing mass environmental damage to the valley’s ecosystem. This film is only three years old but literally nothing looks real. They use CGI for EVERYTHING. Even things like regular clothes that they could have just filmed normally and then composited the robot bits over the top! There is not a single shot in this movie where the main character’s actress is actually on screen.

I was reading more about the movie this morning and apparently it was first announced in 2003 then delayed for sixteen years. Can you fucking imagine if they’d tried to pull this off with Revenge of the Sith standards of CGI?

Anyway the plot wasn’t great either. It ended on the most obvious sequel bait, which is hilarious considering it never got one. Hang on let me check Wikipedia and see if there’s any plans for one...

In December 2022, Rodriguez and Cameron took a virtual blood oath to make a sequel.

oh ok

Well this one has mostly just been me complaining about CGI, sorry. It was still fun to watch with my friends and the choreography was cool. Best character was the guy who joined Alita’s side just because the bad guy killed a random dog. Worst character was the nurse who they put in the background of every scene without giving her any lines or plot relevance.

Mechanukkah word of the day: robocoochie

#mechanukkah #alita