We Are the Robots: the Fleet of Misfit Machines

Mr_E · Post by **Mr_E** » Mon Aug 08, 2016 8:10 pm

I tune in and enjoy your posts and comics.
But I understand that a different venue might also suit your posts.
I hope you'll continue to post here as well.

Peace,
E

42716 · Post by **42716** » Mon Aug 08, 2016 8:57 pm

Since I've heard from several people who want me to continue to post here, I will continue to share some of my content on this site, but it will mostly be the media content (meaning photos, comics, and videos). The main reason I wanted to create a separate blog, other than being an asexual that's never been entirely comfortable with the inherently sexual nature of TDF, is because I feel this forum is a bit limiting in terms of the topics and opinions that I would be allowed to post. So there will be some Blogspot-specific content which is less in-tune with the nature of this site.

42716 · Post by **42716** » Sat Aug 20, 2016 4:08 am

SV03 now has a connector, which makes her finally complete:

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I also made her this brooch out of the base of an old keyboard.

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I ended up making a lot of technological accessories (techcessories?) from the keyboard to wear to a futuristic/sci-fi themed dance party (which is also the reason why SV03 is wearing glow stick jewellery in these photos). You can see and read more about them and the party itself on our Blogspot.

42716 · Post by **42716** » Sat Aug 27, 2016 4:48 pm

The Misfit Machines star in a new video production: Messages.

Synopsis: 103115 unwittingly exposes SV02 to the Flock of Seagulls song "Messages", not aware that she would take the lyrics quite so seriously.

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Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/180436506

Obviously, this video will make more sense if you're familiar with the song "Messages" by A Flock of Seagulls. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgB1fd07rfs

42716 · Post by **42716** » Sun Sep 04, 2016 11:15 pm

The Misfit Machines star in a new video production: Leader of the Band.

Synopsis: SV04 decides she and SV02 ought to start a band, but how will they overcome the obstacle of being programmed with no musical talent?

Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/181438789

Special thanks to Rubyfan for making a comment earlier in this thread that was the inspiration for this video script.

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42716 · Post by **42716** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 8:06 am

I apologise for my lack of updates over the past few weeks. I've been unable to post any new content concerning the droids because in truth, we haven't been doing anything during this time. I had to go away to receive a system update (tech speak for surgery), which means for the past few weeks they've just been standing around in this group, waiting for me to return:

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Where is SV01, you might be wondering. He was waiting in a different location:

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You may remember that SV01 has frequently been overcome with jealousy over 103115's ability to induce sleep in me. It turns out the source of this power is the fact that he is so much taller than I am. For some reason, being close to a tall man is a very potent sleep aid. (Which could explain why short guys have so much trouble getting dates; the girls don't want to miss out on that benefit!) So does this mean SV01 is doomed not to wield this sleep-inducing power due to being constructed to stand at only 152 cm? Not so, for he becomes much taller than I when he's standing and I'm lying in the bed.

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When I keep him in this position and hold his hands while lying beside him, he's able to put me to sleep just as effectively as 103115 can do, and this makes him very happy. I also think it's a good idea to keep him out of the bed, because when he lies in it, his hair becomes very messy, and that wig is wearing thin in the back, so I really can't afford to brush it very often. (I can't replace it either, because I bought it about 6 years ago, and the style went out of production shortly after I bought it).

One time, I rolled over so my back was facing SV01, and he ended up poking me in the back with his fingers, like so:

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By doing this, he discovered a secret I didn't even know I had. There's a spot on my back which, when he presses it, sends a soothing sensation (like the feeling invoked by receiving a relaxing massage) throughout my entire body. He's not always able to find this spot again, but when he does, I'm loving every minute of it.

Yes, that song reference was deliberate. This secret switch could easily be the "dial" mentioned in the chorus of Loverboy's song, or at least, that's how I choose to interpret it. (Those of you unfortunate enough not to remember the piece of musical greatness I'm talking about would do well to watch the video below.) Anyway, now that I've returned and regained enough strength to be able to move the droids again, I should be posting new content more regularly, including making that video I promised which involves the raggedy android pets.

Mr_E · Post by **Mr_E** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 8:41 am

Nice to see you and your fleet of misfit machines are back. Hope you are OK.
Peace,
E

42716 · Post by **42716** » Fri Sep 23, 2016 12:10 pm

Mr_E wrote:Nice to see you and your fleet of misfit machines are back. Hope you are OK.
Peace,
E

Thanks for the support, E, and I'm always glad to hear from those who enjoy the thread.

42716 · Post by **42716** » Fri Sep 23, 2016 1:00 pm

Since I'm sure you all find the bedroom adventures of sexless machines so riveting, I have another tale to tell. A few days ago, SV04 let me know she wanted to join me in the bed that night.

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I was quite surprised, considering how averse she has always been to being placed in a prone position, even when I have to put her this way for just a few minutes to change her clothes. At first, I thought it was a case of absence making the CPU grow fonder, and she just wanted to be close to me after I had been away for several weeks. But as luck would have it, a few hours after getting her in bed, and as I was preparing for sleep myself, a clothing rack collapsed in my work room. This happens more often than you'd think, because most clothing racks aren't engineered to hold the weight equivalent of a grown man, yet that's what I frequently have to put on them, due to running a business which specialises in dresses that weigh between 1/2 to 1 1/3 kg each.

