dsmp au where c!dream builds / creates dream XD to protect the server — dsmp au where c!dream screams himself hoarse in prison before realizing dream XD has been programmed to protect everyone but him.

In Defense of Anakin Skywalker (and Hayden Christensen)

I grew up with Star Wars, my whole family loves Star Wars. I was 8 when I saw Episode I and afterwards, I was completely immersed in the Star Wars universe. Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi was probably my first fictional boyfriend and I'm unashamedly still in love with him too.

Episode II: The Attack of the Clones came out when I was 11 and so naturally I was excited to see the continuation of the Star Wars prequel universe. However, nothing could have prepared me for the absolute utter gorgeousness of Canadian actor, Hayden Christensen who was cast to play the adolescent Anakin Skywalker.

My memories of first seeing Episode II are fond because I got to see the movies with my older siblings while on vacation in Myrtle Beach. It was probably my first experience of being accepted among my older adult brothers and sisters or the feeling of 'grownupness' as I like to call it.

So Attack of the Clones has always been an special film to me because I saw it at a time when I was no longer being viewed as a child, but as a growing teenager.

It's also why I've always been rather defensive of the film too. While the film was titled Attack of the Clones, it may as well have been re-titled, "Attack of Anakin Skywalker (and subsequently, Hayden Christensen)". For over 20 years, there has been an absolute and indescribable hatred of Anakin Skywalker and many people blamed both Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen's supposed poor acting as the result of a badly done Anakin.

And to be honest even though I had a massive crush on Hayden Christensen and was hardly a movie critic at the time, I felt that at times that Anakin could have been better acted. However, I was young and didn't care about the script or the acting. Yet, for years I constantly defended, Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker and Hayden Christensen. Partly due to nostalgia, partly to being a teenage girl and most of all partly to do with understanding the character of Anakin as being misunderstood, misinterpreted and not being treated as an adult by the elders in his life.

Did Anakin have problems? Yes.

Were most of these problems his fault? No.

Did Anakin ever try to fix these problems and better himself? Everyday of his life.

He had nothing, but he gave everything

 The prequels were written as a timeline of a boy's journey from goodness into darkness. Anakin's life is a story arch of sacrifice and redemption. Life has not always been good to Anakin. He was born a slave with no father. He was raised in the strong love of wonderful mother Shmi Skywalker. While Shmi may have been scared and confused as to how she conceived a child without a man, she raised her son in love and simple contentment.

Chances are Anakin and his mother probably faced terrible abuse in their time as slaves and more than once, Anakin may have been separated from Shmi as leverage for greedy slave owners. Although a slave, Anakin was never a victim. He may have been physically owned, but his heart and mind were free. He was his own person, always thinking outside of the box, building, creating, questioning everything and everyone. Not to mention a little wild and rather reckless.

Even as a child Anakin was a little strange to people. For a slave to have such a hopeful and positive attitude may have seemed bizarre to outsiders, but that was just the norm for him. Shmi once remarked that her son knew nothing of greed. For a boy raised with nothing, all he had were his talents as an inventor and growing pilot. And he used his talents for other people. He built C-3PO to help his mom, he entered the podrace to help Qui-Gon Jinn, he always gave without any expectation of being thanked.

A spirit that refused to surrender

After Anakin is freed and sent to train as a Jedi, that wild spirit was still intact. Much to his by-the-book master's dismay. Anakin didn't have the opportunity to grow up in the strict Jedi Temple that was built on order, rules and tradition. As a child, Anakin was use to being himself and not fitting into anyone's mold. His original dream was to be a pilot, not a Jedi. No one asked him if he wanted to be a Jedi, no one asked him if he wanted to be trained by Obi-Wan Kenobi.

While Anakin may have been grateful for both opportunities presented to him, overtime he may have seen this new life as not to different from the one he left. A life run by others. Telling him what to do, where to go, how to dress, how to behave. He survived as a slave because he dared to dream and imagine and refused to be defined by others.

