Holy shit I’m obsessed with ur art style, I have to know what are some of ur inspirations for your art style and how it’s developed???
((Also I see you do printmaking frequently absolutely love love that))
thank you so much !!!!!!!
i have so so many but in terms of my artstyle i’ve been really into rhe work of richard sala, tove jansson, yugo limbo(yugsly on tumblr), maroonracoon (twt/tumblr), valarkspur (twit/tumblr), uuuu i know there’s more and this isn’t even going past contemporary stuff but i have too many … also really influenced by venture bros artstyle in the past couple years
i’m really into by fashion/design/music from the 20th century, especially new wave+goth fashion, really any fashion from the late 1900s, and i’m super influenced by movements like art noveau and art deco …
movies ESPECIALLY…. i actually have a list of movies that influence my art/how i think creatively and im obsessed with rec’ing them so here
So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:
And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.
So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years. These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing. They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it. It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face. Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing. And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc. NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.
Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres. What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female. I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one. They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO. If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone. Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered. I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.
I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all. I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole. That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three. And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.
And it changed the face of costuming. People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries. And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.
So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart. This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.
(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)
RE: YOUR TAGS ON THE PENCIL AND FOUR VIDEO sorry this is chickenscribbles btw hi #sideblog anywya NO you understand so well and exactly..!!!!! "oh im on fours side" "oh im on pencils side" NOO theres so much nuance here and no one gets ittt...
pencil was put into a Bad situation and from the moment she got out one has been so very carefully orchestrated everything to make her as stressed as possible and so she did the tpot 19 thing bc she has been like constantly CONSTANTLY on edge for MONTHS bynow. the timing of it was Awful the level of violence used was Awful but theres nnnuance here.
and then on fours side of things he both doesnt seem to understand how bad the EXIT was and Also doesnt seem to understand how much pencil DETESTS him. hes grown and changed as a person and seems to trust and even care about the contestents beyond just enjoying the power/attention over/from the blorbos from his show and what he did w the exit was BAD but he both doesnt FULLY understand and also has grown from that SO MUCH. but pencil wasnt there to see ANY of that growth, she was always exclusively exposed to the worst of them..
anway tpot 18 is meant to show how they had the most tragic possible parralel arcs, using match as an example of what couldve been-tpot 18 is a fun little lighthearted adventure done ONLY bc four cares abt his friends. he showed it in a weird way and he did his usual "very literal to the point its detrimental" thing, same as he did with getting frustrated people were ignoring the "eternal" thing in the EXIT, but he had literally nothing to gain from that episode other than a friend asked him for help-showing on fours side enough growth that hed do things bc he cares abt hid friends.
MATCH is ised in tpot 18 to show what may have been if pencil wasnt thrown in such a stressful enviorment straigjt away, its a whole running theme throughout the entire show that often what people need isnt big apologies or talks or gifts, its just SPACE. and match HAVINF this space away from four As Wsl As her friends to be there, we can SEE that shes still wary of four and prefers to avoid him, bur also isnt TERRIFIED of him like pencil. and she prefers her friends stay away from him, but she isnt so scared shell do anything inconviencing herself to pull them away. like she doesnt LIKE four and maybe never will but with space shes gotten more okay with him. AND FOUR SEWMS TO UNDERSTAND THAT ON SOME LEVEL bc when shes near he gets a LOT quieter and moves much slower..no one understands the importance of tpot 18 but ill defend it forever.
anyway all this culminated in the most messsyy situation where in 19 pencil is at her Lowest like ROCK bottom, and at the same time is given alll this power. four is at maybe his BEST, and actually trusts his contestests enough he GIVES them said power, and even in the end tries to talk thinks out with pencil. and theres no right or wrong here both of them are sooo justified but also at the same time they were being so stupid and it makes me gnaw on wires
OK. SORRY FOR RAMBLING INUR ASKBOX i saw thise tags half asleep and ghen got excited and i think i only like became fully concious around thebtime i was talking abt tpot 18. umm uyeah sorry thank you
NONO DONT APOLOGIZE I THINK ABOTUTTHIS STUFF LIKE 24/7 IM VERY NORMALLL
you totally put thoughts on tpot 18 together in a wat i was tryingto say but didnt quite get. like despite everytihng and (sadly, some mischaracterization) four’s been learning and growing along with evetyone else. and with four and pencil specifically it makes me think about something; that even though like u said the show has a running theme of just giving people space, and while that DOES help immensely, sometimes there’s just a gap that doesnt fill on its own
and four recognized the reactions and adapted to that but still didn’t take a proper look at the cause (the E.X.I.T)
my friend and i joke that he doesnt have a lot of ‘four’sight (like forsight like-)
but at the same time he seems to alkmost not look back, if that makes sense. at the very least he doesnt seem to look at the things that seem hard to process.. it adds a sort of question to his character on why he doesn’t do that. afterall we know he does care about the contestants in his own way (the EXIT classroom from the beginning compared to more recent episodes has different customizations, attentions paid to the objects’ needs) so maybe the idea that it was that harmful is just that distressing?
anyways ive gotten distracted. ive always enjoyed pencil’s arc; she was one of the leaders of freesmart and in the end was completely seperated from everyone else, either by distance or due to her own or others’ actions. the people she reached out to wanted nothing to do with her and the ones that did, she pushed away
ive also been thinking a lot about one and pencil’s interactions as well. we’ve been seeing a lot of new depth in One as well; it could be argued that a lot of the thing sshe said to Pencil was manipulation, however there’s a lot that was there that just felt too genuine, in One’s own way of being ‘genuine’ at least
still think this bit is crazy though. pencil isnt even looking. that has to be some sort of actual expression. one go to therapy
like you said one strung Pencil along- they compare themself with her, to some extent- and i believe that with the way that pencil’s behavior is, leading up to taking four’s power, is another attempt at a parrelel by the writers .. at least in terms of trying to tell a storyof What Exactly Happened before one got put in the moon.
