#not every mech knows Carmilla

[mechanismslorearchive]

hi i have a question because i'm uh stupid and ur my last hope for an answer since yk ur an lore archive for mecha, WHO IS DR CARMILLA? HOW DO I FIND ANY INFORMATION ABOUT HER??

Hello! This is a fantastic question, actually, because it gives me a chance to infodump about my beloved Carmilla.

I don’t know how much information you have, so I’m going to start at the very beginning.

In-character: Dr. Carmilla was the scientist who invented the mechanization process and created (some of!) the Mechanisms. She traveled with them for a while before departing under mysterious circumstances, which the crew claims was a tragic accident involving her falling out of (read: one of the crew shoved her out of*) an airlock. She is loosely inspired by the titular character of the 1872 vampire novel Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu.

Since her time with the mechs, she’s been up to vague and mysterious shenanigans, and last I heard was working with a forthcoming band called Dr. Carmilla and the Void Quartet.

Out-of-character: she’s another musical artist named Maki Yamazaki who originally formed the band as Dr. Carmilla and the Mechanisms, before they decided to go their separate ways. She still makes music, both as Dr. Carmilla and as herself!

It’s worth noting that while the Mechanisms don’t discuss her in a flattering light, they do canonically lie to the audience (source with spoilers to Death to the Mechanisms), and that there are two sides to every story. Carmilla has been a… let’s say, a controversial figure to the fandom, in the past, but, if I can editorialize a bit, she is no more evil or violent than any of the Mechanisms (which is to say, she’s done many terrible things, but no worse than they have).

If you want more information about her, the two starting points I’d recommend are this fantastic and extremely thorough post by lucky-sevens, and checking out her music, which you can find on her Bandcamp here or on YouTube here! There’s also Lashings, which is the only live show we have a full recording of where she appears with the Mechs, and is well worth a watch!

(*The crew canonically shoved her out an airlock on at least three occasions, but according to word-of-god canon from Maki her final departure was not via the airlock! Still, I’m including these sources for informational purposes)

#mod miralines #asks #dr carmilla #dr carmilla and the mechanisms #the mechanisms #forgive me if this is a little rambly or the formatting or links are wonky #it’s like 2 am but I wanted to answer this one #Also anon if you want recommendations of her music I especially love alive I cried and eleven #though rocket girl is also v popular!

[inspectorlyfra]

So, that “Carmilla fixes what’s broken” theory/headcanon, yeah? Let’s play with that a little. Both a literal meaning, and a metaphorical one. Buckle up, let’s go! 

Thanks to his profile on the official website, we know Jonny made up his “backstory” as seen in One-Eyed Jacks. We also know he still did kill his dad, as seen in the “killing your father in an emotionally climactic moment” “you’re projecting again, jonny” exchange in DTTM. I wouldn’t know what the exact words are, I refuse to watch DTTM. Moving on, we don’t actually know how exactly he reached the near-death state necessary for mechanization. Death row? Self-inflicted? A heart attack? Who knows!

Symbolically, though, in the prison interview fiction, he briefly mentions that SA is the one thing Doc Carmilla put off-limits. While this could be a lie, or instead a reference to Carmilla’s parenting (did Jonny ever get time-out?), it pretty steadily points towards some form of morals integrated into the mechanism itself. Backing this up, on his profile again, Jonny says “I’m told I had a good heart, but the Doc dealt with that.” And what organ traditionally is associated with morals? The heart, babey!

Going off of this, I’d say that Jonny’s act of patricide wasn’t premeditated. Back to the “emotionally climactic moment”, and all. However he handled the guilt after he realized what happened, I’d assume that was his downfall.

One headcanon I’ve seen around is that Nastya was born with hemophilia. That’s got the literal ‘broken blood’ out of the way.

As for symbolism, look no further than “Accept the destiny of your blood” as quoted in Cyberian Demons. Nastya knew her family wasn’t great, and she wanted something to be done about that. Their wrongdoings ran in her blood, and she was killed like the rest of them. Clearing her veins set her free.

Ivy’s another tricky one, since we don’t know much about her backstory either. We know that Carmilla made her offer to Ivy in a library she knew by heart, and that’s it.

Going off of her current dissociation from the past thanks to her supercomputer brain, though, I’d guess she had some kind of emotional dysregulation. Trauma, depression, whatever. The dissociation she has now was possibly implemented as a reaction to that. A distance in her own mind, to keep her from getting so overwhelmed.

Thanks to Ashes actually having a backstory song that’s truthful, we know their first death. Smoke inhalation and burns. That, of course, ties into the literal meaning of their lungs.

But lungs aren’t just needed to breathe- you need good lungs to scream. And if Ashes could’ve screamed that night, told the Sevens the truth and exposed Mickey for what he was.. Well, it might not’ve fixed the whole planet, but it would’ve helped.

Brian’s one of two mechs to have the majority of their body be mechanical. His body froze, leaving only his heart intact, yadda yadda.

Going back to the morality idea from Jonny, Brian is a direct parallel to that. Every part of him broke in space except for his heart- his morals. And Carmilla leaned on that with his switch, splitting “morality” into two halves.

A fic I like for this concept that I will promote: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32318977

TS wasn’t made by Carmilla, and its exclusion is fairly self-explanatory for both the literal and figurative, but I’ll go over it quickly anyway. It was made fully clockwork, and only got its autonomy over time. It stole the angel’s voice so that it would have to be heard. 

Tim’s eyes burned out, yes, but he saw countless atrocities over the 3 or 4 years of the war. Replacing his eyes didn’t remove the memories, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

Marius has very little of his pre-mech backstory known! He was a child soldier, and he fought in a giant mecha. That’s about it.

The arm is, arguably, the part of your body that does the most things externally. It types, writes, holds, carries, hits, crushes. And if you’re a soldier, it kills. So when Marius got a shiny new arm and was removed from the environment he grew up in, of course he wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to figure out how to preserve life, not destroy it. Granted, the Mechs don’t need a doctor, but.. I’m sure he had the right idea before the standard desensitization that comes with immortality.

Raphaella’s a complete fucking wild card! Let’s go!

I must of course mention @ladydragonkiller‘s Icarus!Raphaella fic before anything else. Go read it, it’s lovely. https://archiveofourown.org/works/39452052

Whether you subscribe to the “Raphaella gave herself wings” agenda or the “Human carcinization, Raphaella’s species always had wings, but Raphaella’s went wrong somehow” agenda, from my understanding it’s pretty widely agreed on that she mechanized herself.

And whether or not you lean on the Icarus idea, I think the theme of ambition is a strong note. Science is an ambitious field of study! I still like my old idea of a fallen angel interpretation of Raphaella. Regardless of if she was cast out by others or left the nest of her own volition, that ambition and that separation is what cost her her wings.

Making new wings for herself returned her freedom, returned her ambition, returned all of those glorious things. And now, she flies higher than ever before.

And that’s all of them! This wasn’t the most organized, but I had a lotta thoughts I wanted to get down. Wooooo!

#the mechanisms #jonny d'ville #nastya rasputina #ivy alexandria #ashes o'reilly #drumbot brian #the toy soldier #marius von raum #raphaella la cognizi #theory #meta #i guess lmao #no clue if this is a thing everyone Is Aware Of Already #but ehhhh. if it is then oh well #mechs theory

[neohart]

Mechs headcanons because fuck you and fuck your train

Marius goes by he/they probouns

Ts bottles its feelings up because it doesn’t know how to handle them

Due to the lack of knowledge of Raph’s backstory, she changes it every time someone asks

After Marius’ act of pulling a violin from nowhere in prison, they learned to do it on command so now every time he does it everyone but him are confused

I hc that Lyf goes by any pronouns and because of this Marius will use pronouns that just end up sticking and Lyf now uses them unironically

Trans lesbian Nastya forever and ever, amen

Brian will sometimes just carry the others over his shoulders. He just does it and depending on who he picks up he’s either shot, punched at, or is met with zero resistance

Genderfluid Tim forever and ever, amen

Jonny will sometimes wear platforms to feel tall but it never works out cause he doesn’t know how to walk in them

I like to imagine that ts has a souvenir from every planet that the mechs visited and if it wasn’t on a planet with them, the others would grab one for ts

Marius and Raph constantly look into Lyf’s eyes because they’re “a gay rainbow” and it makes the two of them very happy

I see a lot of people put Jonny into angst situations but y’all are sleeping on the potential that ts’ backstory has

Speaking of Jonny angst, he will sometimes still have nightmares about certain events that happened during One Eyed Jacks and the Carmilla era and when this happens he will seek out anyone who was on the Aurora pre-Tim

People always say that Brian is a giant heater and because of this Jonny or Tim will flop onto Brian whenever he’s piloting during Aurora’s night cycle and sleep there

I’ve been thinking about Tim wearing a strawberry dress and that got me thinking of Brian in a strawberry-themed suit. And I mean like a vest that has strawberries on it, a white dress-shirt, and some light pink dress-pants (someone pls draw this, I beg)

Ivy will create book forts in her library if left alone for long enough

Aurora air locked Carmilla. End of story

#NeosTedTalk #the mechs #the mechanisms

[orangezinnia]

Marius's Mechanism, and speculation on its bioengineering

so, the elephant in the room. who built Marius's mechanism? how, exactly, does it keep him alive, if it isn't by Dr. Carmilla's masterwork?

today, i seek not to answer those questions. instead, easier ones! such as "what type of microelectrodes are used for somatosensory" and "where does osseointegration begin, and would there be wireless myoelectric leads?"

should this have probably waited until TDOBVR was released, so i could obtain potential new and updated details on the workings of Marius's brachial mechanism? no! 'cause i am not nearly that patient! anyway, 7.5k words and 3 distinct Sections under the cut!

(and for those of you who don't have the time to read 7.5k, there's a TLDR at the very very end!)