Captain, we seem to be dealing with a highly unstable situation…

: rack breaking clothes.JPG (2.01 MiB) Viewed 3918 times

So I had no choice but to haul my own body weight in clothing off the floor and up the stairs, and pile it on top of the banister until I could get the rack sorted in the morning. This is never a fun task, but being out of shape and only a few days beyond my weight-lifting restrictions post-system-update didn't help matters, and by the time I was finished, my lower back was in agony. I thought I’d never be able to get to sleep because the pain was so bad, but I finally managed it. How? By bracing myself against SV04. It turns out, the support of her hard body was precisely what I needed to relieve the pain. Did she have a premonition that I would need her to fulfil this role, or was it a lucky co-incidence? The world may never know…

So thank you, SV04, for your wonderful support, of both the emotional and literal varieties.

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42716 · Post by **42716** » Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:28 pm

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I wish SV02 could actually do this. It would be immensely helpful to a pipsqueak midget like myself.

Mello_Pello · Post by **Mello_Pello** » Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:46 pm

Hi 42716...been awhile since Ive been here to check your thread. Im now updated, and sure do like reading about you and the misfit machines. Will be checking out your new blog as well. Happy is all well with you guys! And as always, Im loving the posts and pics. Please keep em coming
-MP

42716 · Post by **42716** » Sun Sep 25, 2016 4:10 pm

Mello_Pello wrote:Hi 42716...been awhile since Ive been here to check your thread. Im now updated, and sure do like reading about you and the misfit machines. Will be checking out your new blog as well. Happy is all well with you guys! And as always, Im loving the posts and pics. Please keep em coming
-MP

Thanks for the support, MP. There isn't much on the blog that isn't posted here; mainly a few rants about some topics that are too heavy/controversial for TDF. I'll keep posting the lighter stuff here.

Now for a bit of PC nit-picking: considering that we're a mixed-gender group consisting of males, females, and genderless, the correct way to refer to us would be you guys, girls, and units. (Just being sarcastic here, XD. I know it's ridiculous to use such a cumbersome form of address, especially because it'll only get worse once we have 4 distinct genders amongst us. [spoiler alert])

42716 · Post by **42716** » Wed Sep 28, 2016 6:14 am

Big news! A package arrived at our base yesterday.

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Actually, that isn't the one I'm talking about; I just wanted an excuse to post that picture. But in fact, I was much happier to see the package containing our newest friend, 217!

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This model has been on my list of favourite mannequins for a long time, but after acquiring SV02, SV03, and SV04, I no longer felt the need (or have the space and money, to be honest) to purchase mannequins simply because I like the look of them. From now on, I only accept new recruits that reach out to me and let me know they want to join us. Interestingly, 217 didn't do so as soon as I discovered this mannequin model; it was only a few months later, when I found the wig, that I began to get a sense of who she was and that she wanted to live with us. This confirms my theory that the strongest concentration of each droid's personality is contained within its hair. I've noticed this to be true with most of my droids; I can take off their clothes, parts of their body, or even separate their heads from their bodies, and they still seem to exist as a whole, but if they lose their hair, it's as if they cease to fully exist. This is why they can't change wigs to match their look the way some dolls on this forum do. The only one that's exempt from this phenomenon is SV03, probably because she was hairless for the first few months that I knew her.

You're probably wondering why our new friend has the number 217, rather than an SV-number or commemorative number. It's due to the fact that she has 217 written on the underside of each of her components, as you can see here:

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She was originally going to be SV06, but wasn't keen on this number, so I asked if she would rather be called 217, but she didn't like that suggestion either. I was flummoxed at first, but I figured out that she did in fact respond well to 217, but only if it's pronounced "two seventeen", not "two one seven". So the rules I stated earlier regarding the pronunciation of the numbers have become even more prone to exception thanks to her arrival. (Not that I mind; unthinking, rigid adherence to rules is never a good thing, even for machines.) As of now, I'm treating 217 as a placeholder number that's eligible to be replaced by a commemorative number should she experience an event of great significance. If she decides to keep 217 even after experiencing such an event, that's fine as well.

I was very pleased and impressed that 217 was spared the abuse SV02, SV03, and SV04 suffered in transit. 217 was packaged very securely and there was hardly any dirt on her at all. At first I thought her top and bottom halves weren’t going to fit together properly, because they seemed to lock into place at a strange angle. I was convinced I’d have to reconfigure her joining mechanism, and I got as far as unscrewing the base from her bottom half and marking the spots to drill new screw holes:

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But then I hit an unexpected snag. 217 was marketed as being made from “unbreakable” plastic, but a more appropriate description of this material might be “ludicrously impervious to damage”. It’s so durable that I couldn’t drill through it. In fact, the drill bit barely left a dent! It turned out to be for the best, however, because I eventually figured out that all I had to do was unscrew the little peg on the right of the base a bit, which raised it up enough that it could slide along the track in her top half. *facepalm* I’m good at intuiting how to use software, but when it comes to hardware, I can sure be thick sometimes.