Now he's thrown into a culture where individuality is looked down upon. He lived through the stifling Jedi order because he still held onto those qualities. He was going to be himself on his terms. He would nod his head and say yes when he needed to, but off the clock he would live by his own rules. Something that Obi-Wan and the Jedi order could not understand. And Anakin is getting frustrated by this.

So now we get to Attack of the Clones (and the Attack of Hayden Christensen). Critics came down hard on both Anakin and Hayden. Constantly complaining about Anakin's constant complaining, his tantrums, broodiness and being a crybaby about everything. Critics blamed the disaster of Anakin Skywalker on the terrible miscasting of Hayden Christensen. The only redeeming quality Hayden Christensen had that saved him was the fact he was so easy to look at.

For years, fans were desperate to know who Anakin Skywalker was. And so the pressure to deliver a good character that could measure up to the icon of Darth Vader may have seemed insurmountable. And so when people got this confused, overemotional 19 year old, who has no experience in love or sex, but is madly in love with a beautiful young women; and who wants to be respected in a highly established culture, without losing himself or conforming, well people were just disappointed. The disappointment can be explained in one of Anakin's most famous lines.

"HE'S HOLDING ME BACK!"

He, being George Lucas who was holding back Hayden's actual talent to create a good three dimensional character. Plus his bad script writing. Poor Hayden was just made to read lines on a page and somehow make this sad character somebody that people can root for. Unfortunately fans and critics ate him alive. It's only in recent years that people have begun to realize that they were blaming the wrong person. And by blaming Hayden, they were completely misunderstanding Anakin as a character.

His most beautiful gift, his most fatal flaw

Of all of Anakin's gifts, his ability to love deeply was probably his most profound and his most dangerous. The Jedi Temple forbade romantic attachments to others and for good reason. When you become attached to or love someone beyond the boundaries of platonic friendship you become afraid of losing them. The end of my review for the Star Wars prequels sums it up the best:

In The Phantom Menace, Yoda warns Anakin about the dangers of being afraid. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Anakin's most beautiful attribute is also his most fatal flaw. His ability to love deeply. Yet, if you love someone you will always live in fear of losing them. Anakin was created by darkness, but raised in the light of his mother's love. His own love was made manifest by Padme and then by their unborn child/children. However, Love no matter how strong can be weakened and even be destroyed by the evil of fear. If the prequels taught anything about life, it taught how fear (even in its smallest form) can be be our most detrimental enemy. Living alone in fear and not seeking help is a signing of our own death warrants. What might have happened if Anakin had gone to Obi-Wan and seek his help? Would things have been different? The prequels were not meant to tell a happy story. They were written as a timeline of a boy's journey from goodness into darkness. No, they don't have the silliness or humor of the Originals, because there is nothing humorous about someone's self-destruction. Yet, the story of Anakin Skywalker's transformation had to be told in a way that was real and heartbreaking. To take Darth Vader and make him a human who could feel and understand and love could be an insurmountable task. Yet, you only need to watch his death scene at the end of Return of The Jedi to see that the humane part of Anakin Skywalker had always been there. The prequels were made to be built on that final scene of redemption and human love. A husband's love to save his wife became a father's love that could overcome darkness and hate. An extreme love that defied fear and held on to hope. That was the love of Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin could be a bratty and immature young adult. However, to only base a character by his few annoying flaws is overlooking the bigger and better picture. Anakin was an outsider his whole life and yet that never seemed to bother him. He never cared about fitting in. He was content being himself and he refused to let Obi-Wan or the Jedi Order or even Padme change him. He held onto who he was for as long as he was able to. Then the tragedy of losing his wife changed that. The indomitable spirit wasn't broken, it was destroyed. Anakin re-entered a life of slavery for over 20 years.

