"Hard" fembots vs. "Soft" fembots: What's your preference?

[Esleeper]

I prefer soft because of one simple reason.
Getting skin caught in a joint crack hurts like hell
We all experienced it at one point, a little bit of skin between a zipper, or accidently getting your fingers caught between a closing door, etc.
Imagine all of those things happening during sex

I was thinking about this today and i was like:
"(facepalm) how the hell did i forget about Mathilda"
I would have gladly risked getting my skin caught between her joints

You realize she's just a human with cybernetic augmentations, right?

On that note, I've looked at a few other robot fetishist communities, and it seems that more than a few of them have had very strong stances on this subject. Some of them have outright stated that "soft" fembots can't even be considered robots in any meaningful form and have suggested that this forum is no place for people who "want their robots to look robotic" (as they put it).

While that's kind of an exaggeration, I do believe a little more diversity in the types of robots showcased on the wiki and in our fics would be ideal. Right now it's almost 100% "soft" stuff, and that's not good.

[Stephaniebot]

Its 'swings and roundabouts' on Soft/Hard images on here, it fluctuates. Those of us who have been around a long time (creak, groan, or my human joints do, anyway) remember when there were a lot more Hard images here, and I'm sure in time, they will return.

To be honest, robot, or human with cybernetic augmentations, that's a hot look! Yes, I'm a hard look fan, as most know

[N6688]

You realize she's just a human with cybernetic augmentations, right?

Well from what i understand about her is that most of her entire body is replaced with cybernetics.
The only thing that's human about her is her brain.

On that note, I've looked at a few other robot fetishist communities, and it seems that more than a few of them have had very strong stances on this subject. Some of them have outright stated that "soft" fembots can't even be considered robots in any meaningful form and have suggested that this forum is no place for people who "want their robots to look robotic" (as they put it).

While that's kind of an exaggeration, I do believe a little more diversity in the types of robots showcased on the wiki and in our fics would be ideal. Right now it's almost 100% "soft" stuff, and that's not good.

Well i thought that a "hard" fembot was one with visible seams, joints and that you could see from first glance that she wasn't human.
Evidently i was wrong in that assumption.
Can i ask what is considered to be a "hard" fembot

[Stephaniebot]

I'm not a soft fan, so I might be seeing it wrong, but my 2 cents...

Soft is, pretty much the human looking type fembot, if you didn't know better. The Austin Powers fembot is probably the most obvious movie example of this I can think of. An example from here would be the Dyson Industries type fembots, they look like humans, they act like humans, and so... Forgive me, I cant remember if the bodies are just clones of the human, or can be customised to suit, as I would do, given the chance.

Hard is, well the obvious one for me, is Maria, from Metropolis, about as hard as you can get! But pretty much, anything with an armor type shell/body would be hard to me, as with Mathilda.

But that's just my 2 cents

[N6688]

I'm not a soft fan, so I might be seeing it wrong, but my 2 cents...

Soft is, pretty much the human looking type fembot, if you didn't know better. The Austin Powers fembot is probably the most obvious movie example of this I can think of. An example from here would be the Dyson Industries type fembots, they look like humans, they act like humans, and so... Forgive me, I cant remember if the bodies are just clones of the human, or can be customised to suit, as I would do, given the chance.

Hard is, well the obvious one for me, is Maria, from Metropolis, about as hard as you can get! But pretty much, anything with an armor type shell/body would be hard to me, as with Mathilda.

But that's just my 2 cents

See, that is what i tought.
But after i thought (and slept because i was already awake for 24 hours when i wrote that comment) about Esleeper's comment i came to the (Obvious) conclusion that he meant that bots like kleo here:

should only be considered as "hard" fembots and anything that is fully human shaped isn't.

[darkbutflashy]

We aren't talking about robots where you can hardly say whether they have a gender at all, are we? I think a purely visual categorization has only a limited use. When a robot has no gender-defining appearance and no gender-defining behaviour, there's no sense in talking about this.

[Esleeper]

I'm not a soft fan, so I might be seeing it wrong, but my 2 cents...

Soft is, pretty much the human looking type fembot, if you didn't know better. The Austin Powers fembot is probably the most obvious movie example of this I can think of. An example from here would be the Dyson Industries type fembots, they look like humans, they act like humans, and so... Forgive me, I cant remember if the bodies are just clones of the human, or can be customised to suit, as I would do, given the chance.

Hard is, well the obvious one for me, is Maria, from Metropolis, about as hard as you can get! But pretty much, anything with an armor type shell/body would be hard to me, as with Mathilda.

But that's just my 2 cents

Mathilda's still technically human- it's not just an armored shell, it's also stuff like optics instead of eyes, metallic "skin", nonexistent hair (because let's be honest, robots aren't meant to have hair), and so on. As I mentioned, EDI from Mass Effect is the textbook example if you ignore the hair. The most important part of all is that their similarity to the human for mis one of generality rather than specifics- assuming they're even of humanoid form. Believe it or not, there are people who prefer more exotic shapes, like tripod-like legs.