Pencil was meant to be left out of the game. Liy was meant to rejoin TPOT. If One hadn’t intervened she’d have stayed out of the competition, maybe been able to talk with Match, maybe had some sort of time to just… recover, in some way. But that continued stress and rewriting of what the show was meant to be only made it worse, and im sure if we removed other obstructions, Pencil would have gone down a similar path downwards as a certain lonely number.
during their fight in tpot 19, we have a number who’s moved on, who’s improved a significant amount from before (though not in the best way)- and someone who’s been stuck in her own cycles, her own traumas, for years. and now the same person that did that to her is standing in front of her, as if nothing had gone wrong.
in her mind, with the smoking gun she had in her hands, the only route was to aim, and pull the trigger.
also sorry if this makeslike no sense my brain is still spinning from tpot 19. every time i think imnormal about it i am Not
like itd be so easy to force three into the role of The Dead/Murdered One but its so much more interesting to make her and four and the algebraliens as a whole a group of people grieveing eachother..and one. like in a sense it was one who was killed that day, because three got to live a life with two people she loved and trusted, but One was the person who had a burial. who lived in the past tense.
"three died" three died in the literal sense sure but four never had to grieve her, she was right there, whenever he wanted to see. same goes for x. five, nine, eight, ten, all of them grieved the life they had with her, but three was still alive to them. just somewhere else.
One is the one they sat by the lake and thought about, the one they mourned. her soft smile from the corner of rooms, her small and hesitant voice. one is who makes their throats close up when they realize theres someone theyll never get the chance to know. one is who they watched be buried, and they all clung to eachother after and cried. people-the fandom- wanna pretend three died, but i dont think any of the algebraliens would ever think of her that way. three is someone they missed but they could hypothetically see whenever they wanted, one is who they had to come to terms with never ever speaking to again.
The forerunner of all online object shows, Battle for Dream Island stages a massive cast of anthropomorphic objects, many of which have consistent and deeply human traits for the narrative to play with. Given that the series has always focused on character above narrative restriction, it forces the objects to interact through equal parts forced proximity and isolation, competition and elimination; mixing cola and mentos, watching the geyser, and frolicking in the sticky aftermath. Fans of BFDI and other object shows view and discuss these characters and their messy relationships through many lenses, and there's much to say about a show with such a simple premise. This project introduces a lens, but it's also a little bit more than that. It actually stemmed from an observation of the show's fandom space: I noticed that limb difference, a diverse trait many characters have in BFDI, is often poorly adapted, if not entirely erased, in fanwork. Adapted into people, armless objects have arms. Legless objects have legs. It is baffling. But it tells me that people are not engaging with disability.
Why would this be? Physical disabilities such as these are a mundane but immutable fact of life for so many real human people, let alone characters in an animated series. Are fans seeing the disabilities in these characters as a problem to avoid? Or are they not seeing it at all? What does ignoring, rejecting, and eliminating physical disability in a simple work of fiction say about fans' understanding of disability in the real world? And how is it that these beliefs are ingrained in the fandom of a series that so passionately and openly celebrates physical difference?
I want to ask: what will it take to change this?
This will be a two-part essay series on the portrayal of physical disability in BFDI. It will be a critique in both the literary sense, examning the portrayal of limb difference in the first part, and in the colloquial sense, addressing the misconceptions of limb difference in so much of the object show community's fanwork. Beyond being a "cosmetic" quirk of the earliest BFDI cast designs, limb differences are important to recognize for the complexity they add to the show. While there are intentional portrayals of ableism that makes disabled readings of these characters nonnegotiable, BFDI's premise as an object show has allowed its disabled characters so much diversity and positivity, conceiving their limb differences as identities carried alongside rather than restricting their character development. That the fandom not only downplays the thematic weight of disability but erases it altogether reflects a cultural lean towards ableism, be it conscious or not, and this is what will be addressed by the end of this discussion. Solutions to the ableist tendencies of fandom require knowledge of disability and acceptance of disability, and that starts with exploring BFDI's diverse portrayal of its disabled characters. Of course, I cannot force you to change how you write, draw, or talk about BFDI, but I do hope this essay leads to more considerate and well-informed thought on disability in our favourite object show.
As One says, "let's...chat."
Part 1: What does it mean to be a disabled...object?
Before we get started here, I would like to be very clear that this is a literary discussion and not an essay informed by personal experience: I don't have a limb difference or mobility disability. Disability's abysmal portrayal in media, though, has been on my mind, in my writing, and on my bookshelf for years now. I've read personal memoirs, manifestos, stories, and critical theory from disabled folks, as well as literature on the representation of physical disability in media, so while I feel relatively well-informed about the theoretical aspects of disability (in)justice and representation, this secondary knowledge is the limit of my expertise. So, I suggest that you, if you are nondisabled especially, do the same: seek out the voices of disabled folks, however you might go about it. Your local library is a great start, and at the end of this series I'll provide recommendations that may help you as they helped me. While the voices of lived experience are critical in understanding disability (and the only ones to listen to with respect to policy change), I am writing this for two main reasons. Many disabilities portrayed poorly in media are rarer in real life than they may seem, making it incredibly difficult for people with those disabilities to counteract all the bigotry that's thrown their way. For example, upper limb differences, which are the focus of this discussion, are immensely rare, even moreso if they are congenital. As such, if abled folks do not play a supporting role in breaking down misconceptions and biases, it's so much harder to make a dent in society-wide, deeply entrenched ableism. It shouldn't be that way, of course, but hopefully that will change with progress. Furthermore, it shouldn't be the responsibility of disabled people to tell nondisabled people when we are being bad allies, nor should we expect them to act as our personal search engines or do our emotional labour. It's on everyone to think more carefully about the ideas we propagate and a big part of this is holding each other accountable for ableism whenever and wherever it props up.
Anyways, this is all to make sure you know that this is a media study. Let's start from the basics, though. I promise you'll see the objects soon.
There are solid resources available to learn about what "disability" means, because it's important to ask who is defining it and what is the purpose of defining it in such a way. In short, there's no single definition that covers the whole complexity of disability. To oversimplify, though, there are two major models of disability. According to Tobin Siebers in Disability Theory, the medical model describes disability (rather crudely) as "an individual defect lodged in the person, a defect that must be cured or eliminated if the person is to achieve full capacity as a human being." More recently, the social model of disability changes the perspective of disability as "the product of social injustice, one that requires not the cure or elimination of the defective person but significant changes in the social and built environment" (3). As an example, someone using a wheelchair may not be able to enter a school because there are stairs leading up to its entrance, and in the medical model alone, the person with the disability is the limiting factor here -- their body's inability to walk hinders their participation in school -- and so the "solution" is to get them to scale the stairs through modification of their body's function, or, in other words, to "cure" their disability at all costs. In contrast, the more recent social model says that the means by which the entrance is accessed is at fault, not the person trying to enter, and the "solution" would be a ramp that the person can then use to access the building using their wheelchair. While there is some utility in the medical model, for example addressing chronic pain, the social model has been an important shift in disability justice over the past few decades, reframing the existence of disability from an inherent disadvantage to a contextually dependent social identity. None of these models comprehensively cover all experiences of disability, but they are a good place to start how we see the role of limb difference in BFDI. In fact, I argue that BFDI is surprisingly open to showcasing the social model.