And he was ultimately freed by one person. An orphan who once had nothing but a talent as an inventor and dreams of being a pilot. A young Jedi with an unbreakable spirit that refused to surrender to evil or fear or pain or loss. A son who loved his father so deeply that he would fight to the death to free Anakin Skywalker forever.

On August 1st 1747 Proscription Act introduced, banning tartan and the carrying of weapons. The penalty for a first offence was six months in jail and a second offence resulted in transportation for seven years.

So how effective was this ban? I think the banning of the tartan has been overplayed at times, the main part of the act was to disarm the Highland clans. That's not to say that tartan wasn't banned, just that it should be looked at more closely.

I dug into the subject further and unearthed this excellent article in The National.......

It would, of course, be wrong to underestimate the effect of the ban. It was enacted by a ruthless government that intended it to be enforced and there are records of instances in which it was enforced.

Probably the weaving of tartan in many glens ceased or was greatly inhibited (at least during the early years of the legislation). It should be remembered, however, that the ban only applied in the Highland part of Scotland, it did not apply to women, and judging by the amount of portraits of the time in which the sitters wore tartan, it seems not to have deterred gentry. (Gentlemen who could command three servants, women and boys, in addition to those serving in the army, were exempt from the ban.)

The Earl of Holderness, in 1752, noted reports that “…universally the sheriffs, or their deputies, are very negligent of their duty in omitting to secure [imprison] persons wearing the Highland dress or carrying arms”.

There is, in fact, much evidence, not least from the old statistical accounts, which were written by parish ministers, to indicate that the ban on tartan was far from entirely effective. James D Scarlett, widely considered to have been the best authority on such matters, ventured the following opinion: “Except in the hands of a few Hanoverian officers, who saw in it an opportunity to persecute the Highlanders, the Dress Act does not seem to have been much enforced.”

The point of this is that tartan was obviously enormously significant to Highlanders or the Hanoverian government would have had no reason to ban it. Given this significance surely, in spite of the ban (or in a sense because of it), steps would have been taken to preserve the knowledge relating to tartan and the old traditional patterns. It is inconceivable that the Highland people, faced with this measure from a hated regime, would have tamely destroyed every stitch of old plaiding and applied themselves obediently to the business of forgetting their traditional setts.

Proscription simply would not have brought about a period of racial amnesia during which all memory of tartan patterns stopped being handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter. The oft-repeated assertion that this was so is the real invention. It not only offends common sense, but is contradicted by a sound body of evidence.

We know from the ledger of William Wilson & Sons that prior to the repeal of Proscription their customers were (apart from military and colonial) largely on Scotland’s eastern coast. However, after repeal in 1782, they increased sales of tartan in the Highlands. This is to say that when they began to promote clan tartans they were selling them to Highlanders, many of whom were old enough to remember whether such a concept was authentic or a deception. We also know that Wilsons took trouble to seek out genuine traditional setts from the Highlands.

“Wilsons were known to have toured the Highlands in the late 18th and early 19th century, looking for old patterns that they could use as a basis for their traditional tartans”, (Peter MacDonald, Head of Research, Scottish Tartans Authority).

Even as late as 1822, the year of the visit of King George to Edinburgh, there remained living eye-witnesses to the 45 uprising (Patrick Grant, who had fought alongside the Glengarry regiment at Culloden, was 108. The widow of James Stewart of Tulloch, who gave Prince Charles Edward a pair of brogues at Dunkeld, was 99 – some 30 years after Wilsons had started to sell clan tartans in the Highlands).

Sir Walter Scott played such a major part in the organising of the 1822 visit (and has, indeed, been thought of by some as the inventor of clan tartans) that it is worth considering his views on their provenance. He is often quoted as saying: “I do not believe a word of the nonsense about every clan or name having a regular pattern which was undeviatingly adhered to.”

Less well known is his conviction that clan tartans were “of considerable antiquity” and that he believed that he could demonstrate that they had been worn “a great many years before 1745”. These comments indicate that Scott very sensibly saw that clan tartans had their origins during the era prior to Culloden.

