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[yvannairie]

So I have my materials and notes for a longer post about EM fields and I'm wondering just where I should start, what level of basic knowledge would make it the most enjoyable reading experience.

I could actually start with the science of it, but is there anyone so tech-illiterate among the TF fans who'd actually need that? Or would it just be patronising?

Comments

[autobotscoutriella]

I know fuck-all about the actual science behind EM fields, so an intro to The Real-World Science would be great for me! It's one of those things I've been meaning to research when I need it, and haven't ever gotten around to.

Granted, considering this fandom, I might be an audience of one, but I'd still enjoy it.

[yvannairie]

I think talking about the technical basis of how EM fields work is gonna have to go to a post about mecha physiology in general, b/c almost everything I have to say about EM fields has to do with... like, I guess either sensory processing or disability theory? And I'm not sure how to tie the two together without getting dangerously close to all sorts of biological essentialism arguments x'D

Writing TF meta is sometimes hard b/c I feel like I'm one poor turn of phrase away from being a Functionist all but in name.

[autobotscoutriella]

That's fair! I feel like it's really easy to border on that with a lot of TF meta--at least, I run into that problem a lot when trying to get into physiology and so on. (Which is admittedly why I bullshit most of it for fanfic purposes and hope nobody asks too many questions...) I'm not entirely sure why that is, though my best guess is something to do with trying to combine my rudimentary understanding of how vehicles work (which can involve "all X have Y feature in common" statements) and my rudimentary understanding of how people work (which...probably shouldn't involve that statement unless it's as broad as "humans require X percentage of oxygen to breathe").

[yvannairie]

Yeah, lol, my agonising over this is not doing favours to my writer's block. I honestly feel like there's a whole 'nother post I could write about the methods of sociology as they apply to Cybertron, because the social theory gets way complicated when you realise that there are no true binaries anywhere, and categories like heavy vs light, labour vs management, even low-caste vs high-caste are often defined in relationship to each other, which means what the actual demographics you're talking about come down to how much you wanna anthropomorphise :'DD

I think the biggest generalisation you can make is that you can't attribute the qualities of a group to an individual, even while you can use an individual to read a group, and that values are communal rather than categorical, but these are also true for humans |D And similarly, I think I could theoretically define a set of physical qualities and be like "100% of mecha have 90% of these qualities" and have it be kinda-sorta in the ballpark of not being horribly offensive.

[autobotscoutriella]

And everybody anthropomorphizes a little bit differently, especially when you get into different continuities and the (problems with the) ways canon deals with that, and...

Yep, there's a lot of reasons it's a post I'd rather read than write :D Just having the complications laid out like that is enough to make me want to go back to fiction. It's a good topic, though. Social Theory is fascinating to me, from a distance.

[yvannairie]

Yeah! Honestly, the parts where they're not working Exactly Like Humans are the hardest, because that's where I just have to cross my fingers and pray that whatever I come up with is compelling because I guarantee I have not looked at a single external source for either the physiology post or the social psychology post, I've just been writing them in the blind hope that my fanfic pleases a fickle audience of people I don't know 8'D

At least when I'm writing fic with characters, I can always just be like "you don't have to agree with my characterisation but my reasoning stands in the text for you to see". Here I'm kinda just throwing worldbuilding together and praying.

[autobotscoutriella]

The "Alien, But Still Makes Sense To A Human Audience" parts are usually where I get tripped up with my fanfic worldbuilding. It's a PAIN to try to establish how they're different from humans but still keep them understandable. (Which is why, at the moment, the extent of my worldbuilding for one big AU is "a handful of notes on robot superpowers" and "a document of Cybertronian slang that amuses me".)