To understand why the fandom's erasure of disability is so irresponsible, then, we must learn about how BFDI portrays disability, why it's a valuable aspect of the characters and the narrative, and how its presence in the show should lead to positive reflections on disability in the fandom (and in life itself!) more broadly.
To start, how about we look at some of the cast?
Look at all those happy faces! Two things immediately become clear:
These characters are based off objects, and objects have various bodies with different strengths, skills, difficulties, etc. They perform different functions for us in the real world, so it makes sense their bodies are diverse!
They also have faces and limbs. The amount of limbs that they have varies between objects, though the majority has all four.
1.1 What Does Disability Look Like in BFDI?
While this essay will primarily focus on characters that are armless, there are other notable ways objects are disabled. Some are "object-specific" disabilities: Bubble, Bottle, and Ice Cube are fragile and die in situations their peers would escape unscathed, and Barf Bag uniquely requires vomit inside of her to function and is at risk of it spilling out or depleting. Many have speech patterns considered disabilities in our world: Saw develops a verbal tic, Pin has a form of scanning speech, Marker has some form of verbal apraxia, Teardrop is mute, and Woody might have an intellectual disability that impacts speech and anxious behaviour. Even without direct parallels to human disability, the connection between these objects and how they approach and navigate the world reinforces that they are disabled in some definition or another. BFDI uses these quirks for humour, but it rarely uses disability to discredit their value as competitors, and all of these characters grow more complex alongside the rest of the cast. Sixteen years after we first see her pop on-screen, Bubble battles against cactus monsters in TPOT 21, successfully escaping unscathed and subverting our assumption that she'll pop. Our expectation flattens her into worrying about her fragility, but by subverting that view, the narrative forces the viewer to question their own assumptions about Bubble's character growth. Her courage here does not negate the fact that she's still extremely fragile, of course, but it emphasizes that she's had plenty of time and experience to learn how to manage her anxieties and her body. In this way, the innate diversity of the objects in BFDI--and the way they grow as characters--is interwoven with the disabilities they possess.
This diversity includes disability in the quirk of the character design itself: many of the objects have different limb configurations. Some have two arms and two legs. Many have no arms and only legs, some have arms but no legs, and some don't have any limbs at all*. As the largest minority, the armless characters provide the broadest lens into BFDI's portrayal of disability. While armlessness is not isolated as a significant impairment, at least in relation to humans (more on this in part two), not having arms is nevertheless a consistent influence on how these objects interface with the world, both in the objective sense of just not having arms, and that they experience some ableism from their surroundings and their peers. As such, it is for the objects, as with humans, a disability. For these objects, neither this objective absence nor the discrimination they face exclusively define who they are as individuals, but we're nevertheless looking at more than a cosmetic artifact of an old design choice. As we'll see, BFDI strikes a balance here: understanding these characters as multifaceted--and often quite capable--doesn't erase the reality of their limb difference, nor should it. It is, rather realistically, a fact of life that the characters carry alongside them; not the whole, but an intrinsic part, of who they are.
1.2 The Problem of Goikian Ableism
To address how armlessness is portrayed by BFDI, it is important to recognize that ableism against the armless is explored in a handful of scenes, and it is portrayed as an injustice through both structural and personally-directed discrimination. In BFDI, there are several challenges that either do not accommodate the competitors without arms or explicitly "disqualify" them from participating. Another Name fails BFDI 10's "handstand challenge" (6:18) in part due to Tennis Ball, Golf Ball, and Rocky immediately landing on their heads, and BFDI 12's "ladder contest" (3:18) is inaccessible for the armless contestants without help from vomit magic (Rocky) or another contestant (Leafy helping Ice Cube). The only other armless contestant at this point, Tennis Ball, stands helplessly at the bottom of the ladders. This is meant to be ridiculous: the Announcer excluding armless competitors from easily participating jabs at his absurd logic and reminds us that the contests have never had any integrity in their "fairness" to begin with. That said, when considered from the perspective of Tennis Ball himself, it is still harsh. A boy who has just lost his dearest friend--one who shares his disability--now faces an absurd task alone and cannot complete the challenge. Being derided afterwards for not arriving at the expectations unfairly placed on him is going to make him feel worse about his own disability, especially if he is still a child! But why should it? Tennis Ball has shown himself to be immensely capable in other contests, ones where he is still armless, and yet his relationship to his disability is being defined through the systemic ableism he is facing. This, by the way, is the core of the social model of disability. Even though his armlessness is part of who he is throughout the competition, its impact on his participation in these contests is dictated by how society itself accommodates, or fails to accommodate, people with bodies like his.
Objects without arms face ableism from some of their peers, too. Ice Cube has been treated poorly across the series, and her armlessness plays no small part in her mistreatment. In BFDI 15, Pencil and Bubble try to play catch with Ice Cube, but their ball flies over her head and drops, given her lack of arms in comparison to recently-eliminated Match. Pencil is dismayed. "It's no fun without Match," she says longingly, and then tells her, "Icy, compared to Match, you're garbage" (0:06). Having further locked Icy in her trunk in BFDIA 6 (rather than solve Icy's "headphone dilemma" together), Pencil holds an insultingly low view of Ice Cube, believing that she is a burden to minimize rather than a teammate to work alongside. Only when Ice Cube saves the team in the BFDIA 6's conclusion does Pencil begin to question this belief, but hasn't the damage already been done? Snowball is another clear example, treating Ice Cube as a disposable tool to chill water and battle sea monsters in TPOT 13 without for a moment thinking about her agency or the pain she's experiencing. Actually, Snowball is notoriously ableist beyond Ice Cube, and he's serially responsible for disregarding, hurting, and insulting his disabled peers: he pops Bubble constantly, he violently smashes Fanny against the ground in BFB 11 and throws her away like garbage, and he berates his armless peers, not wanting to be on their team and assuming they'll cause him to lose. In other words, Snowball, though rude to most, specifically targets disabled contestants for his abuse. To be sure, Snowball's temperament by no means stems from the beliefs of the writers themselves, because Snowball's ridiculous claims ground his archetype as the "bully" of the bunch; when an older Snowball still calls armless contestants "weak" in BFB, his bigotry is not hence a byproduct of a sincerely held belief but an intentional portrayal of an inane bias. His violent treatment certainly does not define the narrative presence of the characters he bullies, but his refusal to treat them with respect has the same effect as Tennis Ball's exclusion: the way their social circumstances fail them is much more disabling than the fact that these characters are armless. They are not broken; these elements of society are.