The present author’s suggestion for a realistic definition is: any pattern that has had a special association with a particular clan, probably because it has been woven and worn in a territory dominated by the clan in question, or any tartan known to have been worn in a uniform manner by a clan.

What is being opposed here is the assertion that the concept of clan tartans was invented some 50 or more years after Culloden. It is not the purpose of this article to maintain that all clans necessarily had exclusive setts pre-45, but that there is convincing evidence some clans had tartan patterns particularly associated with them, and that in effect there were clan tartans in Highland society prior to 1745.

Crucial to penetrating this mystery is the actual experience of the generations of Highlanders who lived throughout the 18th century. These were the people who knew, and who handed down, the truth. It is a fact of history that generally only the wealthy and influential leave records of their recollections and opinions for posterity, so relevant material is strictly limited. In fact the present writer has found not a single clear and specific statement from any such person denying the existence of clan tartans prior to 1745.

On the other hand, evidence by statement or by implication to the effect that clan tartans were a reality of the Jacobite era is not difficult to come by.

Anne MacVicar was born in Lochawe, Argyll, in 1755. This was during the period of the ineffective ban on tartan. She married and became Mrs Grant of Laggan, Speyside. Anne was a poet. In 1795 she wrote The Highlanders. When this work was included in the collection Poems on Various Subjects, published in 1803, her notes to The Highlander included this statement: “[Tartan] was the manufacture of their women, and the distinction of their clans, each having had a sett (as they styled it) of tartan peculiarly their own.”

General David Stewart of Garth was the co-organiser, with Sir Walter Scott, of the 1822 Royal Visit. Garth had served in the Black Watch regiment since 1787. He was the author of Sketches of the Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland (1739). In his preface to that publication the General explains that he had been fortunate in having received much of the knowledge that he passes on from older men of the regiment, writing: “I had also the advantage of being acquainted with several highland gentlemen who had served as private soldiers in the regiment when first organized.”

Garth then has this to say about clan tartans: “In dyeing and arranging the various colours of their tartans, they displayed no small art and taste, preserving at the same time the distinctive patterns (or sets, as they were called) of the different clans, tribes, families, and districts. Thus a Macdonald, a Campbell, a Mackenzie. &c. was known by his plaid; and in like manner the Athole, Glen-orchy, and other colours of different districts were easily distinguishable.”

Garth adds an observation that though only a statement of common sense, is worth repeating in the context of this article: “It was easy to preserve and perpetuate any particular set, or pattern.”

Those who refuse to accept evidence of this quality must resort to effectively accusing Mrs Grant and General Stewart of having been misled or being in some other way channels of disinformation. Is their testimony to be overruled in favour of a modern prejudice?

At the risk of labouring the point, when William Wilson & Sons started to sell clan tartans to Scottish Highlanders there could have been absolutely no mystery as to whether this was an authentic tradition or a commercial novelty. If a person was too young to remember 1745 and what had gone before, he or she had only to ask a father, mother, uncle, aunt, or an elderly neighbour or friend. It seems unlikely that proud Highlanders would buy into something that they knew to be a racket.

As for the disappearance of all the old setts, no matter how often this has been copied from book to book, it was always too preposterous to require serious attention. Of course big manufacturers made the most of clan tartans, exploited them, if that term is preferred, but they did not dream the idea up out of thin air and gleefully bamboozle a generation of Highlanders.

With regard to provenance, each clan tartan has to be considered individually. Some have been passed down from Jacobite times, some are military in origin, some were designed or adopted in the early 19th century, and yet others are even more recent. There need not be any sense of the romantic and gullible versus the wise and realistic.

In truth, where the history of tartan is concerned, very few are wise. It is surely ironic that such a vibrantly colourful subject is comprised so frustratingly of grey areas. Anyone championing any point of view (including this one) has difficult questions to answer.