CW's for: avid descriptions of surgical procedures, medical injuries, generally invasive and fleshy experiments.

Sections-

How does it doggone move? an introduction to our dilemma - creating an external power source - alternative compliance designs in the fingers

How does it flippin' feel? peripheral nerve electrodes - reproducing bidirectional feedback - the epic highs and lows of highschool osseointegration

Why the shit does it do that? vestigial features - SKIN - closing statments and TLDR

but! before making like intrepid heros and striding into the treacherous heath of biomedical and neuroprosthetic jargon, it'd do well to get a refresher on what little lore there is to know Marius's mechanism so far, as like scavengers upon a tragedy, each scrap is sure to have its use. the checklist isn't long, but i'm enamoured with every bit of it-

Alongside Raphaella, (and potentially Tim), it wasn't created or implanted by Doc C. src: tumblr

Whereas the mechs normally 1) heal on command or instantly, 2) don't get hurt at all, or 3) may ignore a wound at leisure, Marius only "regenerates [his kneecaps] when he dies" src: Kofi's twitter

The casing of his fingers are occasionally "organic". src: Kofi's twitter (i still adore the insistence that the mechs aren't human. makes it lovingly impossible to humanize them!)

The surgical procedure, or perhaps the interface styling, that anchored Marius to his mechanism was "botched". src: Kofi's blog post about TDOBVR

Marius "always approached the concept of immortality with a little bit more skepticism than the rest of [The Mechanisms]". src: DTTM :(

way hey, look! i've got links this time!

so, How does it doggone move?! in this case, the TDOBVR post can half-help with that! (and count your lucky stars about it, too). directly quoted-

"Byron [Marius] is from a world that has devolved through an endless war of attrition. Once highly advanced, technology has regressed to circa 18th century fare..."

meaning, since we don't know where or who he got the arm from, its composition is either really advanced, or hilariously crude. but it would seem- or, i thought- if this is the same arm that's going to keep him alive for eons upon eons through supernatural powers, it's likely to be the same sort of technology which constitues those big mechas.

then, you know, i was all ready to explain to you lot about shape memory polymers, and heat wire electrodes, and the many plus sides of artifical muscle fibers, including but not limited to tolerance strain, industrial-like strength, and being the one of the most lightweight options when it comes to mass-producible robotics...

...and then i realized- i'm going too easy on him! what are the chances that Marius is receiving the "leading innovation"? nope! more likely, he's getting acquainted with pneumatic concepts from 1910's Germany that flunked! haHA!

oh, i mean that by the way. here it is-

[ID: A black and white conceptual schematic of a compressed gas-powered hand from 1919, showing a thumb-side and top-down sketch. Top down, there are four parallel cylinders in the palm, but complex gear systems only in the index and thumb. An airline, captioned "Luffzufuhr", comes up from the wrist. Thumb-side, the gear systems are clearer, as is a fifth cylinder for the thumb. /end ID]

this diagram, and that single annotation of "luffzufuhr", translating from German to "air supply", is literally all i can find about it. thankfully, there's at least one other research paper who has attempted to revive this general concept, which makes things much easier for me! both by way of not having to figure it out all by myself, and not having to choose between 300 different styles of motor systems. yippie!

to lay some basic groundwork- actuators, in the application of motorized prosthetics, operate as the replacement for muscles, providing power and resistance for an everyday range of motion- linear, rotary, oscillatory. accordingly, when looking at which actuation systems garner the most praise for prosthetic limbs, one of the first things you'll see is how sleek and precise they are, since jankiness is usually the biggest giveaway that a technology won't be human compatible.

and it's an important factor, but only half of the problem. or, well, the paradigm. it's one that's formed by no fault of our own, and bested even the most funded, functional, state-of-the-art arms. that is, dexterity vs. durability, where the more components a prosthetic requires, the more fragile it becomes. the tougher its materials are, the less agility is afforded.

generally, people who want a "tool" are going to go for the stronger one, because if a prosthetic can't hold up to the stress and strain of the human condition, then its practicality is kind of worth jack and shit.

the pneumatic arm zeros in on this shortcoming of strength, since its simplistic components- a piston pushing against a spring within a hollow cylinder, bolstered by air- need only an increase in PSI to be faster, and are stronger against torque and backlash, giving it that advantage over electric motors.

they also don't draw current when retracting, since the spring elements naturally return to position, but their ability to pull all that power means they won't get shocked under a sudden or demanding influx. though, these plus sides are often achieved at the same cost of a heavy weight and excessive size, usually in response to supplying an appropriate power source. vapor is a bit harder to shuttle along than an electrical current, you know?

but unlike their electric counterparts, the fuel being a detached compromise makes this much more resolveable. and so, we're off on our merry way to make Marius far more steampunk than i initially planned! wahoo!

one of the factors necessitating a bulk-up is getting a servo-like control of the air valves, or servovalves, to fine tune motion and pressure more deliberately. it seems hard pressed to happen on a smaller scale at all, let alone while still packing a bigger punch than electric.

funnily, the way the paper phrases these drawbacks tends to raise the problem in the same paragraph that they solve it. "ah, unfortunately, there are so small-scale high peformace servovalves... fortunately, our team invented small-scale high performance servovalves." summarized, it's a rotary, four-way motor for the gas, compacted to roughly the size of a AA battery. now That's efficiency!

they seemed pretty proud of that, and i do think that Marius's arm would make use of something akin to those, though for us, the REAL focus is the fuel!

like i said, in terms of energy sourcing, gas cartridges have largely been regarded as a poor means. in those pioneer attempts of the early to mid 1900's, the CO2 they used was a limited resource, due to expense, and the quantity demands for a full day's power. add in the heavy bulk of steel canisters, and we don't have a very pretty picture for mobility.

but this obstacle is taken care of pretty smoothly, too, by switching to a liquid monopropellant as a gas generator. in this case, it's 70 percent hydrogen peroxide, which has a hissy fit when it has to buddy up with a catalyst, and spits out more energy than the liquid-to-gas phase change of liquid CO2. the catalyst, by the way, is iridium, typically known for its durability as a metal, but its decomposition under acid is used in the- get this- the Space Industry for propulsion.

yeah, that's right! Marius's arm is a low-grade ROCKET!

because of this drastic improvement, the tank for the hydrogen can stay at about 1 / 5th the size of what the CO2 would be, while manifesting the same power, keeping it nicely in a lightweight and anthropomorphic form. (said power, according to the paper, is comparable to skeletal muscle!)

then, with a setup of 200ml monopropellant cartridge, fuel lines, and a pack of catalyst pellets as the power behind the actuator's piston movement, and the servovalves as modulators to the incoming vapor flow, a choroid of surprisingly aesthetic stainless steel tubes is what carries that oxygen gas to the pneumatic cylinders. (Not a different thing than the actuators, as i learned the hard way).

they're also taking great care to assure us how NOT flammable the propellant is, despite being, you know, rocket-grade hydrogen peroxide. i'm sure this has no implications for Mr. Raum whatsoever!

the downsides to this way of powering his arm aren't many, but in the shadow of their silent, stable, battery-powered bretherin, the nitpicks include-

- exhaust products (ooh, dieselpunk...)

- audible exhaust noise (ooh, steampunk...)

- some unpredictable internal heat (ooh, hot...topic?)

and all of these, conveniently, could compile their inconveniences to explain away the arm cuff criss-cross laces by translating them in-universe as vent slats for exhaust outlets!

on that note, i genuinely enjoy postulating on what shortcomings the mech's -anisms could have. like, jonny's heart (~steel) weighs six pounds, nastya's blood is too dense and likely causes spPOTS (space POTS), ashes's lungs might be prone to clotting (damaged endothelial response), ivy's brain is. uh. well she already can't remember dog from shit of her past. brian's joints (metal-bound) could be fucky! oh, to be a new fan theorizing on all their faults again...!

ahem, anyway. when i was still considering artificial muscles for the articulation of Marius's extremeties, particlarly what those 4 bolts on the back of the costume's hand might signify, i first imagined linear actuators tugging a false tendon strung through his digits. this, as well, turned out to be the same "fully compliant" friction design of the gas-actuator prosthetic, just with electronic back-hand linears switched out for pneumatics in the wrist.

a.k.a, he'd have Marionette Fingies. and, truth be told, it's hard to find a hand that obeys these specifications i'm getting from two different directions- follow the pneumatics, but give Marius an arm that can at least maneuver a violin bow- without coming across strange trade-offs like "we're working on making the fingers move independently" or "if you lean on this arm it'll snap-crackle-pop fucking die"

but! this is where 2009 concepts that die ignoble deaths under the technological onslaught that was the 2010's come quite in handy! (get it?) under the work of the RoMeLa team at Virginia Tech, they led the innovation of a robotic hand roughly following the same principles of "air pressure controls grip", committing to a simplicity of lower pressure = lighter grip, and higher pressure = a tighter, "firm grip that could rip out a human's windpipe."