1.3 The Nightmare of Algebralien Ableism
Most examples of ableism in BFDI are resolved by the narrative siding with the disabled characters over the ridiculous claims against them, and the problems that the armless objects face are treated as present but insubstantial to the narrative tension: it is more often world-ending goo, for example, pressing the objects to act one way or another, than it is the boil-over of unchallenged ableism. This makes One's introduction in TPOT a turning point for the portrayal of disability in the series, concentrating the existing theme of social marginalization into an explicit theme of ableism as an insidious and damaging trauma. Immediately separated visually from her peers in TPOT 20 ("Alone"), One stands out as the only armless algebralien in a group of numbers that play catch, build stacks of cards, strum guitars, blow bubble wands, give high fives, and fix skateboards with each other. Even when One makes an effort to insert herself in their activities, they are dismissive and avoidant, like when Two interrupts and denies her request for company and runs away to high-five Eight instead (3:24). This action, as well as the scene moments later of Three and Five playing catch (3:27), places her crushing isolation against the happy, paired-off numbers specifically doing something without her. The common denominator in all of these interactions, in fact, is that the algebralien world is filled to the brim with activities that she cannot do or has not learned to do, not at least without accommodation that the algebraliens seem uninterested in providing. None of them seem intentionally dismissive towards her, sure, but most ableism rarely is deliberate; most ableism is, indeed, born of ignorance and neglect. The consequence? Being the only algebralien without arms, One has no reference point of living with her disability other than her own loneliness, and so she cannot see the neglect of her peers as avoidable; she has only ever understood herself as the broken one. The responsibility to change has never been on the nondisabled algebraliens, it has only ever seemed to be on her. All that follows One's storyline hereon, from her powers to her imprisonment to her treatment of the objects, can be traced back to her internalizing these ableist social biases as truth.
It gets worse for One, though not at first glance. When One finds the yoylelite meteor, gains its power, and realizes she can hold things telekinetically, the gulf in her mind between her nondisabled peers and her disabled self recedes: unreasonable though they may have been, she can suddenly--literally magically!--meet the social expectations placed on her. She fantasizes about winning over the other algebraliens, participating in their games, and no longer being ignored because of her body. This moment of "equalizing" explains why One is so defensive of the yoylelite when Three approaches it. When Three defensively asks One, "Where's the fun if it's just you doing that...y'know, throwing thing?" (10:48), it's dramatic irony: she does not realize that it has always been everyone but One doing the "throwing thing," and that this power made One see herself, for the first time and for better or worse, on their level. One's fears of being excluded are realized when the next day, Three leads the other algebraliens to the meteor and they together gain the yoylelite's power. One watches as that power concentrates in their hands as they practice their newfound abilities. The gulf returns. As Three even says when One confronts them later, nothing has actually changed, and all One sees from that point on is an eternity where she is sidelined. Her anger becomes understandable. Not justifiable, but not not justifiable: she has had to live without anyone or anything to live for; the arm-waving, ball-throwing algebraliens have not. She has lived without anything or anyone to see her for her passionate, adventurous self, and so in a brief moment of power in a life with so little, she lets herself feel everything she has been keeping inside of her. After Four traps her alone in the Moon for this fatal mistake, her fear of ignorance becomes a reality of banishment with only herself and her self-hatred to keep her company. What has happened to her by the time the moon cracks open would have shattered anyone.
On its own, One's arc is a horror story of ableism at its most potent, a force born of ignorance rather than malice that can, when unchallenged, fester into a living hell. Now, if One were isolated in a larger narrative without any other armless characters, her story would cut too close to the "disabled and jealous/vengeful" trope, in which disability is only represented through trauma, reinforcing the idea that to be disabled is to either experience a broken body or suffer at the hands of social prejudice. There's an argument to be made that perhaps it still is this tired trope, though we don't know how her arc ends, so it's still up in the air. But BFDI largely avoids condemning the fate of its disabled characters solely to misery, because One's story is the exception, not the norm. There exists in One's midst another society where armless people are largely treated as a normal part of the social fabric. Placing One's history against the objects we already know and love makes the narrative that much more meaningful, because we know that it did not have to be this way for One. Ableism does not have to be inevitable. Damage and heartache does not have to be inevitable. Yet to someone who has internalized her society's ableism as deeply as One has, suffering seems sourced from her body. This belief controls and clashes with all of her interactions hereon, being challenged and undermined by the objects to solidify her trauma as an unjust anomaly. Between the several suspiciously hand-shaped pillars in the backdrop of her dimension to the fixation on limbs in her dealmaking, arms eat at her mind. In TPOT 17, When Donut asks One why he would sign her contract, it strikes a nerve, and she screams at him immediately: "FOR YOUR ARMS, DONUT. KINDA IMPORTANT, HUH?" (25:52). While Donut agrees that he wants them back after she points it out, it hasn't consumed his concern in the same way One's lack of arms consumes her mind. This is because Donut has a reference as to what it is like to live a comfortable life without arms. She doesn't, and it's infuriating to her. When he tries to escape, it pushes her over the edge and she rips Donut's legs off, further disabling him. A facile reading of this scene would conclude that this is a clear, universally unwanted punishment, but remember that this is One. It's thematically relevant. Disability is punishment in her mind; she could only ever attribute her torment to her limb difference. What we see in these dealmaking sessions is, in some respects, the medical model clashing with the social, the blaming of the disabled body clashing against the reality that society, not the self, might just be the source of One's unimaginable pain. It doesn't make sense to her, though. The grip of ableism reaches deep.
