splicer toys?

[abe]

What sort of toys would people of splicers create or use?

[BookWyrm]

There was a thread that had an item called a Glow-Egg, generally used for indoor lighting, and I suggested that children would use it in games similar to 'hot-potato'.

[abe]

There was a thread that had an item called a Glow-Egg, generally used for indoor lighting, and I suggested that children would use it in games similar to 'hot-potato'.

Any other potential toy ideas out there?

[BookWyrm]

Now that my headache has passed & I re-read this thread, a few ideas have popped up;

Action-figures would most likely be of that House's significant members (legendary heroes, the current Warlord), generic classes such as a Biotic, Scarecrow, ect. & be seen as teaching tools as well as entertainment. Miniatures, harkening back to stories of 'war-gaming' played by the Resistance's ancestors would also reflect these styles; Older & experienced warlords & commanders often use a table-top & map of the immediate area or combat zone when planning a long-range sortie. (Since I have not heard of any House developing an organic 'holo-projector' creature, table-top war-game miniatures are the only option).
These would be, of course, made of the non-metallic resources of the Resistance; bone & wood for the forms, organic cloth for clothes on larger forms.

Dolls follow a similar pattern, made up of bone & wood, with organic cloth used for clothing. Strong female icons would be the most popular.

Animals, especially WarMounts, are also represented in forms like these.

The creation & trading of these items have led to a sub-market between Houses, mostly for tactical purposes (a House having representations of the most prominent members of other Houses is a given) but surprisingly, a few mid-echelons have been noted to have quite the private collections......

[abe]

what about toy's made of a type of bio-plastic?

[taalismn]

I'd say that Splicer tech wouldn't be used on toys, since the biotech is needed for the war effort. Use of Splicer-derived materials like resin and the like would be incidental, rather than intentional...scraps of material that couldn't be used for weaponry or armor, but still could be whittled into shape. Certainly nothing megadamage, since the Resistance is raiding GRAVEYARDS for bone to use as ammunition. Biomass would go back to the vats to be recycled. A really lucky child of(or living particularly near) a bio-artificier or Gardener might get to play with a prototype animal or chimaera, but those would be exceptions, not an overall trend.
Children would, however, be playing with wooden guns and melee weapons, and would be arguably a lot more violent than our current generation of 'safe kids' where we have consumer watchdog groups rating toys for safety. . They're practicing for war, after all, especially those born to the warrior social classes. The dumb ones get weeded out or slated for Biotic conversion, depending on how (much more) grimdark your social setting is.

[Shark_Force]

well, that depends on how much it takes to produce simple cheap toys. if you can make hundreds of toy swords, hammers, air guns, etc for the kids to basically train for war with, it's not a waste of resources. heck, you're probably making training weapons anyways, after all.

plus, other types of toys would be useful too. imagine if they had miniatures that they use for wargames that the kids can play. not only would it be helping them to recognize and memorize what the various machine creations can do, as well as learning about all sorts of different biotech and the advantages of each, it's also training them in tactics and helping you identify which ones are suitable for leadership positions.

if you made biotech toy dolls that are similar to regular babies, you could train children how to care for other children, and by the time they're teenagers they are responsible for taking care of children so that the adults have more time for other work.

even toys like rubik's cubes can teach pattern recognition and persistence and problem solving.

the right kind of toys don't just provide fun for the children, they can also be training tools to prepare them for war. while we wouldn't do that sort of thing in our society (or at least, not in my society, i suppose some of you out there may be from societies where this is considered acceptable), it may very well be the standard for the resistance. the things you learn when you are young shape the rest of your life to a large extent, so making sure the children start off in a direction the resistance wants may be a pretty high priority.

[Slight001]

Grim/Dark is a matter of perspective as well... there's the "resources are scarce and depression runs rampant" sort of grim/dark and then there's the "we have become monsters ourselves despite the utopia available to us" styles... well there's a lot more then that but those two are the most common that I see and deal with.

When I think of the various metabolisms available and their interactions with each other I find myself wondering just why humans even need to bother with the machine at all. It wasn't that much of a stretch for me to imagine an underground/ocean (which oddly enough is apparently outside the machines operational limits)shaven where Splicer-Tech provides everything a society could ever desire... a new age garden of eden.

[abe]

anybody ever think of bio-squirtguns?

[Shark_Force]

hmmm... almost definitely would exist. apart from the fun aspect, it's a handy way to get the kids ready for using actual weapons that squirt stuff (like acid nodules).