(editor's note: while the CNET author may be biased on that front, it is, indeed, applicable to the physical demands of Marius's job.)

but this time, in order to coordinate flexion and extension of the fingers, the compressed air fills up corrugated tube actuators (built like miniature accordions) spanning the length of the digit. however, it's pertinent to comment that the gas-actuated arm explicitly does not use compressed air, and i've decided the same holds true for whatever version of this build Marius would use. the four bolts, then, are likely some cylinders or servovalves to regulate the gas expenditure.

it's purportedly "strong" under this lack of linear actuators or motors to strain, and dextrous at the exclusion of "tendon" strings or gears, as is common for most prosthetic hands on the market. feedback sensors for grip and proprioreception work in tandem with the extent of pressure, which is already much more than the highly underactuated hand of the original monopropellant arm, and further awards a gentleness fit to handle raw eggs and lightbulbs.

hmm... with one catch. unlike the self-awarded praise of our essay's predecessor, this portion might be a bit weighty for Marius? its original creation saught to eventually appendage the hand to a separate ongoing robotics project of theirs, but the team deemed it "too heavy", and so it was subsided (cough, discarded, cough) into a separate project.

yet, this isn't exactly a downside, 'cause remember! Marius's tenuous grasp on reality (as per the TDOBVR blog post) doesn't come from nowhere! eons-long pain from an inordinately heavy prosthetic would drive anyone up the wall, i think! although, they theorized that a hardier material, such as carbon fiber, could do more favours toward ease of replacement and overall weight. not that we're too worried about that ;>

in general, by the way, i think the casing (cosmetic hard shell that covers all these inner components) of Marius's arm IS carbon fiber. most real-world casings are plastic, or aluminum, and it gets into a tricker area once you start trying to replicate skin. but for now, that material figures to be a pretty easy mention, since it's well known for being Strong As Steel But Lighter, the molding process is variable and easy, and comparably more forgiving to deformation from everyday wear.

anyway, i like the RoMeLa's hand especially because, on the sparse but official page for the hand, it even advertises a potential application in "Hazardous environment operation" and "Entertainment", which if i'm not mistaken, is Marius's middle name (hyphenated.)

oh, and guess what the protoype's acronym is! too late, i'm telling you- it's the "Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments," or RAPHaEL. ah? ah, get it? like la Cogni- [i am dragged off-screen like a dead extra]

here's the beaut in action, too! what a charmer. i think Marius would love her. i may or may not be projecting.

it was very very interesting to touch on something that hasn't really been feasibly explored before, because in the event of making it work, we find ourselves in a beautiful gray area of "how!" and "why?", which i think is perfect for the technological stance of Marius's- sorry, Byron's era.

i'll do you the favour of linking the IEEE video that shows the gas-actuated fucker actually in motion too, because the beginning positively oozes 2008 "The Future Is Here" vibes

also, a quick credit to that crop of Ruth's art below the fingers tweet, whose depiction of Marius's arm with steel piping very much helped solidify the idea of throwing all that advanced technology into the garbage disposal!

but, How does it flippin' feel? first off, it feels weird to use flippin' instead of a swear, hold on- fuck! fuck! there we are. balance restored.

actually, let's take a closer look at that "botched" line.

"One of the first things I decided when creating Marius is that the effects of his (probably botched) mechanisation and his advancing years have left him with a somewhat tenuous grasp on reality..."

that doesn't give us much detail, does it? commendably so, seeing as it's a spoiler-free rundown, but that dissonance between whether it was the surgical manner or the internal mechanics that render "botched" an apt descriptor kind of worried me. i mean, how would i narrow down which configuartion worked best for him, when even the lore doesn't have his best interests at heart?

and, you know what? the question kind of answered itself! what we're capable of in the real world, right now, is genuinely pretty cool, but remains unusually limited.

i think our best example of this is the microelectrode array! the way we're using them, microelectrodes, in short, (get it?), are a rather direct interface with the peripheral nervous system on the cellular level, communicating bidirectionally (translating and sending) sensory, motor, and electrical signals with the axons they're implanted in or around.

there's different types, whose physical attributes determine their strengths and weakness per application. the one that we're looking at today is an "intraneural", meaning its needles physically pierce the nerve sheath.

did i say pierce? i meant stabs it clean through the middle.

[ID: A zoomed-in screenshot on a simplistic diagram of two intraneural electrode styles. The nerves are cylindrical, yellow, and transparent. To the left, labelled "D", a flat gray electrode cuts the nerve perpendicular. To the right, labelled "E", something akin so a slanted bed of nails is embedded up to the square base. /end ID.]

(the one to the left is our guy, transverse intrafascicular multichannel electrode! the cutie right beside him is the USEA, Utah Slanted Electrode Array, which i personally headcanon Nastya as having. talk about metal!)

i'd make a running joke where we call this microelectrode TRANS, but unfortunately, pride month is over, therefore its actual acronym is TIME. you're free to imagine that i've made an awesome pun on "bidirectional", however.

the more broadly discerning that these electrodes are, the more invasive their design is- for example, bed-of-nails USEA has some 100 channels, while a C-FINE (imagine a tiny clasp, gently squeezing the nerve) may have only 8 or 16. while TIME doesn't fair much better with 10 electrodes, and its cross-section style implantation may look a tad horrific (which is exactly why i chose it), its wider spatial range of fascicles allows it to get more picky during recruitment.

it also seems to be pioneered specifically with prostheses interfacing in mind, where most TIME studies (as per a May 2018 report) have been to test its design of "selectively [activating] subsets of axons". or, sending signals from the sensors to very particular parts of the nerves- and that's perfect when our goal is to restore a sense of "touch".

the most complete long-term configuration between human and machine of indwelling electrodes sending two-way signals that i've been able to find is the 2019 in-person trial of the DEKA "LUKE" arm, which unlike their commercially available FDA-approved version, used chronically implanted USEA's to "evoke tactile perceptions on the phantom hand". and, thankfully, this is the production that most articles i've found latch onto like a lamprey.

sorry, that's misinfo. lampreys don't latch onto their prey. that's leeches!

basically, the way this can happen is by finding a method to taper and dilute those bursts of electrical signals coming into the nerve. for this team, the key in registering actual textures, pressure, joint tension, etcetera was by recording the neural responses from primate's fintertips when touched, and alongside some vaguely referenced "calculations", coding this into a procedural model for the arm.

and like i said, the LUKE system is actually bidirectional! ...as usual, with some caveats. my sources may be outdated, taking from early to mid 2010 experiment papers as i often am, but when papers say "bidirectional", they tend to mean "microelectrodes for sensation, sEMG for decoding motor command."

the "sEMG" being a superficial electrode, stuck on the skin to sense and interpret voluntary contraction on the muscles of the residual limb. y'know, the weird stickers? it's the most common, intuitive, and non-invasive way for prostheses users to "control it with their mind!!1!1!", but when the backlog of complaints ranges from socket pressure sores, sweating interference, superficial recording and loss of contact during limb repositioning, i'm not so sure that our mischevious violinist can affort that sort of setup.

but the DEKA model, at least the non-portable USEA prototype, solves this nicely. making dual-use of implantable EMGs to train a Kalmann filter on recognizing the muscular commands, the user mimics "pre-programmed movements", whose recorded values are whittled down to a select number of "features", or what i'm guessing is potential kinematic positions. i think, in laymans terms, that entails some Physical Therapy for Marius!

since when have i been here just to praise things, though, huh? ...okay, roughly the entire time, but i ain't no liar about downsides! 'cause, when referring to "touch", we're not yet at a vis-a-vis recreation of our somatosensory. more often than not, haptic interfaces are missing ways to convey accurate temperature and pain, if any.

even though i found at least a handful of articles saying that LUKE's USEA can "help sense pain and temperature" (sometimes in a copy-paste phrasing), after turning to the official NSF pdf, the only two claims they'd made on that front was, "the LUKE does not include pain and temperature sensors", and "any evoked pain or temperature sensations are uncommon". so, man, i just dunno who to believe!

but a bigger, and more perplexing issue to circumvent, is the electrodes themselves. technically, their placement is a chronic injury to our tissues, and while it might seem like the resultant scarring is ideal for securing its positon on the nerve trunk, the fibrosis can sometimes grow bad enough to insulate it and completely cut off the signals. or other times, completely push the electrode out of the nerve. (which is just our bodies reacting how they should to foreign objects. the same thing would happen if you got a splinter)

at minimum, you're looking at a good chance for nerve damage and signal disruption. and- awe, while researching for the downsides of microelectrodes, i've just stumbled across my first ever bookmarked science paper for that essay i did on Nastya's cybernetics <3 talk about ouroboric deeds! and talk about upgrades- that thing was from 2003, jeez!

ack, distractions! moreover, unless your electrodes are wireless, their channel leads will have to trail a considerable ways through the muscles, and won't be sitting pretty when forming scar tissue can pull them taut. then, if the system can't sustain itself solely indwelling, external hardware will need a way to get ahold of the nerve signals, so a percuntaneous incision will often bring the leads to outside connector pads, opening opportunities for infection and tissue decay.

why am i saying "yours"? you don't own incredibly expensive, defense agency-funded materials. right? at least, i don't. all my tupperware is already used up.

but what i Do have is some inconveniences for Marius, fabricated purely by a nature of my own design! yeah, that's right! I'M creating issues out of thin air!!

since i made the executive decision for Marius to operate under microelectrodes exclusively, and the DEKA system i mentioned used iEMG's for motor decoding, (a.k.a muscular action potential over electrical neuron firings) there's a significant likelyhood of crosstalk and interference between commands coming and going on that shared peripheral channel.

meaning, he might get some rogue signals that are twitchy, painful, or just plain uncooperative. not a complete ravage to his range as a violinist, but certainly some obstacles to overcome. (or angst about, do how you do.) told ya that i liked downsides, didn't i?

the peripheral nervous system, by the way, is just what translates sensory information to the brain. the somatic (somatosensory) is a more voluntary divison of it, and registers the stimulation of mechanoreceptors by pressure, temperature, proprioception, etcetera, for input when considering to the appropriate actions to take. when i say "peripheral", i basically mean both.

and, hey, so long as we're taking about fudging up phrases and bodies alike, how about a little admission time? because, see, here's the thing. roughly half of the robotics that i've talked about today aren't actually... wearable? frequently being "proof of concept"s created by distinctly non-amputee college teams, they would be controlled by an external computer, or someone wearing a "master exoskeleton" glove that mirrors the motions commands into the prototype.

that, or they can be removed at will, after the connecting pads for microeletrodes are merely detached. and at risk of squandering a potential hilarity, but for the sake of preserving the "ahhh irrevocable immortality!" faustian, i stringently don't believe that Marius can separate his whole mechanism from his flesh body. at most, his fingers, maybe his hand as well. (you'll see why later on ;> and that's a threat ;D)

so, let's get a rundown of osseointegration, or OI, which is probably the most Not Portable a prosthetic socket can get. for Marius, i've decided that his amputation is NOT up to the shoulder. instead, he is a transhumeral amputee, the same as every "bionic upper limb OI" subject i've seen news of, because the status of the residual limb is of course the deciding factor in candidacy for this type of surgery.

