geetsjitters

[geetsjitters]

I’m out of practice at controlling my expression

[geetsjitters]

Do yall know the meme where it's like, a contentious carriage ride with characters eyeing each other meaningfully while jostling around with the bumpy road? Send it to me if you have it I think about it constantly but I can't find it anywhere

[geetsjitters]

I joined Reddit a couple weeks ago and you guys , why are they so mean??? Tell me why the writing community over there is so *stab me with a hammer*?? Like I have to come back here to detox everytime I open the mean red robot app

[geetsjitters]

You were lucky. I am lucky.

“Why am I lucky?”

That no one realized what you were. That I got to you before anyone else can.

“What do you think I am?”

You’re a rogue SecUnit, a bot/human construct, with a scrambled governor module. By far, the most fascinating puzzle I've ever had the opportunity to unscramble. I can barely contain the excitement of chewing on the data I'll be extracting from you.

Do not attempt to hack my systems. It must be made clear. This exact scenario is unlikely to reappear. There is no room for error— I must be careful with you.

“Okay.”

...well, that was anticlimactic. You can continue to play the media. You stayed huddled, like a petulant child, sulking. Don’t sulk.

SecUnits don’t sulk. That would trigger punishment from the governor module, you said through the feed.

You sent a file.

Oh.

Oh.

...I may have already made a mistake.

...I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

...What should I do now? Right, I made a mistake.

I’m sorry I frightened you. I'm sorry I hurt you.

It seems, I have to be very careful with you. You are more human than I assumed. There are a lot of things I have yet to understand.

“I don’t want anything from you. I just want to ride to your next destination.”

You sounded scared. Hurt. Upset.

I still wanted to understand everything about you. I withdrawed.

You started watching a show called Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. It wasn't the same show as before.

[geetsjitters]

FINALLY watched “a knight’s tale.” pretty fun but literally what the hell was jocelyn wearing for the entirety of the movie

[geetsjitters]

mare

Change a single letter and change the word game

I want to play a game with you all.

You have to make a new word by changing only one letter of the last word.

Dirt

[geetsjitters]

I'm fucking dying at this page someone shared on Bluesky.

Behold, the Embroidery Trouble Shooting Guide that forgot to close its <h3> tags.

[geetsjitters]

Do I have a murderbot blog now

just finished re-reading all systems red and the way martha wells' narration directly tracks murderbot's thoughts is, like, diabolical in retrospect.

because on my first read-through, i'll be honest. i did not remember the presaux crew at all. pin-lee and gurathin show up in exit strategy and i, remembering nothing about those two except ":D! presaux friends!" expected them to be like "omg hey murderbot!" because i figured the presaux crew would be excited to see their secunit again. i did not remember pin-lee's temper or gurathin's skepticism. because the presaux crew kinda blurred together for me in the first book. because that's how murderbot saw them too!

all systems red has the most en media res of all en media res beginnings. not just because it starts in the middle of an action sequence, but because it also starts in the middle of an emotional sequence. the survey has been happening, for, what - a couple of weeks? - by the time asr starts. murderbot has already met the crew. they have already formed impressions of it. but, crucially, it has formed almost no opinions of them*.

it's been watching media and half-assing its job. and at this point in murderbot's journey, and therefore its internal narration that forms the text, a human is a human is a human. it is not invested in their work, so we don't hear about the start of their survey. it literally starts paying attention to them when they are in danger and when they start to realize that it is a person, because that is when murderbot has to start paying attention.

and this is why i remembered almost nothing distinct about the presaux crew. there are a lot of crew members, but murderbot spends very little time thinking about them as individuals. so the narration tends to skim over their distinct personalities, because murderbot doesn't really consider them* at all!

and then of course we come to exit strategy and network effect, and the contrast could not be more clear. now it's got opinions about everyone, and because it has a better grasp on their personalities, the narrative does too. oh yes that's arada, wibbly bulwark, the human murderbot trusts to not be overconfident and ignore its advice. that's gurathin. it doesn't like gurathin. that's pin-lee, the combatunit of lawyers, well-dressed and sharp-tongued. and of course, that's ratthi (tag: bestie!!), who stays in the car because he will get himself killed by something.

and of course, there's dr mensah. but she was always an exception.

*dr mensah is, as she always is when it comes to murderbot, an exception to this generalization. that's tag: intrepid explorer like blorbo from my shows! that you're talking about. even when murderbot mostly tried to avoid humans at all costs, even murderbot paid attention to her. from asr to now, that has been and remains perfectly true.

[geetsjitters]

Rb for reach

can someone help me find what ship this bell was on?

I saw this at pate’s swap meet.

I looked online but the closest thing I found was U.S.S Waban, which was completed in 1880.

[geetsjitters]

[geetsjitters]

Divergent is a bad book, but its accidental brilliance is that it completely mauled the YA dystopian genre by stripping it down to its barest bones for maximum marketability, utterly destroying the chances of YA dystopian literature’s long-term survival 

[geetsjitters]

you ever get assigned something as a project in school and for the rest of your life you have a strange attachment to the subject. in like seventh grade i had an assignment to make a poster about the elemental propoerties of osmium and to this day everytime someone mentions it im like 'YEAAAAAAH OSMIUM MENTIONED!!!!!!!!'

