(no subject)

I was talking with a friend about writing and was reminded of something redthedragon recently posted about how "write for yourself" is shoddy and condescending advice, b/c while a writer should probably enjoy the process of putting something into words, writing doesn't really become storytelling until it reaches an audience, and

like, y'all should know I really don't like allegory

but writing is a bit like being a carpenter or an architect, right?

We make the plans. We gather the materials. We spend time and effort building a thing, and yeah, we're probably in the wrong business if we don't enjoy doing those things and becoming better at them as we do them.

But once we're done, what we have is an empty house.

And it can be a really good house, it can be functional and beautiful and homely, and hell, sometimes we like our own houses so much that we decide to stay and live in them, and continue to improve them by decorating them and continuing the design process into the interior, but

a lot of times, what we're left with is just the house.

And it feels senless, as a creator, to put all that effort into someone nobody but me is ever going to use, because we probably already have plans for the next one, and the one after that, because making them is what we know, what we're good at, what we like doing, but it feels like a senseless waste of time if there is no audience to actually use them.

Water interaction headcanons

(Reposted from Tumblr.)

Mecha with aquatic alt forms aren’t the only ones that are waterproof. In fact, most mecha are well-shielded enough that shorting out in water rarely happens, and in the 30-100m range the biggest problem is limited mobility. Going deeper than that, the problem becomes one of pressure – Cybertron has a pretty sparse atmosphere and without necessary reinforcements, various components (such as the spark chamber) have fairly low crush depths. Even with being fitted for seafloor operation, it’s sort of like working in extremely low temperatures. Stuff will start failing, it’s not a matter of if but when.

I also don't think cooling would be that big of a problem underwater -- the low ambient temperature will help with the cooling. Shuttered vents are another easy failure point, though, especially on light frames that are heavily reliant on airflow cooling, such as racers and light vehicles that use a two-cycle cooling system (drawing air in and cooling it before it passes over the components that require cooling), but water also damps movement to the point where frictional heat pretty much stops being an issue.

Also, self-repair nanites don’t actually know what the fuck to do with the micro-organisms, so if mecha don’t thoroughly drain and wash themselves there’s a chance the presence of foreign organisms will trigger what is essentially an autoimmune response, with fever-like symptoms, as it tries to kill them dead so they don’t start replicating. Injuries sustained underwater also have a high chance of oxidising, especially in salt water, which also fucks with how nanites operate. Often they’ll “scar” for a significant time as the surface oxids need to be thoroughly cleared away before the recostruction of mesh can start (b/c oxidisation has a bad habit of spreading), which is less of a problem when it’s just a welt across the paint job and much worse of a problem when it’s a joint that gets broken or dislocated due to a structural deficiency.

Oh and as a total aside b/c Rosy and me were talking about this the other day, the problem with cold weather operations is icing, not temperature. Mecha are warm, moisture gathers and then freezes and expands, limiting movement and causing injuries. That’s why cold-climate operations are on a time budget – heating themselves up enough to protect against the icing issues is a huge fuel sink and it’s still not enough if there’s no way for them to dry themselves up.

Also here's another thing about mecha and cold that bothers me

(Another Tumblr repost)

Seekers and other jet frames should have one of the highest tolerances for cold and icing, b/c icing is a problem they regularly have to deal with, at the altitudes and speeds they fly at. Like, they should probably have the highest tolerance for temperature variation, period, b/c of the kind of heat gradient acceleration generates.

Racer frames and two-wheelers with small-volume engines would have the absolute worst time in cold conditions, b/c without proper grip they’re too light to really get anywhere in ice and snow and also if it gets cold enough their engines will plain refuse to run properly, even if we assume Energon confers energy at lower temperatures than igniting fuel does. In general, grounders need much more prep for extreme conditions than fliers do, unless we’re talking about a grounder specifically designed to work in shitty cold-ass conditions like a snow-mobile or a treaded motor lorry.