(that's why the gas-actuated arm is conveniently also transhumeral- they crafted it with eventual OI implementation in mind)

in summary, they (the Scientists) implant a metal rod fixture, typically titanium, into the remaining skeleton. an abutement section of it protrudes out of the skin in a stoma opening, where the prosthetic is attached as an extension. (Marius, i think, does not get that differential luxury. ergo, his "arm"'s titanium bone IS the fixture itself.) obviously, there's alternative types and methods, but this is what we're giving our dear Baron.

for a basic depiction of that setup, from the OPR A Implant System site, and edited so that tungle doesn't kill me dead-

[ID: A grayscale diagram of a rounded residual limb, transparent to show a sturdy bone. Within the bone is a dark threaded metallic rod, labelled "fixture". Outside of the limb, the continuing rod smoothens, now labelled "abutement," and the thicker, bolt-like end is "abutement screw". /end ID]

i run a risky game here, folks.

the humerus is one of the 5 bones eligible for osseointegration, which does not include the shoulder, and it's reportedly ideal for the socket troubles that would come to a residual limb that's "short, wide, scarred, or painful", promptly speedrunning the checklist for "botched".

to hit those point by point- well, in opposite order- for a limb with nerve pain, the necessary compression of a socket may be a deal breaker in everyday use. energy transfer (that is, the inertial strength when performing actions) from the muscles can be put more effectively, and without much misalignment, into the prosthetic.

there's markedly less fatigue than having to work for sEMG devices to proceed with movement via over contraction of unrelated muscles, and a robustness fit for physically demanding jobs, i.e. a truck driver, a builder, a murderer. then, a stable precision for finer tasks, i.e. brushing teeth, handling eggs, setting up security cameras outside the Penelope vault.

as an added bonus, linking the prosthetic directly with the bone reopens an avenue for natural sensation, "osseoperception", where the mechanical vibration from contact (touching or stepping) can be felt through the skeleton. apparently, we can even hear the frequencies?! in our ears?! then, since this eliminates the factor of a cup socket, a suspension rig, and ideally sEMGs, a microelectrode interface is nearly a given for this system to work.

(a lot of OI is paired with Targeted Muscle Reinnervation to control the prosthesis, though. i haven't looked too far into this method myself, but it seems more helpful for transhumeral or shoulder amputees without much of a residual limb.)

(because, while TMR surgically transfers the residual nerves to defunct muscles in a gambit to boost their own signal, then communes those re-assigned nerves to the prosthetic, the TIME would talk directly to whatever remains of the upper arm's somatic. it would definitely require lots more rehabilitation than peripheral interfacing.)

so, viola! overall, a pretty marvelous way of melding a prosthetic to the body, as well as giving Marius's environmental perception and navigation a solid 2x modifier, if he can handle the months-to-years long physical therapy and rehabilitation protocol!

ah, although, the point of a lot of these surgeries is to be rather clean? like, hiding the leads via intramedullary canals, using wireless myoelectrodes. personally, if Marius's arm popped away from his limb, i'd be imagining more wires and connectors and sensors running out of him than King Cole to his machines.

which, you know who else runs the risk of infection besides percutaneous leads? a stoma! which is exactly what this exposed implant is! especially when the infection rate is "well accepted" as 100 percent! ...okay, maybe that's a bit fearmongering. mostly, these infections are "superficial", only causing inflammation or drainage at the skin around the stoma from bacteria making it past the daily hygiene.

a skilled surgeon minimizing the amount of soft tissue that can shear, or crafting an epithelial seal around the abutement can lower this risk. but when it happens, it must be intervened with strong antibiotics, and fast, 'cause any infection close to underlying bone runs the risk of becoming a "deep infection". beyond that, the pain of just that "minor" infection can purportedly keep people bedridden.

alongside the whole predictable subset of issues that can arise when melding Human and Machine, i.e. bone deterioration (aseptic) or fracturing because of the implant, when loadbearing demands on the prosthetic are excessive- machine's fault- and the implant loosening or requiring explantation because of the bone, when natural remodeling fails to fill in the gaps between metal and residuum, or after osteomyelitis (septic) failure. simplisticly, human's fault.

accidents, high-impact events such as falls and sports, patient overuse, or improper rehabilitation (cough, cough, doubling over with my coughing) MARIUS (cough.) can cause both and all of those issues, exacerbated under the event that the components were already shitty. ...do i need to start coughing again, or are we in agreement?

despite their infrequency, managing infections and monitoring the integration's efficacy is a life-long maintenance. now, you've probably seen the catch here- how for Marius, and the mechanisms at large, as immortals whose whole shtick includes (as per a tumblr ask) never getting sick and shrugging off bullet wounds like burrs, he probably wouldn't be bothered by roughly any of this...

...but, during his initial implantation, with regards to the notion that Dr. Carmilla wasn't present? as well as for reasons that i'll touch later on...? suffice to say, hooo boy! eeks! yowzers! uh-oh!

but, hell, nothing says "botched" like pioneer procedures, am i right!

Why The Shit Does It Do That?

and kicking off the final section is my favourite subsegment, titled on the fly "What The Fuck Is That"! the fuck in question-

[ID: A zoomed-in screenshot of Marius's arm, showcasing a strange brass circle on the "upper" outer forearm, where two thin side-by-side wires, colored white and red, trail up and disappear into the laced corset arm cuff. /end ID]

in my initial brainstorming post, for those who saw it, you might recall that i mentioned the similarity of the white and red wires on the back of Marius's arm and MOSFET wires, whose electric nature implied a potential utilization of that weird brass thing on the back as a Solar Cell.

wellll, if you haven't already guessed, i changed my mind. no motors here, no sir! the wires, i'm afraid i can't explain, but with regards to the gas cartridges often being treated as a separate entity from the anthropomorphic prosthetic, from even the actuators that it powers, it could be an extraneous seal for when the arm is not connected to a canister source. so, not quite an insignificant residuum.

or, imagining Marius's arm as slightly more advanced, as a stopper cap to an internal basin that stores the hydrogen peroxide. by its appearance and function, not too dissimilar from a fuel cap in automotives :>

to quote myself from a reply i made in the comments of my interest check, i do believe that Marius's mechanism is Voidily, Outer-Godily powered in terms of immortality, so i think a benign generator like this would either be vestigial of its intended applications (a.k.a., Used By Normal People), or what makes it physically operate.

as for what electrically powers the servovalves and sensors... i dunno. brother, he can just die. (/ref)

operating under that paradigm, when the monopropellant has run out, it might be limp and nonresponsive, but far from dead. kind of like a limb out of socket! the arm falling inert might also harbinger a potential return of Phantom Limb pain! i'll actually link this one, since the normal article has since become paywalled, but in 2015, one Igor Spectic who took part in DARPA'S Haptix trials, described the phantom pain from his amputated hand as "a vice grip all around."

following the experiment's development of generating communicable sensation in a prosthetic hand, where the manually varied electrical signals from pressure sensors on the hand's surface were sent to C-FINE electrodes around his remaining ulnar, radial, and median nerve trunks, the pain was reported to have decreased immensely, if not entirely disappear!

this is good news for Marius, if his arm is active. and this is bad news for Marius, if his arm isn't active. ah, aporia my beloved!

okay, self-plagiarism over. onto the most lovingly terrible section! Skiiin!

for some prelude- remember those Artificial Muscles that i kind of left in the dust? the shape-memory polymers who could hold 5000 times their own weight without permanently deforming at all? well, honesty corner, one of the features i somewhat lament losing in tandem with that whole charade is... the lead professor, Zhenan Bao.

chemical engineering is her field of expertise, and her team also pioneered a thin plastic "skin-like sensor" that could distinguish between pressures and accordingly interface with a neuron cell! and i was gonna do a little callback, start a bioengineering cinematic universe, all that fun stuff.

but, taking a step back, it becomes apparent that Zhenan's approach is So novel, that it literally can't interface with Marius in any of the ways that i've described. or that's in any way natural. what they did, see, was translate the electrical pulses into light pulses, and had those sensed by line of CNS neurons that were optogentically modified. a.k.a., they're specifically bioengineered to be influenced or activated by light frequencies.

it worked, but, not quite what we're looking for, you know? and, considering how we've already devoted lots of space to integrating Marius with the TIME microelectrodes and RAPHaEL proprioception feedback, i think we can just skip right to the part where we make this thing out of living tissue. Kofi said Marius's fingers were occasionally "organic", remember?

on that note, time to overhaul one of my cornerstone ideas on Marius's arm for, oh, say, the third time? we're getting to "she's not the same Aurora" levels, at this point! (just be glad i didn't have to turn to the fleshy phone case for research, hm?)

you know, i've noticed that a lot of these articles are just playing synonym hopscotch with each other? they don't quite care to reveal more information than the last one, the last one- just rephrase it a bit, getting more and more scant on as it goes down.

well! time to enthusiastically propogate the issue!

the broader goal by this particular team, from the University of Tokyo, is to trounce the uncanney valley by cultivating a sense of familiarity with The Artificial, under a predilection that robots would eventually be an integral staple in caretaker jobs. thankfully, i care roughly zero percent about that, so let's dig into the sciencey bits.

colloquially deemed a "biohybrid robot", the product of the experiment is cool, but not nearly so outlandish. it's actually marvelously simple! in fact, i'll keep the outline i had for "questions to answer" as a guide for us, since this subsegment runs on a big longer than my others.