Allan Breck Stewart, of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, was surely a romantic character. Yet he was a real man and Stevenson’s novel was based very much on real events. These events took place during the period of Proscription. Regarding the sett, which we know as Stewart of Appin, James D Scarlett had this to say: “Without being foolishly definite, I would say that it would be probable that Allan Breck wore the Appin Stewart sett and would certainly regard it as authentic.”

ANSWER_THEM_ALL

Alllllll righty then.

1. Would you have sex with the last person you text messaged? Yes.2. You talked to an ex today, correct? No.3. Have you taken someones virginity? Yes.4. Is trust a big issue for you? Probably the biggest.5. Did you hang out with the person you like recently? Yes!6. What are you excited for? Next Friday... hoo boy, next Friday.7. What happened tonight? Discovered some things about myself and what I like that I definitely hadn’t realized before... the night’s still young too.8. Do you think it’s disgusting when girls get really wasted? Depends on what they’re like when they’re drunk, honestly. But I’m happy to go into parent mode if necessary.9. Is confidence cute? Absolutely.10. What is the last beverage you had? Vanilla Coke.11. How many people of the opposite sex do you fully trust? Maybe two or three.12. Do you own a pair of skinny jeans? It’s pretty much all I wear other than suit trousers or chinos.13. What are you gonna do Saturday night? Hang out, play Overwatch/Witcher 3 and talk about sex it seems.14. What are you going to spend money on next? Rent and bills, probably.15. Are you going out with the last person you kissed? No.16. Do you think you’ll change in the next 3 months? Definitely. Especially in my current emotional situation and the industry where I work, a single week is an eternity to play with.17. Who do you feel most comfortable talking to about anything? Probably Dany.18. The last time you felt broken? Earlier this week.19. Have you had sex today? No!20. Are you starting to realize anything? Yes!21. Are you in a good mood? It certainly isn’t bad!22. Would you ever want to swim with sharks? I feel like that’s just asking for trouble.23. Are your eyes the same color as your dad’s? No. I’m green, he’s more of a hazel/brown.24. What do you want right this second? She knows.25. What would you say if the person you love/like kissed another girl/boy? I’d live with it. She’s waaaay too cool for me anyway.26. Is your current hair color your natural hair color? Yes.27. Would you be able to date someone who doesn’t make you laugh? No.28. What was the last thing that made you laugh? A joke about a C-3PO buttplug on Tumblr dot com.29. Do you really, truly miss someone right now? ...kinda?30. Does everyone deserve a second chance? Depends. If they knew what they were doing and could have prevented it, I am less inclined to give it to them. But I’m not unforgiving.31. Honestly, do you hate the last boy you were talking to? He’s my bro 4 lyf dawg.32. Does the person you have feelings for right now, know you do? Probably, like I told her direct superior at a work party so y’know. Never said it to her directly, but I have asked her out before.33. Are you one of those people who never drinks soda? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha absolutely not.34. Listening to? A playlist of songs I’ve written scenes for in my various stories that I made in Spotify a few months ago. Current song - A Strangely Isolated Place by Ulrich Schnauss.35. Do you ever write in pencil anymore? Not really. I do draw in pencil though.36. Do you know where the last person you kissed is? Yes.37. Do you believe in love at first sight? No. The three people I’ve ever truly loved were not people I was even interested in when we first met.38. Who did you last call? My mum - mother’s day is tomorrow and I gotta be places.39. Who was the last person you danced with? My crush. That night is largely why she’s my crush.40. Why did you kiss the last person you kissed? Because it was fun and the mood was right.41. When was the last time you ate a cupcake? Honestly dunno.42. Did you hug/kiss one of your parents today? Nah, but i probs will tomorrow.43. Ever embarrass yourself in front of a crush? Of course, who hasn’t?44. Do you tan in the nude? Tanning is not something I really do - I am a white boi 4 life yo.45. If you could, would you take back your last kiss? No.46. Did you talk to someone until you fell asleep last night? Yes.47. Who was the last person to call you? Either my mum or my personal trainer.48. Do you sing in the shower? Sometimes! Not often.49. Do you dance in the car? Yes.50. Ever used a bow and arrow? Yes!51. Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer? Two weeks ago for work... by my crush.52. Do you think musicals are cheesy? Yes, but that’s part of the appeal. The Producers (both versions) are pure kino though.53. Is Christmas stressful? I fucking love getting into the Christmas spirit, I am a fucking yuletide machine come late December.54. Ever eat a pierogi? What the fuck is a pierogi55. Favorite type of fruit pie? Apple and Cinnamon.56. Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid? An inventor, author or journalist. I still have the author dream, but I swapped out journalism with advertising after I started learning both at Uni.57. Do you believe in ghosts? Nah.58. Ever have a Deja-vu feeling? All the goddamn time. Sometimes I seriously think I have an oracle’s premonition.59. Take a vitamin daily? I take magnesium pills but otherwise the vitamins I get are from smoothies I blend at work.60. Wear slippers? Nah.61. Wear a bath robe? Nope.62. What do you wear to bed? An assortment of old high school sport/band gear, my Year 12 jersey or a heavy jumper I nicked from a landscape gardening tutor at CIT.63. First concert? Radiohead - The King of Limbs Live in Sydney in 2012. No other concert since has compared, it essentially ruined the live music experience for me.64. Wal-Mart, Target or Kmart? Kmart and Target are different beasts in Australia but I’ve been into a Walmart once and I’m gonna have to go with that.65. Nike or Adidas? I guess Nike, not for the clothes but because the Knight family founding Laika has been the best thing to happen in animation since the Disney Renaissance.66. Cheetos Or Fritos? Miss me with both. Cheetos if I have to pick.67. Peanuts or Sunflower seeds? Peanuts.68. Favorite Taylor Swift song? I can’t stand her music but I’ll pick 22 because it’s catchy and she looks super hot in the music video.69. Ever take dance lessons? I actually want to, but no.70. Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing? For some reason I guess I’ve always pictured her as a musician or doctor.71. Can you curl your tongue? Yes.72. Ever won a spelling bee? I won enough as a kid that I got banned from them.73. Have you ever cried because you were so happy? Yes.74. What is your favorite book? 1984 changed my life. To Kill A Mockingbird and Mister Monday are runners-up because they had me reading the whole thing in a single sitting.75. Do you study better with or without music? With. 76. Regularly burn incense? Not regularly, but I do.77. Ever been in love? Yep.78. Who would you like to see in concert? Daft Punk.79. What was the last concert you saw? Some indie band I can’t remember the name of. Umm, Hey Geronimo or something? I saw it because I was doing promo stuff.80. Hot tea or cold tea? I do like a good iced tea.81. Tea or coffee? Tea.82. Favorite type of cookie? Can’t go wrong with chocolate chip.83. Can you swim well? I’m decent.84. Can you hold your breath without holding your nose? Yes.85. Are you patient? Being as patient as I am is a curse. My life is a quagmire of diminishing returns.86. DJ or band, at a wedding? Depends on who I’ve wed and the vibe. I think, generally, a band sounds nice.87. Ever won a contest? Yep!88. Ever have plastic surgery? Nope!89. Which are better black or green olives? I can’t really tell the difference.90. Opinions on sex before marriage? Never had a problem with it. In fact, I encourage the idea of sex before marriage because locking yourself in with someone who is sexually incompatible with you sounds like the worst.91. Best room for a fireplace? Bedroom, but the living room makes more sense.92. Do you want to get married? Someday. I won’t be thinking about it until at least my 30s though.

The charisma droids: today’s robots and the artists who foresaw them

RoboThespian and the worlds first automaton newsreader are the stars of the Science Museums Robots show. But did Da Vinci and Michelangelo beat them to it?