"Internalized ableism," writer Melissa Blake explains, "occurs when disabled people absorb ableist messages from society and project those prejudices and stereotypes onto themselves and others" (60). She describes her own experience with it, highlighting its harm: it is "one insidious monster, and it creeps in slowly, little by little, until it's suddenly all-consuming and deeply rooted in your psyche" (61). In real life, there is a misconception that disabled folks lash out after experiencing ableism or otherwise create a destructive force for others around them, so One's storyline is a little unrealistic insofar as it edges closely to the "bitter" trope. But like I said before, context makes her actions an exception rather than the rule: so many of the armless objects are content, valued as they are, and bonded closely with their friends, and it is this normalcy that both positions One's perception of disability as skewed and challenges that perception outright. Consider why so many of her signees are armless women: Bell, Fanny, Ice Cube, Gaty, and Basketball. Having the latter two erased from existence altogether seems an intentional choice, given they each have close relationships the likes of which One never had with her own peers. In fact, Basketball's disappearance is a special case: in TPOT 19, even after Barf Bag's erasure compels Donut to concede and give up his share of Two's power, One still disappears Basketball. Donut already said he'd do it, so why? Donut has hardly even interacted with Basketball! Why her, One? Like One herself said in their deal, she and Basketball are a lot alike, being curious and inventive yet temperamental when things go wrong. A difference, of course, is that Basketball has people who depend on her and value her as an equal. Better to have her out of sight altogether than face a constant reminder of how unjust life has been. Between Gaty and Basketball, One simultaneously envies the objects and looks down on them, considers them disposable and manipulable, and refuses to conceive of a world where armlessness can be an intrinsic part of positive and constructive lives. It's vicious, but it points to immeasurable and uncontainable grief in One's heart. Maybe facing that things could be better would be more pain than she can handle. She could have been one of these objects. She could've played soccer with Three or learned to use a hammer with her feet to fix Nine's skateboard. She could have sat with Two and talked about life.
All this could have been her. It was not. Why was it not?
"Alone" and One's narrative is about ableism. Originally I was going to say that it's a narrative about disability, which is true insofar as One herself is disabled. But I think specificity matters here. It is about being disabled in a world that does not want to acknowledge it at all. It is about being neglected and marginalized, ignored and disregarded at every point. It is never that One herself is defective, but that society treats her as defective and she internalizes it into a destructive force for herself and everyone around her. Arguments could be made about whether it is perhaps too severe, and that I cannot weigh in definitively. But it remains that "Alone" is the most unforgiving storyline of BFDI. It is brutal and it is heartbreaking.
1.4 Rejecting Symbolic Disability
There is only so much of One's storyline I can point out before it becomes simultaneously shallow and unbearable. These forms of ableism exist, but not only do they not include most of the experiences of the disabled characters in BFDI, their exclusive focus would flatten this discussion of disability into a trauma, as is so commonly the case in media. This would present disability as some kind of symbolic punishment or narrative tension that, like in the medical model, is propped up to be "fixed" for the betterment of the character. BFDI competently avoids this, instead offering a big cast of objects that are consistently but never defined by their disability. Oft-frustrated Fanny doesn't seem to care that she doesn't have arms, nor does Gaty, or Naily, or Foldy, and so on. None of these characters without arms are disabled for any sweeping narrative "reason". While at first this may seem obvious and natural--and it is, given that the series itself is open-ended!--this manner of seeing disability is actually not very common in media.
Stories as old as stories themselves, from fairy tales to modern television, have often been moralistic, and in many cases function to explain why some people are disabled and others are not. In her book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space, disabled author Amanda Leduc says that stories "turn disability into a symbol because it has been socialized to be not useful...If disability is not a disability so much as a symbol of something else, then once that symbol is realized, the disability can go away" (215). She adds, in contrast, that "disability isn't visited on us in response to a grand, overarching narrative plan, but rather is a lived, complex reality that reimagines the very nature of how we move through and occupy space" (216). What is so refreshing about BFDI is that its characters reflect the latter more than the former. Its characters can be tangibly disabled and have it mean various things to their lived experience (or in BFDI's case, participation in the contests) without either flattening it into a problem of misfortune or giving it some metaphorical, deeper symbolic meaning. The tendency, I think, to misunderstand these disabilities as "not important" has to do with the framework of disability as something symbolic; when it isn't symbolic, people don't know what to do with it. But doesn't BFDI then offer us a new vantage point? Must these armless characters be armless for a reason, to telegraph that they are "other" and symbolize some greater narrative challenge that must be "fixed" for their happiness? Or...do they just happen to be disabled? This is where BFDI shines. Just as an object might be small, round, or dimpled, an object might just not have arms.
As a 2010 veteran and self-described main character, Golf Ball stands out as one of the most complexly disabled characters in the show because though her occasional struggle against ableism impacts how she views herself, the series doesn't limit its focus on her character, her abilities, her flaws, or her armlessness to these negative experiences. On the outside, Golf Ball is a high-strung, highly confident contestant that touts her ability to lead her team to victory. This is for good reason on her part: her plans are often sound, and usually they fall apart when others fail to listen to her, which is often the case. Yet it feels, even in her moments of leadership, that she is always trying to prove herself to somebody, because it is a fragile sense of confidence that erodes when things go awry. Consider BFB 6: in an attempt to escape the Twinkle of Contagion, Golf Ball escapes to the moon yet gets it immediately after leaving her rocketship. Frustrated by this, she catastrophizes: "Why do my plans NEVER work?!" (7:32). This frustration is frequent with her, as Golf Ball is subtextually autistic and particular about things going as she expects. But surely someone who is delusionally confident in her own ability would deny that the failure is her own fault, right? Of course. She's not delusionally confident. Her confidence was never about her proving to Blocky or Snowball or whoever else that she was a capable team member as they are; it was to prove to herself that she is on level ground with her peers, an internalized voice insisting she has to work harder to be an equal. She faces a social current that has never been conducive to her participation. This is explicitly tied to her physical disability. She has to be smarter than everyone else to get through challenges not made for her, she has to deal with Snowball treating her like she is useless simply because she is armless, and if all else fails, she has to face against her own hopes that she cannot do some things the same way as her peers. When she gets frustrated at herself, enough to feel she is inept, we should see her as a disabled woman realistically reacting to the discrimination she has faced for years. It is natural, then, that there are moments where Golf Ball wishes, if momentarily, that she were not disabled. It happens.