How can it cover the metal?

we've already got the "covering robotic fingers" bit down on lock from the getgo, because this skin was specificially made to grow around a finger-mimicking structure! (this time, electrically driven.) it only faces strain at those typical three joints, but seems to "stretch and contract" rather forgivingly when it does!

since it's a different cadence from "grafting" on lab grown skin-sheets, adhered to each other and wrapped snug on the surface by stiches, which runs the parallel risk of the living skin incurring injury in the surgical-esque procedure, this recreation would prove a bit more complex. and fleshier.

How is it grown, exactly?

using a solution of "commercially available human cells", of course! which sounds like it should be appendaged by a * on the black market. but, hey, i know this song! from the meat berry video! we've all been haunted by Meat Berry in our recommendations, right? ...right?

okay, look, it's not as creepy as it sounds. it's actually comprised of the similar sort of ingredients in implants and hydrogels for severe burns- collagen, in that case, but the culture media also had dermal fibroblasts, both of whom are two big players in the building of connective tissue.

so with the robotic scaffold bathing calmly in that mixture, the cells, as they grew over the course of 3 days, naturally compacted and conformed to the surface's contour, as is the tendancy of collagen's elasticity and fibroblasts's traction. the team then moved it to an ablution of epidermal cells, keratinocytes, and let it develop that sealing outer layer for two weeks.

the whole sleeve ended up at about 1.5 millimeters thick, similar to an average human dermis! the scentists also lauded it for its "natural wrinkles", so... a win for Marius?

by the way, culture media- as per the meat berry video- is a solution primed with the nutrients, antibiotics, and hormones for the specific type of cell it intends to grow. it's usually a pinkish benadryl color, not naturally, but colored that way, and its hue shifts with the health of its condition, indicating to the cultivators whether it's gone bad or not.

just imagine Marius going "Raph I want organic fingers for our next performance :(" and she says, "okay, but remove them from your arm. they'll have to soak in the Science Fluids for about two weeks... beforehand."

ah, get it? get it? beforeha- [i am killed, veritably]

Does it need bloodflow?

NOPE. It pointedly doesn't have a circulatory system or sweat glands- basically only collagen and a layer to un-gooify it, right now, and it dries up (dies) when left out of the solution too long. that also means no nerves, but, eh, Marius could probably just sliiide some sensors under that bad boy.

that was actually a big selling point of one of the previous iterations of "artificial skin" i delved into researching, before i noticed that it technically duped the criteria what Kofi had originally stated as "organic". but, most incriminatingly, the prototype wasn't even skin! just some circle little sensors that "could be" placed under cosmetic silicone.

his version of the culture would also need some melanocytes, since the prototype flesh doesn't have even a bit of melanin, making it look either like a pepto bismol finger, when in the culture, or a ballistic gel dummy outside of it.

How realistic is it?

"Water repellant, self-healing, and with a texture that looks and feels like ours," as every article will happily tell you, one in particular repeated themselves 3 different ways in the same paragraph! in short- thank you epidermal, thank you fibroblasts, thank you collagen.

it's not yet up to par, however. apparently the cells weren't very mature, so although it could tolerate being pinched and stretched by the robotic joints, it was rather weaker than human skin should be. but, the epidermal could at least be picked up by tweazers! which hurts like a motherfucker, if you've ever done it.

and when these articles say "heal" they mean placing a "collagen bandage" over the clean, surgical slice, and letting the cells assimilate it into the wound. not to undercut (get it?) the achievement, though, because importantly this means the cells are living- the skin is alive! how about THAT for organic, Kofi!

Finally, what melange of mean things have articles called this scientific beauty?

icky-looking, sweaty, gooey, stinky, "westworld", "terminator", creepy, revulsive, ersatz, "out of a horror movie", and that it "looks like a, um". (you get three guesses, and none of them count. that's also why i'm giving no links this time, friends! sorry!)

also, y'all? hey y'all? this news came out, as of the time writing this (July 12th), almost Exactly a month ago. this is right now! we're LIVING in it! the future is HERE! and that just goes to show, folks- procrastination DOES pay off! because i, like, kicked this idea around for months... and months...

any! way! arriving at last to our closing statements, it is my firm bias that we would both benefit from making only as many wrap-up claims as further questions they raise. do i honestly expect any of them to be answered in TDOBVR? not a lick of hope! will i propose them anyway? absolutely!

most of these quandaries, i will admit, are conjucture stemming from one jokeful tweet. but when you add upon the more canonical layers, i.e., his mechanism lacking Dr. Carmilla's certified seal of approval, himself harboring a strangely outlier mistrust in the likelihood of true immorality, and in general, hailing from a planet that has regressed badly enough to go back to muskets, it would not surprise me if these conundrums came to pass at one point or another.

and on that peroration of resounding confidence, here goes nothing!

TLDR:

Marius's mechanism is styled, in general concept, after illustrations within a German "limb substitution" book from 1919 that ideates an externally gas-powered hand prostheses. revitalized under our "modern" technology, it is fuelled by catalyzing monopropellant hydrogen peroxide with iridium pellets in an internal reservoir.

a steel tubing network and small scale servovalves shuttle along the gas, providing the pneumatic cylinders with ample power for linear actuation, while the vapor leaves as an exhaust product through a crosshatch grille spanning the length of his inner forearm.

Plus sides are- stronger than most electromechanical prostheses, steel is very quite aesthetic

Downsides are- lacks an offhanded dexerity, constant need for fuel

as our counterpoint, let's indulge on some fun curiosities about Marius's healing factor- canonically the "device's self-regulation", as per Drive The Cold Winter Away. incipiently, if his patellas don't regenerate until he "dies," must his brain be clinically dead before he can start to heal? or does he just not share that preternatural haste of repair, where the assumption would be that he often meets death's clammy grasp quicker than any healing may have its finishing touches?

Marius's pneumatic hand is materially influenced by Virginia Tech's robotic RAPHaEL prototype, though altering RoMeLa's design to preserve the fuelant approach in its coordination. rocket-powered air fills up corrugated tubing within each finger for an enticingly individualized articulation, and an oscillatory grip strength is commanded by lowering and raising the air pressure at hand. the cosmetic shell of his entire arm, including the hand, is made of carbon fiber.

Plus sides are- fine tuned manipulation of objects, a sense of independence

Downsides are- no steampunk gears, a bit too heavy

seeing to it that his regeneration fails to be as thorough as his companions, and a stabilized form doesn't come back until death, would he still be able to recover minimally over the intervening weeks and months, like a normal person? gaping wounds to fibrous scars, deep infections to chronic sicknesses, whose remnants only get cleared away when he's fully dead, like one big reset button?

Marius has transverse intrafascicular multichannel electrodes interfacing with his peripheral nervous system to stimulate sensory feedback on the ulnar, radial, and median nerve trunks of his residual limb.

Plus sides are- increased somatosensory and kinematic precision, seeming metal as hell

Downsides are- neural scarring, and long-term glitches from signal crosstalk

on that note, during those rare occasions he survives the crew's raucous lifestyle for a continuous length of time, will his immune system begin responding appropriately untoward the traumatic, invasive, foreign implantation that is, in essence, his mechanism?

are there infections to ensue, and inflammation, and eventual scarring whose nature is inclined to cut off both his sense of touch and motor skills? by proxy, making him uncharacteristically ill and in considerable pain? (this line of thought, patently, is why i kicked up such a fuss about "wuauggh, his scar tissue! infections! stoma! blargh!")

Marius underwent a major implantation surgery to osseointegrate a threaded titanium stem, screw-fixation type, into his transhumeral. most likely, he did not have the resources at hand to abide by the prolonged rehabilitation protocol. there are no intramedullary leads going solely through his abutement, and the exoskeleton of his arm is inseparable from the indwelling fixture.

Plus sides are- remarkable stability, and rejuvinated osseoperception

Downsides are- acute infection, innate incompatibilities between skeleton and metal.

with the established hypothetical that he doesn't return to a generic save-state in an automatic fashion, we have to wonder- does he age? how slow, if altered at all? more pressingly, can his mechanism get worn down alongside it?

especially when taking into account how, while several pros-and-cons lists have praised the pneumatic actuator's simplicity under an impression of less oversight, that's once again treating the baby separate from the bathwater. maintenance of the several components, fuel lines and tight seals and valve fittings, required for reliable gas generation basically creates an inverse sunk cost.

whether he knows this or not, if the mechanism starts to act archaic and clunky after he's gone a bit too long without kicking the bucket, would he perhaps settle for a tune-up in lieu of literally biting the bullet? is he scared? is that why?

does walking head-first into certain doom become a reflex at the first sign of mechanical failure? is that why?

Marius, at a whim, may adorn his mechanism's fingers with living skin cultivated from commercially available human cells. ideally, his organics would be buffed by self sustaining perfusion channels, and melanocytes.

Plus sides- flesh, hell yeah!

Downsides- will be fingerless for a number of weeks, as the digits soak in the culture media petri dish

most of all, why doesn't he believe in immortality?

i've, well, got half an answer to that. 'cause when the contraption that's supposed to keep you alive already started out so messy, and makes no promises to keep you in top shape through your millennia of mangling and make-do, it's probably a bit hard to place the trust of eternity in its air-actuated hand, huh?