An android toddler lies on a pallet, its doll-like face staring at the ceiling. On a shelf rests a much more grisly creation that mixes imitation human bones and muscles, with wires instead of arteries and microchips in place of organs. It has no lower body, and a single Cyclopean eye. This store room is an eerie place, then it gets more creepy, as I glimpse behind the anatomical robot a hulking thing staring at me with glowing red eyes. Its plastic skin has been burned off to reveal a metal skeleton with pistons and plates of merciless strength. It is the Terminator, sent back in time by the machines who will rule the future to ensure humanitys doom.

Backstage at the Science Museum, London, where these real experiments and a full-scale model from the Terminator films are gathered to be installed in the exhibition Robots, it occurs to me that our fascination with mechanical replacements for ourselves is so intense that science struggles to match it. We think of robots as artificial humans that can not only walk and talk but possess digital personalities, even a moral code. In short we accord them agency. Today, the real age of robots is coming, and yet even as these machines promise to transform work or make it obsolete, few possess anything like the charisma of the androids of our dreams and nightmares.

Thats why, although the robotic toddler sleeping in the store room is an impressive piece of tech, my heart leaps in another way at the sight of the Terminator. For this is a bad robot, a scary robot, a robot of remorseless malevolence. It has character, in other words. Its programmed persona (which in later films becomes much more helpful and supportive) is just one of those frightening, funny or touching personalities that science fiction has imagined for robots.

Remorseless malevolence Terminator Salvation (2009). Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros

When Douglas Adams unleashed Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on Radio 4 in 1978, the idea of a robot with a human-like personality was already enough of a cliche for Adams to have fun subverting it. Instead of being either loyal servant or sinister would-be overlord, Marvin shares our unenviable human capacity for self-pity and despair. Brain the size of a planet and you want me to clean this spaceship.

Would we really want to replicate melancholy in a machine? Perhaps we would, if robots are ever to genuinely relate to human beings. Just before Marvin came along, the original Star Wars in 1977 had imagined two kinds of robot a mobile computer, R2-D2, and his much more humanoid interpreter C-3PO whose attitude shares some of Marvins wounded passive aggression. More recently, Matt Groenings sc-fi cartoon Futurama featured Bender, a robot who smokes and drinks, is a liar, an egomaniac and a thief. In the latest Star Wars episode Rogue One, K-2SO is a converted Imperial droid who is constantly behaving insensitively and apparently selfishly in short an electronic jerk.

Can the real life well, real simulated life robots in the Science Museums new exhibition live up to these characters? The most impressively interactive robot in the show will be RoboThespian, who acts as compere for its final gallery displaying the latest advances in robotics. He stands at human height, with a white plastic face and metal arms and legs, and can answer questions about the value of pi and the nature of free will. Im a very clever robot, RoboThespian claims, plausibly, if a little obnoxiously.

Im very clever RoboThespian humanoid robot. Photograph: Reuters/Thomas

Except not quite as clever as all that. A human operator at a computer screen connected with Robothespian by wifi is looking through its video camera eyes and speaking with its digital voice. The result is huge fun the droid moves in very lifelike ways as it speaks, and its interactions dont need a live operator as they can be preprogrammed. But a freethinking, free-acting robot with a mind and personality of its own, Robothespian is not.

Are todays robots any closer to true agency than the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton that amazed 18th- and early 19th-century Europe? This lifelike early robot beat all-comers at chess, apparently by the power of a clockwork brain. It was a hoax. In reality a chess grandmaster was hidden inside the machine controlling its every move. Robothespian is no hoax. It is a state-of-the-art robot, with complex movements and interactive responses but it can not think for itself. Robotics is a long way from creating anything with as much personhood as Marvin the Paranoid Android.

