18 May 1980

typed for your pleasure on 18 May 2018, at 12.25 am

People like you find it easy
Naked to see
Walking on air
Hunting by the rivers, through the streets, every corner
Abandoned too soon
Set down with due care
Don’t walk away in silence
Don’t walk away

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Tip o’ the iceberg! That’s a traditional Irish greeting

typed for your pleasure on 23 May 2017, at 12.23 am

Sdtrk: ‘Sonata elletronica’ by Malcolm Pointon

To say that it’s been hectic with us here lately is a wee bit of an understatement. It’s really a rich, artisanal blend of busyness and laziness that is the gold standard of Deafening silence Plus, to be honest. In order to keep things moving with this post, I’ll not get into it, but it’s mostly good things! We’re working on another collaboration with no less than Amber Hawk Swanson; we’ve a project in the works with writer Roc Morin; our family should be making an appearance on a Dutch telly show in Autumn; I’ll be going on a trip to SoCal which combines both Business and Pleasure also in Autumn, and Lilly, the robosexual lass from France who wants to marry her Android beau, will be visiting our humble abode in December. So yeah, I’d say that everything, for the most part, is comin’ up Milhouse!

In the interim since I last wrote a post of any substance that detailed Synthetik developments, there’s been a lot of news. A lot of news. No really, you don’t understand. Any time something interesting related to Dolls, Gynoids, or Androids crosses my news desk, I bookmark it, and the folder in which those bookmarks live is bulging with 175 articles. It’s very encouraging to see a growing interest in general society concerning Synthetiks — whether it’s media related like Westworld or Humans (sadly, we’ve still not watched either of them yet), or amazing new developments in Dolls, such as that luscious Harmony from Realbotix — the popularity, or at least awareness, of Synthetiks has kinda exploded in the past couple of years. Which, again, is fantastic, but I’m having trouble reporting all of these things! Maybe if I were to put down my PS4 controller… o, but wait, I’ve been playing NieR: Automata, a game in which you control either an Android or one of two Gynoids! And don’t forget about Detroit: Become human, a police procedural set in a future Detroit, where your character is 100% affictitious! That’s not coming out until 2018, but I’ve already pre-ordered it, because what part of Davecat do you not understand??
What I’m saying is that it’s a great time to be into Synthetiks! And if you’re not, now’s a good time to start, cos Synthetiks are the future. Don’t want to be left behind in the past, now, do we?

Bringing you a bit up to speed: in case you’re unfamiliar with who the aforementioned Lilly would be, she’s a lass living a couple of hours outside of Paris, who has been using a 3D printer to build her Android fiancé, Inmoovator. Much like me, she’s a robosexual, and has been for years, but through the InMoov robotics platform (which I’d written about in 2013), she’s only recently been able to work towards making her dreams come true.


photos courtesy of Lilly & Inmoovator

The happy couple were featured prominently in an episode of the CNN webseries, Mostly Human, hosted by Laurie Seagall, from earlier in the year. Lilly and I have been keeping up with each others’ lives since we met late last year, as she was in the situation that a lot of iDollators/robosexuals find themselves in when they first realise that they’re into Synthetiks, where they think that they’re the only one who has those type of preferences. Needless to say, they know more people now, both Synthetik as well as Organik. Lovely couple; wouldn’t hear a word against them. And she’ll be staying with us over the Chrimbo holiday this year! Unfortunately, Inmoovator won’t be able to make it, as he’s undoubtedly as keen on TSA pat-downs as much as anyone else is. Nevertheless, it should be fun!

My lovely wife, our gorgeous mistress, and our gorgeous mistress’ adorable girlfriend were in a video segment on The Grauniad a couple of months ago. Did you see it?