#the mechanisms #marius von raum #tdobvr #marius #oz.txt #this thing took two whole weeks to write y'all it is a Monster #oz.essay

[gunpowder-tim]

psst i know you like crochet things so if i posted pictures of all my crocheted octokittens would you like to see them? i have one for every mech + aurora, lyf, and carmilla

👀👀👀👀👀 yes please show meeeee

#rai.txt

[spinchs-field]

tell us about your mechs headcanons

woah thats crazy i was just thinking about them

it’s all gonna be under the cut. im just listing shit off

i know in canon, Aurora is mostly engine space with only a few common areas, but i like to think that she’s a massive ship that was built not just for war but also to live in, but not comfortably. the crew kinda made the place more enjoyable to spend eternity in. there’s a food storage area that the crew turned into an actual working kitchen and bar. there’s a huge common area that they turned into a living room (used to have a section of it walled off to act as a guest room for new Mechs, got rid of it after Carmilla left). there’s obviously a med bay, but Marius and Raphaella turned half of it into a living space/office. Raphaella’s lab used to be a storage room. Nastya’s “room” is the cockpit, so the place is a little messy, but pretty barren save for the tools scattered everywhere and trash she keeps forgetting to throw out. the crew sometimes get into arguments about how shitty all their decorating skills are despite the fact that Aurora genuinely loves all of it. it’s like jewellery or tattoos to her (:

Nastya and Jonny are biological siblings; twins, more specifically. they were separated at a very young age due to Jonny being kidnapped by Billy Vangelis. it was originally a hostage situation, but Billy got attached to the kid and decided to just raise him, telling the Tsar that Jonny was dead. Billy never told Jonny about his past, because he didnt want to make things more complicated than they already were. wasn’t till Ivy noticed how weirdly similar they were that they found out. Raphaella ran DNA tests on them (against their wills of course) and, lo and behold, Jonny finds out he’s been a prince his whole life. took him a while to adjust, but Nastya was overjoyed. someone in her family was alive, and that was enough

Brian is like 6′8″ and Ashes is 6′2″. why? it’s funny.

anatomically, Brian and the Toy Soldier are almost identical. Carmilla actually used TS as a blueprint for Brian’s body when she was rebuilding him.

Tim sleeps with really thin blankets and hates heavy clothing because it reminds him too much of the lead sheets from the war. also gets really nervous when he sees smoke without a source; reminds him of the gas attacks.

all the Mechs have scars from when Carmilla found them, except for Brian and TS, of course. they’re the only ones that don’t vanish with the healing process. Ashes has burn scars on their legs and chest. Nastya still has her gunshot wound. Jonny has a surgery scar from when he got mech’d. Ivy has a lot of scars, but the most prominent ones are the burn scars on her hands and arms. Marius has a scar on where his mechanical arm connects to his shoulder; the skin looks shredded and only slightly taken care of. Tim has burn scars around his eyes, of course. Raphaella’s scars can’t be seen very well, but if you look close enough, you can see where her skin tore away around where her spine is.

Nastya is cold like. all the time. Ashes, however, is very hot all the time. Nastya clings to Ashes like a damn leech when she’s especially cold. it’s actually how they became such good friends. Nastya just hung around Ashes long enough for them to want to talk to her

Jonny drinks very dangerous substances for fun. these include but are not limited to radium, gasoline, liquid novichok agents, pesticides, and enough alcohol to kill a man (this happens once every few months)

Marius may not be a doctor or a baron but damn if he can’t make a good cocktail. similarly, Brian is a very good cook (:

okay im done im sorry my brain has rotted from the inside out

#the crops #ult fav

[ceaseless-rambler]

hello, mechanisms enjoyer. I don’t know who you are but I got very into the mechs about a week ago and am hunting down mechs blogs. my mechs sideblog is @allthedoorsareopennow . who is your favourite mechanism. what is your favourite album. what is your favourite song. do you have a mechsona.

Favorite mechanisms is near impossible oh god. If you follow this blog for any length of time you will be subjected to Tim Time, which is when I watch gender rebels and then reblog every Gunpowder Tim post i can get my hands on. I also love Tim angst. However, he's not always my favorite. Sometimes it's Brian. Sometimes it's The Toy Soldier. Sometimes it's Ivy. Usually it's one of those though, I think

I'd have to say High Noon Over Camelot, although I do have every single song and one narrative track off Once Upon A Time (In Space) memorized

You could not possibly expect me to choose... even choosing one song off each album is impossible

I accidentally came up with a mechs oc at work once and then developed him further, if that counts. His name is Alaric Sterling and he used to be a ship pirate where he was the navigator and cartographer. He befriended a sea monster but none of the crew knew about it, and then when the crew saw this sea monster they attacked it. Alaric tried to stop them and they saw that as a betrayal so they keelhauled him. Carmilla had been doing something or other with the sea monsters and so decided to mechanize Alaric for the one he'd befriended, and his mechanism is woven into his skin where he was covered in wounds from the keelhauling. She also mechanized the sea monster but Alaric doesn't know this

[gunpowderdtim]

Hello! I was wondering what exactly the mechscord is?

an old now rather defunct discord that highkey went to hell. several of the mechs were in it in early 2020 but uh. fandoms gonna fandom and they left real quick do to a lot of reasons.

lots and lots of this fandoms culture/common fanon troupes/headcanons originated from us losing our collective minds in the mechschord. it died a slow painful death of the blacklist getting out of hand. you could not discuss carmilla with spoilering her every mention.

basically, it was a discord that The Mechs Themselves were in but then the fandom exploded and they left. that's really it. it still exists but its 'dm the mods for an invite' and i do not know their tumblr urls anymore and its a dead server.

#asks

[enigma-absolute]

Eddtober: hey! Pick a song for what you’d like to make! Any song! have fun!

Me: Haha entirety of Ulysses Dies At Dawn and The Bifrost Incident go brrrrrrrrrrr

So while I’m back at it again with my any% speedrun of Eddtober, I decided to combine prompts 15 and 16 into one while listening to the Mechanisms and make an Eddsworld AU of them, so meet the Eddchanisms!

For the most of you who DON’T know The Mechanisms, originally a backing band for the space-travelling vampire Dr Carmilla (who uh, “fell” out the airlock), they are/were a British steampunk cyborg time-travelling cabaret space-pirate band of (not-so) immortals who roam/ed across the universe in the starship Aurora, looking for violence, adventure, violence, and bittersweet and gruesome stories to tell. And they did!

The type of stories they tell/told are mainly sci-fi takes on fairy tales, folklore, and mythologies to the tunes of sea shanties, folk songs and hymns, and all of said stories are very gay and actually tie into lore of the Mechs themselves! (And their songs are actually, unironically bangers.)

My personal favourites are, as stated above, ‘Ulysses Dies At Dawn’ and ‘The Bifrost Incident’ (Greek myths in a gritty sci-fi noir and a train-based mystery with Norse Myths on board respectively). But ‘Once Upon A Time (In Space)’ (fairy tales corrupted into a sci-fi war epic) and ‘High Noon Over Camelot’ (sci-fi western interpretation of Arthurian legend) have been pretty fun too!

They released four main albums and two volumes of smaller stories before going out with a bang on the ‘Death to the Mechanisms’ concert, where… yeah, they died. That being said, their works are still around on bandcamp and youtube (with some filmed concerts even!), and their website is still up, with the fan channel TheVoidSings compiling whole lyric playlists of their music into one easy place. I recommend first listening to be one of their many, many versions of ‘Drunk Space Pirate’, their closing song from every concert.

Before I get carried away, let’s shift back to the Eddchanisms: a spinoff four-man band who, upon building their ship off old fragments of the Aurora, set off on their own adventures after being Mechanised by the original Mechanisms (mostly). They tell their own stories, but sometimes they come to a world still suffering the effects of the original Mechs, and so they may occasionally retell the Mechs’ own too. So let’s meet the Crew!

Edd: Design inspired by Baron Marius Von Raum and Jonny D’Ville, as well as regular Future Edd. The Captain of the ship, lead vocalist and storyteller. His drawing hand is the mechanised one. He claims his hand is impenetrable and unbreakable, but he will deny the story of it breaking when he once punched Jonny D’Ville in the face. It’s perfectly fine, it doesn’t need repairs.

Tom: Design inspired by regular future Tom and Jonny D’Ville (though I will admit, it’s up to change). vice-captain First Mate. Under tutelage from Ashes ‘O’ Reilly, is the bassist of the band and another vocalist. Confirmed to be a friend of the Void— wait a sec, is… is he even meched? Nobody’s sure, but a bassist is important.

Matt: Design inspired by Marius Von Raum and a vampiric vibe. Obviously. Ship’s ‘doctor’, his skull is mechanised. Often switches between lute and guitar as well as another vocalist. A sired vampire, possibly due to his naivety to sneaking into Dr Carmilla’s lab?

Tord: Design inspired by Drumbot Brian and The Toy Soldier (but it’s really up to the most change in the future). Ship’s mechanic, said to have his vocal chords are mechanised, but it’s suspected that he’s really mechanised elsewhere. Playing drums and banjo as frequently as Drumbot Brian did as well as being a vocalist. It’s ALSO suspected that he could have been an experiment of Dr Carmilla’s (or really, a blend of Marius and Raphaella la Cognizi’s), since there’s evidence of a strange combination of the Toy Soldier and Nastya’s abilities regarding his Mechanism.

#eddtober #eddsworld #eddtober 2022 #the mechanisms #the Eddchanisms #my creations #chris rambles #hey mechanisms tumblr sorry for dropping this in here i just think you guys are neat and it makes sense that one band of British assholes #should have another au being a band of British assholes #it makes sense #please don’t send the marquis de all the knives after me

[eternaljunkyard]

i just realized why the mechs resonate with me so hard (sorry this is gonna be long)

They are so wildly nonconforming it’s beautiful,,, every single one of them gives me the strongest sense of “I Do What I Want With My Identity Cuz It’s Mine” and if that isn’t the most visceral, amazing feeling

Their music isn’t always my jam, sometimes I’m really sad that I never got to experience it in the moment, sometimes I’m angry about the ending that I don’t have the heart to listen to more than once

But each of their characters have such rich backstories and interactions with the others and unique characteristics that they resonate with me in different ways — the power of choosing who you want to be and taking that and actually Making Something out of it

I want to do that

- Nastya gives me a lot of vibes of myself

- Jonny has wicked eyeliner and the love for storytelling

- TS is unlabelable

- Ashes burns things down and I respect it

- Raphaella can fly

- tbh I don’t know much about Marius but he’s there and I support him

- Brian has a lot of crises and often not a lot of choice

- GPT has excellent hair and so much quiet confidence

- Ivy likes to learn and collect

- Carmilla has the cheekbones

And I wasn’t sure why they’re so near and dear to my heart until I thought about it really hard but… they’re just people doing things they love. Sometime, a group of people got together and decided to make a band of immortal steampunk cyborg storytelling space pirates because that’s their jam.