A 16th-century automaton monk from Spain, who beat his chest as he prayed. The clockwork mechanism was hidden beneath his habit. Photograph: Science Museum

That is not for want of trying. Robots reveals that human beings have been obsessed with automating ourselves for at least 500 years. Early automata in this exhibition include a Spanish 16th-century painted wooden statue of a monk that can move by clockwork. This attempt to give a statue the illusion of living movement fits well with other art of the age when it was created. Religious art from the 16th and 17th centuries includes gorily realistic sculptures of the dead Christ covered with blood and faces of the Virgin apparently shedding wet tears: to animate such statues was just another way to awe and move the Catholic pious.

Our fascination with synthetic humans goes back to the human urge to recreate life itself to reproduce the mystery of our origins. Artists have aspired to simulate human life since ancient times. The ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion, who made a statue so beautiful he fell in love with it and prayed for it to come to life, is a mythic version of Greek artists such as Pheidias and Praxiteles whose statues, with their superb imitation of muscles and movement, seem vividly alive. The sculptures of centaurs carved for the Parthenon in Athens still possess that uncanny lifelike power.

Most of the finest Greek statues were bronze, and mythology tells of metal robots that sound very much like statues come to life, including the bronze giant Talos, who was to become one of cinemas greatest robotic monsters thanks to the special effects genius of Ray Harryhausen in Jason and the Argonauts.

The smile of Mona Lisa reflects Da Vincis research on the mechanics of the muscles called lips. Photograph: BBC/Illuminations

Renaissance art took the quest to simulate life to new heights, with awed admirers of Michelangelos David claiming it even seemed to breathe (as it really does almost appear to when soft daylight casts mobile shadow on superbly sculpted ribs). So it is oddly inevitable that one of the first recorded inventors of robots was Leonardo da Vinci, consummate artist and pioneering engineer. Leonardo apparently made, or at least designed, a robot knight to amuse the court of Milan. It worked with pulleys and was capable of simple movements. Documents of this invention are frustratingly sparse, but there is a reliable eyewitness account of another of Leonardos automata. In 1515 he delighted Francois I, king of France, with a robot lion that walked forward towards the monarch, then released a bunch of lilies, the royal flower, from a panel that opened in its back.

Leonardo da Vincis robots were more than gimmicks. They reflect the way he thought about nature. In his anatomical drawings, many of which record his own careful dissections of corpses, he sees the human body as a complex and marvellous machine. On the same sheet as his famous drawing of a foetus in the womb, for instance, he shows the wall of the womb connected by protruberances like the teeth of gear wheels. This vision of tiny cogs working in the human body reveals how he saw us not as angelic wonders the religious orthodoxy of his time but as contraptions, our ligaments pulleys, our eyes cameras. His greatest simulcra still exists. She is called the Mona Lisa.

Da Vinci applied the same science that inspired his automata to his most famous portrait. The smile of Mona Lisa reflects his research on the mechanics of the muscles called lips. Her lifelike eyes embody his understanding of optics. Contemporaries responded to the Mona Lisa as a hypnotic imitation of life: Giorgio Vasari writing in 1550 goes into ecstasies over her illusory life.

One of the most uncanny androids in the Science Museum show is from Japan, a freakily lifelike female robot called Kodomoroid, the worlds first robot newscaster. With her modest downcast gaze and fine artificial complexion, she has the same fetishised femininity you might see in a Manga comic and appears to reflect a specific social construction of gender. Whether you read that as vulnerability or subservience, presumably the idea is to make us feel we are encountering a robot with real personhood. Here is a robot that combines engineering and art just as Da Vinci dreamed it has the mechanical genius of his knight and the synthetic humanity of his perfect portrait.

Art and science come together in the dream of the robot. To replicate humanity is a feat of artistic illusion as much as an engineering challenge. In the 21st century, robots with mask-like faces, plastic anatomies and friendly handshakes can, and do, draw on the ways artists have tried to reproduce the look and feel of human life for centuries. Yet the dream of the robot that shares human emotions is still, for now, a fantasy.

Robots is at the Science Museum, London SW7, from 8 February until 3 September.

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from The charisma droids: today’s robots and the artists who foresaw them