Air, one of the essentials of life, along with food, water, and shelter. We breathe it in, we breathe it out, we gain many things from it, good and bad, and sometimes we obsess about the bad in it enough to demand gasmasks for everyday living.

As an inflation artist, however, I am of course interested in air for its filling of inflatable items. Pressure, volume, pneumatics and parenchyma. Wait, what?

Air in balloon-like beings has always been compared to its internal organs, or perhaps its very soul or essence, which is probably why deflation is seen as akin to snuff around some of these parts. I never saw it that way, though obviously it's very bad for one to lose air. I always saw it more as a fluid of support, rather like how a spider uses its blood to straighten out its legs (other creatures have a similar system to straighten out their you know what). Obviously, without air, there is no support, and therefore little to no movement, so deflation could very well be akin to a coma-like state.

However, would the opposite be true? Even if air was not of spiritual nature, could inflating a balloon creature with more and more air bring more support, more strength, more power, more life?

As appealing as the concept is, it brings even more questions. If more air is equal to life, would loss of that air diminish that life? It seems worse to me that one could so easily giveth what one could taketh away, to coin a phrase. Yeah, you might find me one to believe that life is precious, but don't start debating to me about human population and children. What I simply mean is that, in these fantastic conceptual contexts, an intelligent living being made from formerly inanimate material is a great honking deal, at least to me. Strange that they're manufactured so plentifully in my Furld.

I've always designed my balloonies with the sense that, if they are mass-manufactured lives, that they be treated as both property and partner. Property only in the sense that they have manufacturing dates, warranties, and manuals of operation, but otherwise they have rights much like any living being. Sure, they're conditioned to believe in subservience and don't mind being deflated and packed away for the night, even for a long weekend of their owner's vacation, but that doesn't mean that they're not thinking through that flattened period, developing ideas, thoughts, and opinions during that time.

Back to my main question: Is Air = Life? Well, one of my favorite stories/sequences is Nathan Ounce's old sequence, New Toy, which features a skunk woman with a tigress balloonie, challenging herself to inflate the balloon as much as she can over the course of a year, to see how big she could blow her up. For its lack of production value at that period, it was enough back then to inspire me to do what I do now, especially the parts written by maloo. Of course, looking back at it now that it's put on permanent hiatus in favor of more complex stories and ideas, I do wonder what would've happened had it continued.

Maloo has admitted that he is intrigued by the idea of balloonies coming to life with the application of more air, which of course reminds me of balloonie-cat's story, Full Power, which is a good example of such ideas put to action, as well as their consequences. Either way, my take on the subject is a little less magical and a touch cynical. For me, the idea of balloonie life is not so much dependent on air as it is on certain pre-programmed parameters, such as first-time inflation and other sort of things listed in instruction manuals. After such, no further inflation will empower it, nor deflation make it perish.

Air as strength, on the other hand, is a concept more up my alley, but still very unusual. Tanks with "muscle gas" or similar novelties are cute and all, but recently, the only sort of thing like that that makes sense to me is a multi-chambered setup much like a humanoid musculature, somehow able to redirect air through the chambers as needed. Not that I've grown out of magical mayhem, but I have always been a scientific type by nature. I like to know how things work, and how they affect the workings of their environment. It's funner to me than just "It's magic, shut up and enjoy it!".

Speaking of magic, any magical, mystical works I tend to do come under the magnifying glass of science. I prefer "magiscience" or "magitech", where mystical properties are analysed as any other property known to man. I think I tend to do such with balloonies, since as far as we can tell, no such technology exists in real life to bring balloons to life, let alone allow them to inflate to skyscraper proportions. Just because it is magical or fantastical doesn't mean it can't be analyzed or considered scientifically. I suppose mostly the feeling around here is that heavy science =/= fun, which is untrue.

While it doesn't always bring me pleasure, I really don't mind. It helps me to exercise my knowledge and creativity, which probably doesn't mean much to you seeing as how I'm not creating much to post here. There's a ton of W.I.P., but otherwise nothing that I can really share for whatever reasons. A lot of old projects have even got shelved, which is unfortunate since most of them involve the development of my characters (a list of them I should upload, if nothing else). I suppose I just wanted to make something to see if I can get someone thinking.

Any thoughts?