They inspire me so much 🥺🥺 plus they’re just all absolutely gorgeous so~

#i love them I love them I love them #they give me hope #the mechanisms band #the mechs #nastya rasputina #jonny dville #ivy alexandria #baron marius von raum #raphaella la cognizi #gunpowder tim #drumbot brian #dr carmilla #the toy soldier #ashes o'reilly

[obii-wan-kenobiii]

what is the mechanisms? based on your posts i'm 50% sure they're a band?

hi omg okay permission to infodump???? if you say yes i will reblog this and ramble for half an hour. actually i don;t want to wait so im just gonna put it under the cut (skip to the end for a very short summarized verison of everything)

SO THIS IS THE LEAD SINGER AND HIS CHARACTER IS JONNY DVILLE (he’s played by jonny sims) AND SO THEYRE ALL IMMORTAL SPACE PIRATES BTW AND SO IT’S SIMILAR TO A MUSICAL

SO TO BECOME IMMORTAL THEY GOT A PART OF THEIR BODY REPLACED BY SOMETHING WHICH IS CALLED THEIR MECHANISM(hence the band name) AND SO JONNYS IS HIS HEART AND SO HE HAS A MECHANICAL HEARt  AND HE GOT MECHANISED BY THIS VAMPIRE NAMED DR CARMILLA WHO LEFT THE BAND;  SHE ORIGINALLY FORMED THE BAND TO BE HER BACKING BAND BUT THEN LEFT AND THE ‘canon’ explanation for this is that jonny pushed her out an airlock

marius!!! so his name is marius von raum and his mechanism is one of his arms

he plays violin for the band and voices some of the screamier characters

oh!! jonny dville is the lead singer btw :)

okay and uhhhhh nastya rasputina!! she left the band in early 2015 for personal reasons but i still love her and am pretending she is still there she plays violin and doesn’t voice any characters but has appeared as herself in one of the albums

oh!!! also their spaceship is sentient and named aurora and her and nastya are dating <333 lesbian rights

and this is aurora 

drumbot brian!! as the exact opposite to jonny, his mechanism is everything but his heart, and he plays banjo and sings a bit too and he has this switch that has two modes, means justify ends and ends justify means which are two morality modes and so on mje he can’t do anything he would consider immoral but on ejm it’s the opposite of that

( my autocorrect changed ejm to run at first and that’s accurate honestly 😭😭)

oh did i mention jonny dville has canonically committed every non sexual crime?? jonny dville mr king of consent ily. maybe you’re a bloodthirsty murderer who kills people for fun but <333

okay uhhh ashes o reily!!! mx. o reily i love you please marry me i love them sm okay. uh the crews resident arsonist, plays bass and voices a few characters!! their voice is so hhhng. they burned down their entire home planet

brian got shot into space pew pew pew and floated there for a while until he was eventually found by doc carmilla 

and jonny is the first mate, he’ll tell you he’s the captain but don’t listen to him

brian is the pilot

ashes is the quartermaster

nastya is the engineer, oh and nastya’s mechanism is her blood!! i don’t think i mentioned that lol

and marius is the doctor (he says he has a degree but nobody has actually seen it so.)  not that you really need a doctor when these nine kill eachother regularly but anyways

but raphaella la cognizi, the ships science officer!! as cruel and brutal as she is… science! plays piano and voices multiple characters, her mechanism is her wings 

ivy alexandria!! the ships archivist :)  her mechanism is her brain, she plays the flute and one other instrument i believe? she doesn’t voice characters afaik but she has appeared as herself in an album once.  she stores information!! she’s like a living data collection center 

the toy soldier!!! it’s… present, as usual. we’re not really sure what it does, nobody is, all we know is that it showed up and won’t go away. it’s just happy to be there

and finally!!! gunpowder “prettiest mech” tim!!  he’s so,,,,, hhhhhhng.  his mechanism is his eyes!! he plays guitar and voices a few characters in albums!! he’s the weapons guy 

ABDHDHHSHD ALRIGHT NOW THE ALBUMS

okay so one thing you have to understand before all this is that they take old folk stories and retell them but make them either in space, cowboys, and much, much gayer

their first album, once upon a time (in space), think disney but much more violent and also lesbians

and then there’s ulysses dies at dawn!! it’s like green myth but mafia!!! ahdhhfhsjd it’s so good

tales to be told is just backstory songs/songs that didn’t make the cut for albums, it’s still great it’s just not one defined plot line as each song follows something different unlike the rest of the albums

high noon over camelot!! arthurian legend but cowboys and also mordred is trans and arthur guinevere and lancelot are all dating eachother ( i,,,,,cried at the end of hnoc :)))))

THE BIFROST INCIDENT!!! MY FAVORITE ALBUM OKAY 

SO THINK NORSE MYTH BUT MAGIC TRAIN IN SPACE 

AND THE MAIN CHRACATER IS LYFRASSIR EDDA

so basically

odin sends a train, the ratatosk express through the bifrost to get from midgard to asgard but the train arrives in midgard eighty years late and so lyfrassir edda is assigned to investigate it  and so it’s like this whole super elaborate plot and it’s amazing

and takes to be told. vol 2 is the same idea as the first one so

and then finally,,, death to the mechanisms :(  they broke apart in 2020 and they recorded their final concert and released it as an album and it’s always rlly sad to listen to :((

and finally,,,,,,,,,,,, backstories,,,,,,,,,,,,,

so jonny killed his dad bc he had collected debt and then proceeded to kill the person who made him kill his dad bc of said debt and then ran away with doc carmilla

nastya ran away from her family after she accidentally got them killed?  fun fact thta i noticed bc i read too far into everything: so nastya’s name is actually anastasia but she doesn’t go by that, and nastya means reborn AND SO SHE WAS REBORN AFTER SHE ACCIDENTALLY GOT HER WHOLE FANIMY KILLED AND AHHDHFHSHJFF

i have émotions abt these characters

tim fought in the war against the moon kaiser and when his ,,,,,,,,,,,best friend’’’’’’’’ got killed he blew up the moon bc he got mad and also he went on like a massive killing spree

marius doesn’t actually have a set backstory yet!! his actor is working on an album but they haven’t released it yet

raphaella also doesn’t have a backstory yet i believe?

ashes burned down their entire home planet bc some guy screwed them over

brian got shot into space pew pew pew and floated there for a while until the doc picked him up

ivy lived in a library and doesn’t remember her life, she got picked up by the doc and mechanised after she died

the toy soldier was made as a toy to serve someone and it stole its voice from an angel (heavily implied to be some sort of singer but i’m not sure) and it’s just stayed there

so this was. badly summarized and not well said but also hhhng thank you for asking me!!! basically the people in the band play characters who do retellings of stories, and they play characters in the stories. they’re all immortal space pirates and have a mechanical body part which is how they became immortal. they retell the stories like ten times gayer and it’s fantastic anyways. 

#yayyyy badly done ramble #ill probably edit this later but

[rystonlentil]

2022 Podfic Roundup!

(2021 here)

forever hurtling towards the earth, by vienna_salvatori The Mechanisms Raphaella la Cognizi, Dr. Carmilla teen and up 24m 3s

Brilliant scientist Raphaella la Cognizi is down on her luck. She might've made more breakthroughs in her field over the past six months than most could hope to achieve in a lifetime, but it's still not enough. Her project isn't working, and she's run out of time. No one else sees the potential. No one else appreciates the majesty of it, the impossible breakthrough with every painstakingly assembled connective joint, the full sum of scientific knowledge etched into the sweeping curves of not-quite-feathers. It's not enough. And yet- And yet there is a woman standing in the middle of Raphaella la Cognizi's lab, annotating her diagrams and rearranging her wires, and even though it might kill her, Raphaella realises she might just have a chance.

when midnights break their sleep, by SummerFrost The Witcher Geralt/Jaskier, Geralt/Jaskier/Yennefer, Geralt & Renfri mature 1hr 48m 55s

The first Snapchat that anyone ever sends Geralt is a picture of his own irritated face. shrike_princess: can u believe this dumbass finally got a snapchat bc a cute boy asked him nicely "It wasn't even that nicely," Geralt says flatly. AKA: The one where Geralt is a bartender and Jaskier sings karaoke.

Blurry .jpeg of a Little Glass Bird, by spaghetti_garrote Five Nights at Freddy’s mature 51m 44s

In an alternate universe, where instead of hanging around Hurricane as a security guard, William Afton takes on the identity of Dave Miller, a widower and art gallery secretary in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont...

I Want My Octokitten Back, by shella688 The Mechanisms teen and up 6m 13s

Gunpowder Tim has lost his octokitten. What if he never sees it again? WAIT He has seen his octokitten... (A Mechs version of I Want My Hat Back, by Jon Klassen.)

where no man (should have) gone before, by fushifables Stellar Firma teen and up 28m 45s

“You– You’re not going to stay?” he was saying nervously. “Don’t you think you should... er, instruct me? Commentate? Mock me for my hubris? Please Hartro anything—” “Stop whining, Trexel,” Hartro said, pressing a large green button on the console in front of her with a flourish. “I have zero-gravity yoga, so you’ll have to manage on your own. Just remember,” she added, making for the door, “If you die in the HoloDome—trademark Stellar Firma, Limited—you die in real life! Toodles!”