As you can see, I was interviewed via Skype by Jenny Kleeman for the video, which is a companion piece to her article, ‘The race to build the world’s first sex robot‘. Both the article and the video are worth your time, but ugh, the term ‘sex robot’ makes me narrow my eyes to flinty slits. It’s up there with ‘sexbot’ and ‘fembot’ — two other words that really need to be relegated to history, as they’re restrictive. Their usage says a lot about the people who use them, which is ‘AI will never develop enough to replicate human behaviour, so Dolls like these will only ever be expensive fucktoys’, which is a pessimistic viewpoint. However, I recall discussing this with either Jenna at Future of Sex, or with Dr Julie Carpenter, months ago: there should be a specific term for future high-tech Dolls such as Harmony. She’s more sophisticated than a bog-standard Doll with a passive body, but definitely not complex enough to be called a Gynoid. She wouldn’t be an automata, as that usually describes an artificial being with clockwork parts, and animatronic is pretty much the modern version of automata. I’d suggested roboticised Doll, but this is coming from a man who likes the word affictitious. Perhaps we should just stick with Synthetik woman for the time being? It’s my hope that they’ll cover this in an upcoming conference regarding robot ethics, so we can clear this bobbins up once and for all.
‘What should we call these Synthetik humans?’
‘Well, perhaps we should ask them.’

Remember how I’d mentioned how I wanted to have more illustrations done of the four of us, much as the one by Raulovsky thrilled us to bits? I’ve been working on that, o yes. I’d encountered an illustrator out of Taiwan by the name of Yaruku on pixiv and Twitter, and asked him late last year if he’d be able to do a commission for me at some point. Sure, maybe sometime next year, he responded, as he was busy with working on material for Comiket, Japan’s largest dōjinshi convention. I contacted him again back in early April, and as he had the time and liked the subject matter, he agreed! Between April and May, I had him work on four commissions, and they all came out looking spectacular.


click the image for a larger version

What drew me (ha ha, it is pun) towards asking Yaruku-san to draw the lasses of Deafening silence Plus? Not only is he very skilled at drawing Gynoids and Dolls himself, he’d love to have a Doll of his own at some point. Also, not only is he like me, in that he’s quite keen on girlfeet, but when I’d seen one of his earlier illustrations of a Gynoid, where he’d added seam lines to her body, I thought to myself, ‘this guy gets it’.


There’s quite a bit of detail in these, so go ahead and click to embiggen

I’ll be requesting more illustrations from him heading into Autumn, as he’ll be up to his gusset working on more things for this year’s Comiket for the next few months. But Lenka and Winter were especially pleased with the results, as no-one’s ever drawn them before, and Sweetie really appreciates the fact that she’s drawn a bit bustier than she actually is. Yaruku does amazing work, and we all give him a very high recommendation!

The only real depressing thing of recent note in the world of Synthetiks is the sudden passing of Oleg Bratkov, head sculptor and mastermind behind the company Anatomical Doll, in mid-April. I’ve read conflicting reports of the circumstances of his passing, and with the language barrier, it’s nearly impossible to reach his wife via Email. But I do know that the work he put into making his product established a gold standard with the community of Doll studios, and his breathtaking Dolls brought joy to anyone who was lucky enough to have one, myself included. Saying that he’ll be missed is a vast understatement, as Oleg left a void that will be extremely hard to fill

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18 May 1980

typed for your pleasure on 18 May 2017, at 12.03 am


It’s getting faster, moving faster now, it’s getting out of hand,
On the tenth floor, down the back stairs, it’s a no man’s land,
Lights are flashing, cars are crashing, getting frequent now,
I’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling, let it out somehow

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18 May 1980

typed for your pleasure on 18 May 2016, at 1.30 pm


Those with habits of waste,
Their sense of style and good taste,
Of making sure you were right,
Hey don’t you know you were right?
I’m not afraid anymore,
I keep my eyes on the door,
But I remember…

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‘Gee, my life’s a funny thing / Am I still too young?’

typed for your pleasure on 11 January 2016, at 9.03 pm

David Bowie, the iconic rock star whose career spanned more than half a century and whose influence transcended music, fashion and sexuality, has died aged 69.