But if being armless really were something Golf Ball wanted to fix about herself, surely she would have done so by now. She is a prolific inventor! BFDIA 25 shows her reversal of Pin's limb loss and in the same scene shows she has already built a pair of mechanical arms! But she has not grown her own limbs, nor is she ever shown using inventions in this way. Why would she? Even through brief pains of frustration, her disability has never been something she actually wishes to change about herself. She is sufficiently capable of doing everything she loves to do. Her feet are her hands! But it's not a big deal, either. Consider everything we've seen of her, irrespective of how she does it: she loves to draw, research, brainstorm, sketch, invent, and write papers, and she can drive, hammer, fix, experiment, hold, type, push, pull, and drill. She is one of the smartest contestants and she is almost always doing things for the success of her team rather than herself alone. In TPOT 13--a single episode--she builds a full drill-equipped van from blueprint to construction and nobody really bats an eye. It's tempting for someone with arms to see her disability as a challenge that she continually has to overcome, but is it, really? It's all she has ever known and all she's ever had to work with, and she seems just fine. Her capacity for adaptation is not anything special, it's just who Golf Ball is and what Golf Ball does. Her lack of arms is a physical difference from the status quo, sure, and sometimes that causes tension in her own self-conception, but it is more often an aspect of her that she works with, that is her, facing an environment not made for her. It is not, no matter what Snowball tells her, a shortcoming innate to her body. She knows that her body is not "missing" anything. She does not need arms, and BFDI has always asserted that clearly without ever erasing her disability.
To reiterate, in comparison to One, the armless objects benefit from living in a better, more communal social context that sees their disability as a present but unremarkable part of their identity--a mundane reality that has been absent from disability representation for so long. Without any support, the feelings of ostracization that ensnared One could only ever bounce around and amplify in her own head. Not so for the armless objects, as many of them not only have allies with similar disabilities to themselves but are treated as unremarkable by their nondisabled allies. To continue with our favourite dimpled lady, Golf Ball's disability is certainly a large part of her profound relationship with Tennis Ball, both being massive nerds. And what a team Tennis Ball and Golf Ball make! She and Tennis Ball match each other both in scientific fervour and physical ability, writing and building the same way, sharing "low-fives", and commiserating with each other's limits, however few there may be. Strong relationships do not occur solely between armless objects, either: Saw and Gaty are very close, Fanny is a highly valued member of Death P.A.C.T., Bomby helps Bell navigate without her string in the algebralien dimensions, and Book remains one of the few who treat Ice Cube like a person, respecting her autonomy enough to give her the distance she needs in TPOT. There's also humour in these relationships, especially when the armless objects have the advantage: when Two whips a wooden board at Donut in TPOT 9's Cake at Stake, Gaty playfully quips, "Gotta learn to catch with your legs, Donut!" (3:55). Having lived with her disability for as long as we have known her, Gaty makes fun of Donut because she knows that he can learn to live with it--indeed, Donut gets considerably better at using his feet by TPOT 17, though here gets his arms back. BFDI may not be flawless in portraying disability as mundane, but the many small moments like these provide something so rarely given to disabled characters: belonging and acceptance. There is nothing for armless characters to prove, nor are they shunned and othered by their nondisabled peers for not having arms. A major overarching theme of BFDI is togetherness and isolation, the push and pull between belonging and ostracization. Having disability be a part of it all, weaved in as just another aspect of the characters, can be, if not revolutionary, then at the very least refreshing.
1.5 Conclusion - Disability, the social core of BFDI, and why this matters
A series built on character diversity, BFDI endears its audience because it has a plethora of objects to cheer on throughout many absurd contests. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the cast welcomes its many armless characters as another variation of the object form, making it a consistent quirk of the character design while firmly appreciating it as normal. Though there is honesty in BFDI with the challenges of being physically disabled in an inaccessible world, and One's arc tackles this problem explicitly, her juxtaposition against all of these similarly disabled objects allows BFDI to acknowledges a much broader and brighter lived experience of disability that frames the series' love of this diversity at its best. Having a limb difference can mean something to how some objects exist in the world, but this does not mean it has to be negative all, or even most, of the time. There is so much space for armless and disabled objects to find common ground and acceptance, even celebration, amongst themselves and their nondisabled peers. To so many of these characters, their disability is not exclusively who they are, but it is not irrelevant, either; it can indeed be a part of the joy they can share with one another. Characters stay disabled no matter what challenges, triumphs, or mere routine they face at any given moment. To perceive otherwise is to reduce disability, to flatten it and disregard its existence in our own world, but it also shutters off the chance to learn that experiences that differ from one's own need not be inherently worse.
I hope it's clear why disability is a nonnegotiable aspect of BFDI as a whole. When you want to carry on the love that BFDI has for its characters into the fanwork you create for it, I implore you to remember that BFDI itself does not forget disability. It does not forget how many characters have limb differences, and it does not forget that disability is normal. Disability is normal. Your creativity cannot afford to forget what the series embraces. Your creativity can and should include disabled characters. If you wouldn't draw a Golf Ball without dimples, why would you draw her with arms?
While the second part of this series will critique the portrayals of characters in fandom spaces, I don't intend to lambast any portrayals unfairly, nor do I want to posture it as intentional on the part of fan creators. Because BFDI and its fandom has such a broad age appeal, I know that many artists are children and don't really...know what disability looks like, or maybe disability seems too daunting to address and so is a lot easier to adapt into the dreaded "magic prosthetic arms" that plague the character tags. I am not here to be upset at children, and I am not here to say they should know better, because that's unkind and unrealistic. That being said, even if it isn't intentional, ableism is still ableism. I will elaborate much more in the second part, but I will say this explicitly now: giving human characters "prosthetic" metal arms to suggest that their object selves don't have arms is not engaging with disability in any meaningful way. It is obscuring it behind assumptions and ideas of disability that are meaningless if not blatantly incorrect.
(And if you still aren't convinced, please read this post and this post and this post when you have a minute. Thanks!)
This part comes first because an honest discussion of disability portrayal needs a framework and backing, which itself requires consideration of the source material's engagement with disability. At the end of the day, though, I want this to be an opportunity to learn. It is important to understand that even as I critique the ableism of a wider community, I do it because I know people can do better about disability representation. I trust that people want to do good things. But I also know that if these shortcomings remain unchallenged, there is not going to be change or growth, just a stagnant, tired, and boring rehashing of the same tropes, the same misunderstandings, and the same biases.