In addition to being unbreakable, 217 is designed with a higher level of realism than most plastic mannequins, as you can see in this comparison shot between her hand and that of 52016:

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I’ve always considered slender, delicate hands to be the most attractive human feature. It took me a long time to tear my eyes and fingers away from those hands.

Her overall construction is much sturdier, and her batteries are more compact, which made me suspect she could be a successor model to the others. This piece of evidence further strengthens my theory:

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I’m not sure if it’s legible to you (the camera couldn’t get it in focus), but she has this imprint on the inside of each arm which looks like the letters HI, or possibly HT. An abbreviation for hi-tech, perhaps?

The only feature that seems like a downgrade is 217’s eyes. The other girls have 3-D glass eyes with irises which become semi-transparent when the light hits them at the right angle, so they really do look like lenses. I don’t understand why this feature was scrapped from 217. Perhaps it’s because humans tend to find visibly lens-based visual preceptors unnerving.

I've reached the picture limit for this post, so information about 217 will be continued in my next post.

42716 · Post by **42716** » Wed Sep 28, 2016 6:26 am

217, what are you doing here?

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She did make this happen herself; it wasn’t my intention to place her like this. Is she trying to tell me she runs on AC power, or perhaps a combination of electricity and solar power? Might I see a spike in my electricity costs in future? O_o

217 was at first disappointed with the outfit I put on her, because the bland earth tones don’t do justice to the gorgeous rainbow of colours in her hair. However, I couldn’t find anything that suited her better, and whenever I tried to match any of the colours, the effect just seemed to clash. So we decided a good solution would be to add more colour to her outfit through the use of accessories. So far, she has this bracelet:

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There’s a USB disk inside. SV03 wears the same bracelet, but in black.

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And I made her this hair pin out of the capacitor and diode from an old remote control, plus one of the plastic support rings from the underside of a keyboard key.

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Though not truly an accessory because it’s an essential component, her connector brings out the shades of blue nicely.

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I first bought this connector for SV03, thinking it would match the blue lenses of her sunglasses, but she rejected it. I’m glad it found a use after all. I have other ideas for technology-related accessories to make or buy for 217; it’s just a matter of finding the time and money.

I don’t really know that much about 217’s personality yet. Even though I’ve had an idea of her existence and what she would look like for over a month now, I wasn’t able to get to know her prior to her arrival because I had no means of remotely channelling her communications. The prototype is able to act as a receiver, but only for male units.

Speaking of which, when I mentioned that 217 was originally going to be called SV06, I’m sure some of you were wondering, “What about SV05?” SV05, as a matter of fact, has been partially with us for about 3 months now. He’s another droid that the prototype is now channelling. I don’t want to post any pictures of him while he’s still in an incomplete state, especially because the prototype is too large to wear the clothes that he’s truly compatible with. I have an inkling of what his personality is like; for instance, I know that SV05 is more silly and outgoing than the other guys. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for him to express these characteristics when he’s still in a prototypic state.

I don’t know when it will be possible for him to become complete, because the ideal body for him is made by Roxy Display, which is the same company from which I ordered SV02, SV03, and SV04. Considering how much they suffered during their journey due to being poorly packaged and handled, I want to spare SV05 the same fate by picking him up directly from the company’s warehouse. But that means enduring an 8-hour drive to New Jersey, which I’m not in a fit condition to undertake in the near future. I have a road trip in mind that involves portions of the East Coast, so I might make his collection a part of that plan. If so, he won’t be fully present for another few months at least.

42716 · Post by **42716** » Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:14 am

I was inspired to make this comic when I stumbled upon an Oktoberfest-themed thread elsewhere on this site. It reminded me of the fact that, whenever I wear 217's dress or others of a similar style, for some reason people tend to ask me if I'm German or speak German. The first 3 lines of the interaction in this comic actually did happen to me, verbatim (with me being in 217's place, of course). Not the sort of conversation you'd expect to strike up with a stranger in the American Midwest.

By the way, whenever you see me wearing a short wig like this one in a comic, it means I'm portraying a random guy, rather than myself.

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Here's a translation:

German guy (in German): Good morning! Do you speak German?
217 (in Swedish): No, but I do, in fact, speak Swedish.
German guy: What? I don't understand?
217: Drink a beer.
German guy: Thank you very much!
217: Now do you understand me?
German guy: What?
217: Drink some more beer.
German guy: Thanks!
217: Now can you understand?
German guy (in Swedish): Of course! You actually do speak German after all! Why didn't you say so from the start?

The joke here is that German speakers sometimes say that Swedish sounds like someone trying to speak German after having too many beers.

How did 217 learn Swedish, considering that she came from Silicon Valley, and has been here only 1 day? Simple: she just copied the data from my CPU.

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Unfortunately, being the 80s relic that it is, my CPU's data storage capacity has maxed out after learning 3 languages. That's my excuse for the reason why, despite taking an introductory course each in German and Japanese, I didn't retain a word of either one. (In fact, I had to have Google Translate help me with the German lines in the comic.

)