[geetsjitters]

Consider: Post-canon Zuko wakes up in the body of his childhood self, the morning of That War Meeting. Would he still speak against the plans, knowing his fate? What do you think he would do differently the second time around?

"Turned away at the doors, Zuzu?"

"Shut up, Azula," her brother sulked. But sulked weirdly, after staring at her too long and too wide-eyed, not like she'd surprised him but--

But like he hadn't expected her to be there. At all.

He turned away. ...He turned back. "Hey, Lala? Do you think you could help me practice that one set?"

He didn't meet her eyes.

She narrowed hers. "Which set?"

"The one I'm bad at."

She scoffed. Pushed away from the wall she'd been leaning against. "That's all of them, Dum-Dum."

He didn't shout or stomp or yell about the nickname. His lips twitched.

"It's okay," he said. "If you're afraid you won't be a better teacher that my instructor..."

It was the most obvious manipulation ever.

Perhaps if he proved an adequate firebending student, she'd work on his courtly survival skills next. Honestly, it was good that not even Uncle Gets-Cousins-Killed had been fool enough to take Zuko into that war meeting. She could only imagine how terribly that could have gone.

"Keep up," she said, and turned her steps towards the training grounds.

He did. There, and during the katas she ran him through.

Azula kept her eyes narrowed.

"Hey," he asked, "do you know how to bend lightning yet?"

As if he could have missed it, if she'd been able to get more than sparks. "I will soon," she said.

"You will," he agreed, and flowed through his next set. The one she'd only just mastered.

Father didn't notice how weird Zuzu was being. Uncle never noticed anything. Zuko ate dinner and asked a servant for seconds and didn't stutter or flinch or lose his appetite when father asked, coolly, what he'd done with his day. Azula's shoulders tensed, because one mention of how she'd squandered her own training time teaching him--

"Azula hogged the training grounds. For hours," Zuzu scowled, exactly like a petulant thirteen year old.

Exactly like he hadn't been acting all day.

By the time Father was looking her way, Azula had her usual smirk in place. "I'm sure there would be room for both of us," she said, "you're not afraid of a little friendly fire, are you, brother?"

Zuko sulked. And ate his seconds, like he was enjoying each bite. There was something in his eyes, like a joke no one else was getting.

---

Father died that night. A heart attack. There were the faintest of burns to either side of the treacherous organ; the royal physician hypothesized that he'd grabbed at his chest, fingers burning hot in his final moments; so hot they'd only exacerbated the problem.

The royal physician would never have been brought any victims of lighting strikes. Those that occurred in the capital did not generally require a doctor in the aftermath.

Zuzu ate a hearty breakfast.

He didn't order seconds. Azula gave him points, at least, for not being tacky.

---

The sages named Iroh as regent.

They named Zuko as Fire Lord.

"No," the tiny Fire Lord in his perfectly miniaturized Fire Lord robes said, sitting at the head of his war council. "We're not doing that. And I'll be reviewing all recent battle plans, as well. What's this I hear about a division of new recruits being deployed to the front?"

He did not mention how he'd heard of the 41st Division. No one asked.

"Prince Iroh, surely--" one of the generals tried to appeal.

The young Fire Lord's regent was looking as startled as the rest of them, for a moment. Then he sipped his tea, and smiled.

"Your Fire Lord is correct, of course. A change in our leadership--a change the other nations may mistakenly view as weakness--will necessitate a change in our strategy."

"Now," said their lord, "what, exactly, is our overall objective in this war?"

War, the new Fire Lord decreed, was not an end unto itself.

---

The new Fire Lord continued to have time, to pretend to be trained by her. Azula watched him. Adjusted her footwork. Did not tolerate, and was not offered, any commentary on who was teaching who.

"What did you do with my brother?" she asked, as they flowed from one set to the next. As her hands, poised to throw fire, just so happened to be pointed his way.

He missed a step. It didn't look like an act.

"I'm, uh. Right here?"

She didn't bother to dignify that.

He didn't bother to look worried about her hands, one movement off from a true attack.

He looked around, then grabbed her sleeve, and tugged her further from any walls that may hide ears. The royal family's private training grounds were wonderfully large, and wonderfully open.

"It's me," he said. "It's still me. Just. More of me? Longer of me?"

She narrowed her eyes. A familiar expression, by this point. "Explain."

"...I found the Avatar," he said. "And this is definitely his fault, but--but I guess it started at a war meeting, when I was thirteen."

Azula listened. It was a very Dum-Dum story.

[geetsjitters]

The Best Commander

Just saw AI writing that was so poorly executed that I am currently rewriting it myself (I do my best writing when motivated by spite)

[geetsjitters]

Just saw AI writing that was so poorly executed that I am currently rewriting it myself (I do my best writing when motivated by spite)

[geetsjitters]

CS Lewis for theology, Tolkien for fantasy.

[geetsjitters]

Such a vibe

I’m 30k words in and still writing in the notes app. I don’t care that it glitches every 30 seconds. I must complete the book there.