Erasing disability from fanwork is a disservice to the characters and, more importantly, a disservice to disabled folks who already do not see themselves ever represented in media. It should be important to everyone that we recognize and accept real human people, let alone silly cartoon objects, as they are. Accept bodies that look different. BFDI is all about the differences that pull its characters apart and pushes them together, so let's celebrate it for what it does best.
If you've read this far, thank you. I hope this could spur some thoughts about disability rep, whatever they may be. I also humbly request something from you, if possible: this has been a lot of work, and I am an adult with a job and not that much time to spare for silly things like this. Because it's taken up more time than I'd expected, please consider reblogging this post, sharing this to anyone you know in this fandom space, and talking to them about it. I really want people to think about this. If not reblog or repost directly, by all means still have these conversations. Please just get the word out about disability and start a discussion on how we portray it in our culture, both in BFDI and beyond. Cultural shifts can start in the smallest places, but they take effort. I hope it's clear the effort is worth it.
Works Cited
Blake, Melissa. Beautiful People: My Thirteen Truths about Disability. Hachette Go, 2024.
Leduc, Amanda. Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space. Coach House Books, 2020.
Siebers, Tobin. Disability theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Via the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/disabilitytheory0000sieb.
and a buuuuunch of bfdi episodes lollll jnj
(Also a huge shoutout to this short but excellent post from @cosmovain that points out some of the same problems within the sphere of osc fanwork (plus some very cute art!). It helped inspire me to write this project at all and has a lot of the same critiques I will elaborate on in part two, so consider it a kind of preview. Thanks and stay tuned!)
For those of you with android devices, you can use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) standalone app control program to get rid of all the bloatware, data mining, and AI crap - no coding needed!
There are also Android-based alternatives like GrapheneOS and LineageOS, which are pretty easy to install. These are unfortunately available for a more limited range of devices (Graphene is ironically Pixel only, while Lineage supports more), but it's very worth checking out whether one of them might work for your phone.
GrapheneOS is a security and privacy focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility.
LineageOS Android Distribution
Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.
I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.
I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.
AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android Tablets, Web Apps, Online, Windows Tab
An alternative app store:
F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy
cough cough.s.dsmljsd coguh. lap t op. through this ask i am now cursing you to think about algebralien in an objectified context worldbuilding, specifically:
how do objects regard the numbers? (numericals? numbarssss) especially considering the numbers are fully organic and might not have organspace?
do they have the same hominid/bestial structure as objects do
whats different about the region where they come from, does it depend on which one of the lawless/false kings rule that territory?
in general, apart from there technically being two lawless kings, how do their concepts of lawless kings differ
HIIII hi astronic hiii :] sorry for the wait on this i was waiting to make sure it's very good. smiles
Algebria ; [ .. name pending] and its inhabitants
Algebria is a smaller region compared to some others- having two main wild districts that directly contrast each other (as well as a few smaller, but incredibly prominent middle class settlements scattered in Verdant Chalkboard) and one large city district, Cosine.
The overall region shape is similar to that of a null sign or empty set, with moderately sized mountains driving a line through the region- these same mountains are the same reason that the region was left largely undiscovered until relatively recently- with most Object/Numbar relations only picking up within somewhat more recent generations.
The Roots is a large forest thick enough to obscure most of the sky that fills roughly half of the ground level in Algebria and watched over mainly by Infinity. It is a region largely unspoiled by construction however groups ('playgrounds') of Numbars that gather in one location may build their own settlements in any clearings that occur.
The Roots is a conflict heavy area- many 'wilder' Numbars gather here and a large amount (including an infamous 'Fourteen') prey on other Numbars, particularly other Integers.
Verdant Chalkboard is the other wild district of Algebria- although its wild status is under high debate by most geographers due to some of the smaller settlements dotted throughout, as well as a moderately sized town leading up to Cosine. The district is mainly watched over by 2763.
Verdant Chalkboard is a large plains location with some smaller deciduous groves of trees scattered about- it also features natural rock structures and dips in the ground that offer shelter to playgrounds of Numbars looking for a location to settle.
Cosine is the largest city in the region and is located in the very center- with travel infrastructure spiraling out from it in most directions. It is a rare instance of a location free from natural mathematical hazards- that is, shapes and forms that can form an Equation potentially hazardous to an Integer's health.
While Objects reside in many settlements throughout Verdant Chalkboard, Cosine is considered a somewhat exclusive location due to its main draw:
The material known as Infinitum (named by objects as 'Hourglass's Gilded Folly' after a taxonomical mishap by the aforementioned researcher) is contained in veins throughout Algebria and radiates a heightened passive background radiation that draws Numbars to the mountain. Over years of evolution it settled into Numbars' biology and gave their animal and factoric cells flexibility; allowing Integers their ability to shift their value and add together, as well as Symbols and Operators the ability to manipulate Integers.
Infinity and 2763 hoard this radiation in their cells and pass it to their offspring, leading to certain abilities being unlocked in some of their direct descendants.
Infinitum is chemically useless if not mildly toxic to Objects (hence the prior classification) and attempts to pass on its gathered powers to Objects often causes symptoms of radioactive poisoning in the bodies of both individuals.
Numbars - Biology
Objects are observed to have three cell types already- Numbars only have two, and in very particular places.
Numbars evolved from a convergence in a very early Object ancestor based on abstract concepts, and a distant unknown relative of the common mammal. Whilst their limbs or 'parts' are made up entirely of animal cells and are structurally similar to that of objects, Numbars' bodies are made up of a mix between animal cells and a separate kind of synthetic cell only found in Numbars called 'Factoric' cells.
Factoric cells are found solely in the body and each hold a part of that Numbar's 'value' (in Integers) and 'semantic' (in Symbols). When factoric cells are damaged or missing, it can cause particular disorders in Numbars- although some disorders are 'dormant' and only activate under extreme stress or duress (such as Factoric Cell Deficiency, a congenital conditi
Numbars are one instance of neither confirming nor denying Organspace theory in sapient beings- as many of their internal systems appear to be present, however in most subjects a mix of rogue factoric cells and Infinitum based radiation caused partial liquidation of any discernible organs when exposed to open air.
They (Numbars) do not conform to the dichotomy of bestial/hominid objects- however they do have several types of appearance that depend on what sort of Numbar the individual is. For example, Operators appear to prefer aquatic environments (particularly freshwater) and Letters are suited to extreme environments, while most Integers take the in-between and seem to take on mostly typical mammalian traits.
