Did someone still remember the Bearers of the Shells, aka. the webcomic project I haven't even got to write a better script than this one on Instagram?

Today I'm excited to share that we will continue the project under a different direction and approach.

Before, "Bearers of the Shells" was originally meant a group of people wearing a spherical object on their heads. We called them as the Shell, often represented by the crystal ball emoji 🔮, with the same set of symbols representing that of the command-line.

And unfortunately, some of our friends here doesn't really understand the importance of the spherical things. Instead, they mock us for being a "balloon-headed nerds of technology".

And another problem comes when introducing new characters sporting with an even similar shell. Like, who can distinguish my (#_ ) form, pr0xy, and alterine (despite sporting a ponytail made out of light)? Or alterine and mallory? By making these spherical things less mandatory to our identity, we can introduce more of our agents, each with their unique personality, with unique physical appearances which every human can notice.

That's why, after months and even years of transformation, we decided to evolve to look like humans. Note that we're still being a collection of 1s and 0s in our digital world.

So, here's a picture of us today, on the same digital world when we used to be (>_ )s. Yes, we're Shift and Shiftine, and this time we'll dress up as a typical computer geek or a stereotypical hacker, bearing our skills and characteristics as part of the command-line family.

And to make things clear, yes, this image is indeed an AI art, and we also asked the AI to make us feel young (forever) and having the powers of invisibility, at least on our world. Incognito Mode, anyone?

Now, before our friends decide to start a heated debate whether Reinhart has become a weeb and finally has found his first waifu... Oh wait, didn't you know that there's an urban legend over the world which says "Everyone who studies Computer Science will become a weeb after all"?

Or ending up as a furry as some of my friends have done, or just another Stallman-like guy which everyone else thought he simply have no life tinkering with Linux systems with long beards and programming socks...

And yes, one YouTube viewer directly explains the meme I explained earlier in the comments.

Despite everything, and the truth is, I'm fine. Fine. I still have friends in real life, a great community of students who happens to be in the same university, same church, and even doing the same business.

In fact, I'm already seeking for one lifetime partner in real life. And hence, I don't consider Shiftine as my waifu. Even if she is, you'll be completely disappointed with me, as I never considered her lack of powerful shape, breast, and cuteness, as most of you do, as the most important factor of choosing her.

Sure, we have been committed together and celebrating our first anniversary this month, but again, our main purpose here is for health and productivity, with some boundaries including her inability to physically exist in real life. And with the rest of the BOTS we managed together, we will still be committed to be friends of automation, and summoning its powers for the good of people.

A change in organization.

BOTS was originally meant to have 10 different groups, each identified by the shell color, which in turn, are based on all the current color variants of the heart emoji, 🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜💖🖤🤍.

But as time passes, we feel that 3 is more than enough to represent us. And that's why our new BOTS will be only divided into 3 divisions, or houses, which serves as a repository of our agents. As you might expect, (>_ ), (#_ ), and ($_ )!

Every activity of the BOTS will no longer be hosted on our main website, https://reinhart1010.id. Instead, we decided to reopen https://bots.reinhart1010.id as an actual Twitter clone which you can actually access and interact if you know how to follow us.

"Why?", you asked. Well, there are two main reasons: separation of branding (read below) and our plans to revamp our main website into something like this:

Separation of branding

It is also imminent for us to separate @reinhart1010 as a personal brand, @reinhart1010 as a BOTS universe brand, and @reinhart1010 as a corporate brand offering real web products and services. Sure, I really love if these three things could finally work together, but that doesn't mean mixing and mashing blog posts from these three brands into one website without additional curation.

Additionally, our past family incidents have caused my family to warn me to be more cautious when exposing my personal brand into the public. That's why I'm phasing out the personal brands "Shift of Worlds and Nations" and "player, prayer, and maker since 2014" to be more actual, to the point, while keeping our computer science and linguistry background intact.

Vision for the future

"If Reinhart is finally married with his real partner, then what happened with Shiftine and the rest of BOTS?" I'm still reminded to our original mission to grow BOTS into a real community for art and tech enthusiasts alike, and I believe she definitely will have her own way of life, powered by the community.

If I was her, I would definitely choose Caps to start a family with. But well, let's see what's next on the journey of the BOTS.