IIRC, the Dyson Institute robots act like humans because they ARE humans-some kind of transformation, I think. Kind of ruins it for me, because it just drives the point further that they're robots in name alone and nothing else.

And no, darkbutflashy, were not going that far. Unless you want to anyway.

[Esleeper]

I'm not a soft fan, so I might be seeing it wrong, but my 2 cents...

Soft is, pretty much the human looking type fembot, if you didn't know better. The Austin Powers fembot is probably the most obvious movie example of this I can think of. An example from here would be the Dyson Industries type fembots, they look like humans, they act like humans, and so... Forgive me, I cant remember if the bodies are just clones of the human, or can be customised to suit, as I would do, given the chance.

Hard is, well the obvious one for me, is Maria, from Metropolis, about as hard as you can get! But pretty much, anything with an armor type shell/body would be hard to me, as with Mathilda.

But that's just my 2 cents

See, that is what i tought.
But after i thought (and slept because i was already awake for 24 hours when i wrote that comment) about Esleeper's comment i came to the (Obvious) conclusion that he meant that bots like kleo here:

should only be considered as "hard" fembots and anything that is fully human shaped isn't.

You misunderstood me entirely.

Nonhumanoid robors are definitely on the "hard" end of the spectrum, but humanoid robots can be "hard" too. It's only when they are nearly indistinguishable in a way that you can't tell they're robots (e.g. fake flesh, hair, etc.) that they become "soft".

In other words, Maria is hard, KLE-O is hard, practically anything that needs a faceoff scene or any other reveal tropes to prove it's a robot is soft.

[N6688]

I'm not a soft fan, so I might be seeing it wrong, but my 2 cents...

Soft is, pretty much the human looking type fembot, if you didn't know better. The Austin Powers fembot is probably the most obvious movie example of this I can think of. An example from here would be the Dyson Industries type fembots, they look like humans, they act like humans, and so... Forgive me, I cant remember if the bodies are just clones of the human, or can be customised to suit, as I would do, given the chance.

Hard is, well the obvious one for me, is Maria, from Metropolis, about as hard as you can get! But pretty much, anything with an armor type shell/body would be hard to me, as with Mathilda.

But that's just my 2 cents

See, that is what i tought.
But after i thought (and slept because i was already awake for 24 hours when i wrote that comment) about Esleeper's comment i came to the (Obvious) conclusion that he meant that bots like kleo.
should only be considered as "hard" fembots and anything that is fully human shaped isn't.

You misunderstood me entirely.

Nonhumanoid robors are definitely on the "hard" end of the spectrum, but humanoid robots can be "hard" too. It's only when they are nearly indistinguishable in a way that you can't tell they're robots (e.g. fake flesh, hair, etc.) that they become "soft".

In other words, Maria is hard, KLE-O is hard, practically anything that needs a faceoff scene or any other reveal tropes to prove it's a robot is soft.

Ahhhh, now i get it (doy, i'm dence )

[Esleeper]

ESleeper, you have seen other robot fetish communities? Where?

Well, to be fair "community" is a bit of an exaggeration since they're not very well organized, but 4chan is the de facto gathering spot for most of them. With everything that entails, of course.

In retrospect, that might explain some of the reactions, too.

[liliwinnt6]

Getting skin caught in a joint crack hurts like hell
We all experienced it at one point, a little bit of skin between a zipper, or accidently getting your fingers caught between a closing door, etc.
Imagine all of those things happening during sex

Yeah, I don't think having sex with a chrome Sorayama-style robot would work. Polishing it daily to keep it clean would be fun though.

but you may get turned on by her. imagine for a rectangular something between her legs, looks like a panel. I would be eager to see it open.

[liliwinnt6]

by the way, both hard and soft ones are ok to me, in most occasions.

[Extyr]

In a purely visual medium I prefer hard fembots, but in a story I don't really mind either way as long as it's not GINO. In a dream world I'd have a hard fembot with an almost human AI and a soft fembot with really basic AI.

[Esleeper]

Agreed with Extyr. GINOs are the worst. "She's a robot!" Well how can you tell? "Uhm...well because she IS!"

Hear, hear. Why even bother labeling it as a robot when it looks and acts nothing like one?

[Stephaniebot]

Yes, if I'm fortunate enough to ever be turned into a robot, I really want to look, and act like one!

[Esleeper]

Yes, if I'm fortunate enough to ever be turned into a robot, I really want to look, and act like one!

You know, that actually brings up some philosophical points I was thinking about earlier. If you were transformed into a robot but still remember what it was like to be a human, can you really say you'd still be able to act like a robot? Or would you just end up acting more or less the same way you were beforehand?

That's part of what draws me to the hard variety. They were never human, and if they're self-aware they would be quite conscious of this fact and thus they wouldn't try to "act human", consciously or not. It allows for a greater range of personality and differing views on humans, and yes that does include the capacity for sex and love in the right circumstances. It's much more interesting than a fembot who thinks she's human, or a transformed fembot who still knows exactly what it means to be human from her old life.

Food for thought, that's all.

