CERESUltra

Music Nerd, Author, Yote!

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30s/white/tired/coyote/&
Words are my favorite stim toy


F-Z-Blackheart
@F-Z-Blackheart asked:

How does a synth mimic biology in your setting? Is it just superficial or can a synth derive energy and sustenance from normal food [with some supplements]?

This is an interesting and tricky one to answer! Part of it is my habit of jumping worlds and timelines and everything else, so that really nothing's permanently on or permanently off the table. I have several veins I write in, and some of them have common rules, but I wouldn't say I have one fixed setting where everything is defined.

That being said, there are certain paths I tend to take based on what the story calls for. Are the synths considered "human", or very much part of the culture of a place? Are they formallly organic creatures who uploaded? Stories that follow these paths will have synths who eat food, be it specially prepared for them or with some contrivance for what we consider "normal" food. Eating is as much custom and expectation as it is sustenance, and it makes sense for the synths to be adapted to fit those cultural norms and social practices, whether or not it is actually "functionally" eating. Even if it's purely aesthetics for the sake of organic comfort, it's something to consider.

On the inverse side of things, in more organic-hostile environments or in more digital worlds, it makes more sense for modular parts and power sources that forego any inherited organic routines. If we have convenient reactors, why bother with the inefficiencies that come from chemical breakdowns of matter? Hot swapping old oil or certain parts of something that can be done in the mechanical bay, and certainly less often than meals. Synths can have fully human personalities without needing to adhere to the biology or routine of organic life, and there is something to be said for imagining what new and interesting cultures and maintenance practices/conditions arise from that.

There's all sorts of middle grounds, like how much of what we understand about robotics and the way we build things are based off of how things in biology evolved to work well. think of springy legs like dogs and horses have that very big influence on how we build walking machines.

And to be honest it's one of those things where it depends on what inspiration strikes me. it may come to me as a fully formed universe, where we thought down to even the finest detail about how everything that Universe works, versus the robots eat because it's convenient and I'm not going to think about it any harder than that because the story is not that deep. If I'm writing several stories in a specific setting or universe or context, I might develop more specific rules overall, but again it depends on what I'm working on and my tastes and Inspirations change all the time.

A very good one kin, thank you. Had to use voice to text a little bit, so if the grammar spelling or whatever is wonky I apologize


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