The Point Of Clothes, by pikablob Five Nights at Freddy’s Vanessa & Glamrock Freddy & Gregory general 16m 1s

After taking Gregory in, Vanessa takes him to get new clothes for the first time. While there, he plucks up the courage to ask for something specific.

so i’m the dragon (big deal), by SummerFrost The Witcher Renfri/Yennefer, Geralt/Jaskier/Yennefer, Jaskier & Renfri, Geralt & Renfri explicit 2hr 51m 0s

If Renfri were straight and also someone who believed she needed a relationship to have a meaningful existence, she'd probably marry Geralt and not totally hate her life. Luckily she's neither of those things, so she's fucking Geralt's girlfriend instead.

You’ll Figure It Out When You Get There, by TheQuietWings Five Nights at Freddy’s Vanessa & Glamrock Freddy & Gregory teen and up 15m 3s

Vanessa doesn't know exactly what she's supposed to do now. It turns out there is no 12 step program for recovering from being manipulated and possessed by a child murderer who likes to dance around in a rabbit suit. or, an ex-security guard and a piece of stolen property have a chat while Gregory robs a gas station blind.

Nothing Really Sticks, by Rosie447 Stranger Things Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington & Nancy Wheeler teen and up 1hr 11m 9s

Steve cuts his hair with safety scissors in the bathroom of Family Video. Maybe he's less okay than he's been letting on.

The Very Best People, by scioscribe Stranger Things Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington teen and up 1hr 45m 40s

“Why are you messing up my undercover operation, Steve?” Dustin said. “Do you want another tear to open up in the space-time continuum and suck us all into the Upside Down? Do you want the entire world to turn into squishy, mind-flayed zombies because you and Robin couldn’t get your shit together?” (Or, the one where Steve and Robin go undercover in an evil suburb.)

Case #0222411, by FireflysWriting The Magnus Archives, Goncharov (1973) general 6m 37s

Statement of Maria Angelova regarding her supposed involvement in the film Goncharov (1973). Statement given 24th November 2022.

A Mile Away, by lenaballena Check Please! Nursey/Dex, Chowder & Nursey & Dex teen and up 5hr 32m 45s

The thing is, he’s had study nights and TV marathons in Chowder’s room. He’s gotten stoned in Shitty’s, and Lardo’s, crashed on Jack’s floor after a kegster, gone to Bitty’s for advice, and checked Ransom and Holster’s for ghosts. If it were anyone else’s, Nursey would at least have some indicator of what was going on, because he’d be able to recognise the decorations, the layout. But Derek Nurse wakes up in William Poindexter’s room and has no idea where the fuck he is.

A Christmas Carol - Mechanisms Style, by otherhawk The Mechanisms teen and up 18m 34s

On the night before Space Christmas, Ebenezer Scrooge is going to change his ways. Brian will make sure of it, with some unhelpful help from his friends.

#bonus feature of this year is you can hear my voice getting lower #probably going to make a compilation of that eventually since I didn't do the standard 'here's my voice' videos #podfic #the mechanisms #the witcher #fnaf #stellar firma #stranger things #the magnus archives #goncharov #omgcp #430planets

[sp1resong]

a mechs/warrior cats au? when i'm still working on the wof one? it's more likely than you'd think!

this started off as me making up potential warrior cats names for each mech and it spiraled like an ant. anyways.

basically, they're all from various AUs and possible timelines of warriors, and technically exist within the same multiverse as my rewrite + the Eldritch Bristlefrost AU, although this never comes into play aside from the lore being more similar to the rewrite than warriors canon.

onto the characters!

Dr. Carmilla is Frostshade, an ex-healer of RiverClan. Her timeline is one where Darktail succeeded in driving out the Clans, leading them to die out over time.

Following her death, she found herself in... what might have been StarClan at one point, where she proceeded to fuck around and find out. You... pretty much know how that ends.

She may or may not be her timeline's version of Frostpaw.

Jonny D'Ville is Foxfang, a former warrior of he-says-it's-ThunderClan-but-he-might-be-lying-for-main-character-privileges. His timeline is pretty much the canon timeline, in the 'you can't prove it didn't happen' way.

Ashes O'Reilly is Ashfire, a former rogue. Kind of. It's complicated.

In their timeline the Clans had dispersed over time, leading to a number of smaller groups that kept some but not all Clan customs. The Sevens were one such group, keeping... pretty much just the naming conventions.

Drumbot Brian is Copperpelt, a former healer of SkyClan. In his timeline, SkyClan managed to drive out Darktail and as such never moved to the lake.

He's a former loner, presumably; a patrol found him wandering around the territory with no memory and were like 'may as well keep him lol'

Gunpowder Tim is Stormleap, a former warrior of ThunderClan. He and Bertie (Birdwhistle) are former kittypets who were recruited by ThunderClan, who were at war with ShadowClan because their leader (Moonstar) was an asshole. tim backstory ensues.

fun meta fact: he's named Stormleap because of how the moonstone got fucking exploded by a lightning strike. so that's a little roundabout reference

Ivy Alexandria is Ivyflight, a former mediator of ShadowClan. She's from some variation of the canon timeline's future.

Nastya Rasputina is Snowsky of GlacierClan, from a timeline where the Clans more blatantly conquered the mountains (the Tribe doesn't exist in any of these timelines because of. all the many many problems and issues, but there were certainly cats there at the time who weren't too pleased with being conquered).

The Toy Soldier is ???? dude I don't think that's even a cat

a wooden toy that was probably supposed to be a cat but is fairly simplified. everyone in every timeline they travel through just passes it off as normal. no one's sure if it's a possessed toy, an AI, fully mechanized or what. but either way it sure is There

Marius Von Raum is Mottledfur, a former rogue/semi-warrior of WindClan (he worked for them but wasn't really a member). He is also from a potential canon future.

Raphaella la Cognizi is Cricketwing, a former healer of SkyClan. She's from a timeline where SkyClan didn't find the lake, and just kind of adapted to a wandering lifestyle.

The Aurora is... something, for sure. She's less bound to one reality than the Shadow (eldritch bristlefrost au) but is nonetheless likely formed from one faded soul or another. Despite this, her consciousness is complete and seemingly unimpaired, and Frostshade has figured out how to communicate with her.

#the mecatnisms #< that's this au's name now. i'm not sorry #the mechanisms #spire rambles #my aus #i am tired. should probably sleep #bye losers i'm off to get some fuckin rest #(they lie; like a lying liar who lies)

[seaglassdinosaur]

Me, trying to figure out the Mechanisms timeline: I hate this, I hate this, I hate everything about this, why would you make this so unnecessary complicated?

#it just #it messes me up because we get the lore in tiny snippets #and from that I guess #not every mech knows Carmilla? #I don’t like how messy it is #and worse than the lore snippets #it’s all spread out #not just on a website plus the albums no #we have to deep dive to get the deets #discord snapshots! shared google docs! random playlists on youtube of live events! #I love their music but this is the evilest way to put info out there. #the mechs #the mechanisms #my post #oh! and how about the part with Tim and Ivy? #who shows up first? #Tim was apparently mechanized by the crew #and then he shows up on Ivy’s planet before she’s immortal (I think. he was referenced as a man with silver eyes) #so who came first? #Tim or ivy? #I cannot express my burning hatred for this evil timeline.

[ashes-orielly]

Doc Carmilla could have had the decency to mechanize a therapist for the crew before she fell out of the airlock. Because they would be a mech too and that means the crew can't escape them by starting a war or going to jail for a few decades or anything like that. Eventually they would end up on the Aurora some years later and the therapist would be like, "Since you missed your last appointment, I scheduled you a new one for right now. Now, how did becoming a god affect your self-image?"

And the mechs can't used their tried and true method of killing people to avoid difficult conversations on them. Every time one of the crew shoots the therapist they're like, "I know this is a difficult topic, but lashing out doesn't help anyone. How can we regulate those emotions in healthier ways?"

They would absolutely infuriate the crew and I just think it would be very funny. Plus they're all desperately in need of therapy and Marius doesn't count because he's not a real doctor.

#original content #the mechanisms #imagine making the mechs go to therapy #just imagine it

[anotherhawk]

Jonny d'Ville, for the headcanon ask game

@nammikisulora Thanks! But. Um. How in the world do you define what is and is not a realistic headcanon when it comes to Jonny fucking d'Ville?

Headcanon A: realistic

Jonny is asexual (and kinky). This combined with his tendency to absolutely overlook anything that he, personally, does not find interesting leads to him being the last person board to be aware of Nastya and Aurora's serial relationship, despite also having been there literally since it started. He has on numerous occasions had full conversations with members of the crew without apparently noticing that they were mid coitus. He's (obviously) not naive, just startlingly disinterested and frequently hyperfocused on something else.

Headcanon B - unrealistic but funny

He was actually still a teenager when he was mechanised, and after Carmilla had to listen to him whining about being carded, acne and his voice occasionally cracking for a century or so, she came up with a way to fool his brain and his mechanism into reconstructing his body to be a few years older. Every now and then, when most of him is destroyed by Shenanigans, this fails and the rest of the crew gets a few days of teenage Jonny, before he manages to get Raphaella to fix it for him.

Headcanon C: heart crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

In all the millenia he has been alive, no one has ever told Jonny that they love him and he 'knows' on an instinctive level that is because there is absolutely nothing lovable about him.

Headcanon D: unrealistic but I will disregard Canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

After Carmilla goes out the airlock, Jonny still goes to her concerts whenever he can. He makes sure to dress down - nearly parted hair, no eyeliner and sweater vests - so she doesn't recognise him. She always does. She doesn't say anything.

Sometimes she goes to a Mechs concert, wearing a large floppy hat and Groucho Marx glasses. Jonny pretends not to see her, but no matter what show they're actually performing, he makes sure to throw in Elysian Fields, just so she can listen to him play the part of a man who seeks his happy ending in death. She hates every second of it, but she always stays.

Huh. I honestly think I could have swapped most of these around and it would still work.

#you ask i answer #jonny d'ville #the mechs #my writing