[Rotwang]

I like to see it from the perspective of "degrees of artificialness"

I've never quite believed in the "we can make a robot that looks 101% like a human being" No matter how hard talented artists have tried these last few centuries they have yet to reproduce a person convincingly in the smallest detail and I don't see how this will change in the future, therefore rendering the whole idea of a perfectly realistic human analog null and void. The only option would be a classic biological android, either cloned or constructed living being, very close or as good as identical to a human being. But in my mind this defeats the whole idea of the "R" in the acronym.

This is why I dislike the classic person pretending to be a robot in film and television with nothing more than a spot of makeup, a set of contact lenses and/or a wig, because it's just a cop-out. It still screams "obvious human pretender" And extra fakery like a fake arm substitute or a CGI panel (like the overdone face-split inspired by AI) just adds to the sense of a demand of make-belief. But then again it's often done because it offers a performer the chance to use human expressions.

More satisfying is the pretender that manages to hide all traces of looking like an actual human, it feels more rewarding because it shows a little bit more thought and consideration. And if the performer adds an extra touch by a good, preferably original performance, only makes it better.

To give a concrete example, one of my favorite moments in Real Humans was the moment they broke into the safe containing an original fully artificial-looking gynoid, it's a pity there weren't a few of these older ones still around.

It then goes from the sexbot in the remake of Total Recall all the way to Metropolis and Sorayama.

And then we reach another cop-out zone, typified by Bjork's "all is full of love" clip. It's not very satisfying because it uses CGI rather than an actual existing mechanical design and perhaps even more jarringly uses human elements superimposed on something purely mechanical. It's another trick to allow for a wider emotional range, made easy by the versatility of CGI, but it still feels like a cheap shot to me.

As for the real robots we start to see, it's all very impressive in details and disappointing overall. The Scarlet Johansen robot we saw a few days ago, looks like, but it's little more than an animated mannequin and it shows we still have a very long way before we have robots that have all the abilities we see in over a dozen very different robots combined into one. For every robot that has some degree of facial expression, we have another that can walk, but they are still miles apart.

[Stephaniebot]

Yes, if I'm fortunate enough to ever be turned into a robot, I really want to look, and act like one!

You know, that actually brings up some philosophical points I was thinking about earlier. If you were transformed into a robot but still remember what it was like to be a human, can you really say you'd still be able to act like a robot? Or would you just end up acting more or less the same way you were beforehand?

That's part of what draws me to the hard variety. They were never human, and if they're self-aware they would be quite conscious of this fact and thus they wouldn't try to "act human", consciously or not. It allows for a greater range of personality and differing views on humans, and yes that does include the capacity for sex and love in the right circumstances. It's much more interesting than a fembot who thinks she's human, or a transformed fembot who still knows exactly what it means to be human from her old life.

Food for thought, that's all.

From a personal choice, I'd rather not remember what it was like as a human, be completely transformed in body, mind, and thought. But given that on more than a few occasions, I've acted like a robot, I suspect I could soon get totally into the robot mindset anyway. Its like asking me to define when I stopped acting like a man, and started becoming a natural woman, it just flows. I know one thing, there is no easy way I could go back to acting like a guy again, for sure. Would be the same, I'm sure, robot body, robot mindset, would soon forget I'd ever been human, for sure.

So yes, ideally, I'd want all my humanity removed, literally be a robot, nothing else. But I'm sure that very quickly, my mind would adapt to my new body, and I'd act like a complete robot anyway. Would really love the chance to find out, I must say

[Stephaniebot]

Yes, Rotwang,

For me personally, I'd prefer the Metropolis/Sorayama look, that is really how I'd like to look. But yes, practicality, if humans are being transformed into robots, I suspect its going to be sex related, and most, for that purposes, seem to prefer the more human look. Great shame, as far as I'm concerned, but as long as its a 'full robot' transformation, mind and body, I could settle for that

[JessicaDupre]

.

[Esleeper]

This is an interesting question! I've always been a softie for lots of different reasons, one being I sometimes like to play the "sleeper bot" who finds out she's not entirely real. The other things I enjoy, mannerisms/malfunctions, etc, can be done with soft and hard alike.

I always thought of those as being mainly useful for reveals, but I guess they have a place for the hard type too.

[Deep Blue]

I think soft is more realistic, human are soft exterior after all

[RobotMaker]

I think a soft skin made from something like silicone or an organic material would be preferred, but the skin being in panels with electronics showing through in gaps wpuld make modifications easier to make, and give it a "definitely not human" vibe.

[Esleeper]

I think a soft skin made from something like silicone or an organic material would be preferred, but the skin being in panels with electronics showing through in gaps wpuld make modifications easier to make, and give it a "definitely not human" vibe.

As a covering over joints and to protect vital parts, maybe. But give me a good old-fashioned metal chassis any day, I'm not looking for an imitation organic covering anyway.

And honestly, why should it have to look realistic or be a dead ringer for a human anyway? If you want a robot that looks exactly like a human, you may as well just settle for a human pretending to be a robot instead- it would be a near-identical experience.

[Stephaniebot]

Always nice to find a metal chassis lover, I must say