Numbars are also more prone to further features of their assigned animal than noticed in Objects.
The only exception to the rule is Irrationals, a smaller and rarer offshoot of Numbar who seems to 'cancel out' typical animal traits and appears similar to hominid objects.
Regardless of type, all features and genes are always overruled by direct descendance from any Lawless King.
SPAWNING STONES AND TERMINALS -
Numbars do utilize Spawning stones- located throughout Algebria- and reproduce in the same way as Objects. Object and Numbars do not hybridize fully however in some cases an Object may have Numbar features. (but not vice versa. See below)
Contrary to Object society, Numbars do not utilize Respawn Terminals or any similar equivalent.
This is because Terminals are not programmed or designed for the production and use of factoric cells due to their unique makeup- and even in successful attempts, many Numbars are unstable without many of their factoric cells. This leads to either chronic illness or death- or in incredibly rare cases, an error leading to a Numbar being recovered with Object features or parts of their main body; also known as Misprinted Cell Disorder.
Due to these previous errors Numbars are considered unrespawnable- at least with today's technology.
LETTERS AND SYMBOLS - Letters and Symbols are- simply put, remnants of a separate sister group that had previously been living aside Numbars but either died out, migrated into what would become the Outskirts and died off- or integrated into the species as a whole. Letters are more commonly seen as Variables now- and most punctuation mark Symbols are considered archaic, though they do exist.
EQUATIONS - Equations are the phenomenon of factoric cells and Infinitum energy being instructed to liquefy and fuse two or more Numbars together in a (typically temporary) conjoined state. Whilst mathematical fusion is only observed in Integers, Operators and Variables are capable of causing or aiding this process to happen consentually.
Equations are never without risk- there have been documented cases of Numbars being unable to separate and eventually fully integrating into a new entity. With strict safeguards in place, however- it is used to combine sleeping Infinitum-gathered power and aid in brunt force work such as construction.
Most Numbars participate in equations at some point in their life- however there is a regional ban on equations with any kind of negative and some irrational numbers due to the lasting effects they have on other Numbars’ factoric cells.
Most objects do not contain factoric cells and thus cannot participate in Equations as a fused participant- not even as a conduit (like an operator).
LAWLESS KINGS - Infinity and 2763
Infinity and 2763 are considered by Object classification to be the Lawless Kings of Algebria- though they break a few of the rules to fit the role. Both Kings are in constant conflict, fighting to be the one in true control of the mountain Cosine sits atop due to Infinitium's draw.
They have each absorbed an unhealthy amount of the material's power, leading to their extended lifespans and strange abilities. While both are equivalent in power, the Numbar population is split in loyalty and unknowing objects asking which King is in charge will often spark an argument even amongst the mildest Numbars.
2763 is a chimeric being- its descendants take on a wide range of mixed-animal appearances easily mistaken for a respawn defect- and some more directly related take on a weakened variation of one of its powers: to steal the strength and power from another entity, even that of another, foreign Lawless King’s descendant.
Infinity is a deceptively powerful avian Symbol with a surprisingly smaller frame compared to that of another King- his descendants take on an exclusively avian/feline appearance, with some exhibiting features comparative to a porcupine or horned animal. Its descendants are gifted not in physical strength- more fragile and erratic, but capable of manipulating the subconscious thought and perception of another entity.
These powers are stronger the more directly related to the two Kings the individual is. It is rare, but not entirely unheard of, for these traits to be passed to an Object descendant.
This is not a concrete pattern, but it has been observed that more Symbols have descendance from Infinity, and more Integers have descendance from 2763.
Additionally, descendants of either King share at least highlight color from their ancestor.
Culture/Object Interaction
Object and Numbar relations is somewhat friendly at the moment- most Numbars have internal arguements with others of their own groups but seem to mostly leave the Objects out of it save for some isolated incidents.
A common enrichment activity shared between the two is competing in challenges- mostly low stakes events for small prizes of collected cash or materials of interest. The challenges are low danger, although do contain some rough play and vary in topic from relay races to extended in-the-moment intellectual puzzles.
Since Objects and Numbars have begun migrating between each others' settlements, Numbars have had respawn terminals built in a handful of larger settlements for the sake of visitor safety. Numbar and Object scientists have additionally worked together in the scientific field.
Groups of Numbars are called 'Playgrounds' or 'Playgroups' depending on who you ask.
Names
Whilst many Objects have specific names, Numbars tend to be named based on a variety of factors- increasing in specificity depending on context.
For example- when talking about a Seven, they would be referred to as 'Seven'.
When talking about two Sevens, they may be referred to as 'Green Seven and Gray Seven'.
When talking about two Sevens of the same color, they may be referred to as 'Seven, spawn of Sixteen and Twenty-Two (or Seven of [hometown] or Seven of [employment/hobby/occupation])' and so forth.
When introduced to Object birth names, some Numbars chose to adopt names as well to avoid confusion and enjoy personal individualism in large playgroups of the same value or type. Some Objects, equally, chose to adopt the Numbaric naming style and it is not impossible to find a pair of similar objects using the style amongst each other.
Numbars in the Rings
By the events of the AU (and the Parasite-based apocalypse) the Numbars have been settling into other regions- in the Rings, particularly Middle Ring, playgroups of Numbars have gathered and scattered throughout the Object communities- although by far they are still a minority compared to the general population.
During the apocalypse many Numbars chose to migrate further from the Rings, taking objects they find close with them.
Numbars are not immune to the Parasites either- though boasting a resilience, over time the Parasites evolve and are able to assimilate factoric cells.
The only exception are Variables- who contain naturally unstable factoric cells that constantly mutate and reproduce. However, this process is not infallible and in most cases turns an unfair race into an endurance sprint that the Variable cannot typically win- only dragging out their suffering.
One of the first Numbars to fall to the parasites in the Rings is 'Vermilla', or Three.
So this was an AMV that I did back in mid-2015. “Cry for Judas” was the first song by the Mountain Goats that I ever heard, and this was the first AMV I ever did, and tbh it still holds a pretty dear place in my heart. A while back the original got copyright claimed and taken down off of YouTube, and given the nature of the content and my channel, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that.
But, for those of you who might still want to see it (including myself), I figured the least I could do was upload it here.
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