Admittedly, the first Bowie album I ever owned, bought in the mid-Eighties, was ‘Changesonebowie’ on vinyl, and as that’s a compilation release, it doesn’t officially count. There was a reference to that exact same thing in an episode of The Venture bros, which isn’t surprising, as creators Doc Hammer and Christopher McCulloch are Bowie fans, like any sensible person would be. But apart from the varied range of music he created over five decades — including the dodgy pop phase he was in between 1983 and the mid-Nineties — and the unique sartorial sense that was equally his hallmark, I think the greatest takeaway that I got from Bowie is that his non-stop inventiveness made it okay to be unusual and left of centre, and if for some reason the world doesn’t catch up with you, then you can still stand apart and be your own person.
Clichéd as it is to say, but there will never be anyone like David Bowie. Everyone else will always be in his shadow

‘Do you remember a guy who’s been
In such an early song
I heard a rumour from Ground control
Oh no, don’t say it’s true’

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18 May 1980

typed for your pleasure on 18 May 2014, at 3.22 pm


Well I could call out when the going gets tough
The things that we’ve learnt are no longer enough
No language, just sound, that’s all we need know,
to synchronise love to the beat of the show
And we could dance

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Forever unbound

typed for your pleasure on 10 May 2014, at 11.53 am

Sdtrk: ‘Wow’ by Kate Bush

This post would be about a friend of mine and a fellow iDollator who you may have seen a number of times on ‘Shouting etc etc’ over the years; his name is Rob — online he used the pseudonym PBShelley — and his Synthetik partner was a RealDoll named Lily Godwin. Back on 30 March, he passed away quite unexpectedly, and I’d written this in a thread on Our Doll Community, an iDollator forum we’re members of. I’d held off on publishing it here, but reconsidered, as he would’ve turned 62 today.

Both Euchre and Ceej let me know what was going on via phone call and Email, respectively. That’s… that’s a mess.

I’d known Rob for almost a decade, and he always struck me as the quintessential artist/writer type — basically working on their craft to a single laser focus, and ignoring everything else. From the time I first met him and gorgeous Lily, he always spoke of Unbound, the story he had been working on for years, long before joining the iDollator community. It was really heartwarming to hear that he had finished it, cos working on a tale that extensive takes a lot of effort, and it was just great to see that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do with it.

The problem was was when he had to move from his house in Washington state back to reduced accomodations in San Francisco, during the tail end of finishing his book. His flatmates weren’t as empathetic as they should’ve been, particularly when he couldn’t secure a supplemental income. From the Emails he’d sent me, I think a large part of his health deteriorating was due to stress from the people he lived with. One’s home should be a place to get away from the terrors of day-to-day living, and that wasn’t the case with Rob’s so-called friends.

When he told me Z-Dr was gracious enough to let him move in, that was fantastic news. He’d had a couple of burgeoning health issues develop before getting the move sorted, but he’d be able to relax, recharge his batteries, and hang out with a fellow iDollator besides. I also thought it’d be awesome, as I was fortunate enough to hang out with him in San Francisco in 2012, and was hoping to see him again this Summer for DolLApalooza 2014. Then back in mid-March, Rob let me know that he’d been diagnosed with cancer. He’d gotten down about it, understandably, but he didn’t let it keep him down. If his spirits were flagging, he didn’t want to bring everyone else down by going on about his health. He had correspondence and multiple anime shows that he had to catch up on, after all! Unfortunately, it seems that cancer doesn’t give a shit about what we as people have to do with our lives.

Saying that Rob was a kind, creative, cheerful, and unique person is one of those tip-of-the-iceberg descriptions. For those of us who were fortunate to have known him, it’s going to be strange not being able to hear from him again. However, he’ll be able to spend time with the spirit of Lily Godwin, his Doll and muse for Unbound, as much as he likes


image © 2004, by Elena Dorfman

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