paradoxi-kay

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Yes, I know it was just humoring me.

more murderhelion cross stitch! i really like cross stitching text... it's so meditative. and this conveniently perfectly perihelion-colored floss is so pretty ;;

(it's cosmo seasons 5021; the secunit color is cosmo seasons 9011.)

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show!ratthi, to me, might as well be wearing a neon sign that says THE WRITERS HAVE SOME UNEXAMINED BAGGAGE ABOUT POLYAMORY OR POSSIBLY CASUAL SEX

because i really think that's what it is.

whatever book!ratthi gets up to with his various partners, he's thoughtful and respectful enough about it that secunit thinks he'd be a good role model for amena. if secunit is caring about human relationships for long enough to describe someone as remarkably good at human relationships, they're probably really good at relationships.

but for some reason show!ratthi is all "he had a lot of relationships" and no "he and they all seemed very happy about it". sure doesn't seem like a coincidence that we got a stereotype based on half of that sentence and the other half went missing.

unpopular opinion, but i don't really like show!ratthi. i'm pretty sure he's my least favorite show character, which bothers me, because i love him in the books. i think it's about how the show tried to make him close to his book characterization, but only manages a shallow impression.

like, one of the first thing we learn about book!ratthi is that he has a thing for pin-lee, but, crucially, he's not weird about it. even murderbot thinks he's not weird about it, and murderbot is convinced all relationships are stupid. and the show really did try to go somewhere with that, but i feel like they completely ditched the part where ratthi is capable of being in love or in a relationship without being a creep. only a couple of days into the relationship, he's interrogating pin-lee about whether she wants kids. he seems like he can't read a room, like he doesn't understand that he's making his partners uncomfortable. book!ratthi would never.

and the weird macho thing where he tries to go into habitat to help murderbot and mensah? no. that's just not how ratthi is. mensah is the intrepid galactic explorer, not ratthi. in the show, he was just so gung-ho about going, so condescending when talking to arada and pin-lee, so eager to jump into the fray. it's something that he would have never done in the books. book!ratthi has no machismo, no need to prove himself. it makes show!ratthi's character feel very different.

and i think this latest episode highlighted one other reason why this ratthi just doesn't match book characterization. it's his attitude towards murderbot. in the books, ratthi was one of the first people to believe in its personhood, one of the first people to treat it like a friend. in the show he treats it as a pet. not a person on its own. and it's just. i don't now. it doesn't fit.

i feel like only the surface level characterization is the same — the serial dating, the shallow kind of niceness — without including any of the traits that make him a good character. yes, book!ratthi is a bit of a slut, but he's on good terms with all of his partners. he's kind, he's charming, he respects other people's boundaries. he's down for crime, but he doesn't run into dangerous situations just to prove to himself that he can. he's thoughtful. he's loyal.

show!ratthi doesn't feel like him at all.

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happy pride month to Murderbot and those alien worm things having weird alien worm sex on top of the hopper

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Crazy how many people want characters in fiction to speak and act like they’ve had 20 hours of intensive therapy. Could NOT be me I want these bitches fucked up insane

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Reblog and put in the tags if you can remember where you got the shirt you’re currently wearing.

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most unrealistic thing in the show so far: the company uses universally compatible cables

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i was, somehow, not expecting yet another week of the dr. gurathin whump hour 25 minutes, now featuring someone's gurathin/secunit fic that accidentally got mixed in with the script, but i am still very okay with this.

look i'm still mad about secunit already having watched worldhoppers but if this is why it's already watched medcenter argala i can live with that. i can live with that very happily.

the progression from "secunit, restrain me" / "sure, i can restrain you" (holy shit) to both of them simultaneously realizing there was an alternate solution (holy shit) was just. how was that real. how was that actual (show) canon.

and both of them being petty fucking assholes about it!!! secunit prying in gurathin's trauma, gurathin prying in secunit's trauma while undergoing emergency surgery because the gurathin whump just never ends...

i think making the murderbot reveal more dramatic and fraught works really well, too, because it's something that is really emotional and fraught for secunit and that's not really reflected in ASR. it deserves more focus than just "yeah that happened i hacked myself so it won't happen again nbd".

(i've also been thinking a lot since last week about like. mensah kind of mother henning gurathin + the infantalization of neurodivergent ppl, so to get hit with the "why can't you love me back?" after that is just.... oof. ooooof. i have no idea how much of that was intentional but i think it's a valid read of what's going on?)

i was not expecting murderbot tv to just be the dr. gurathin whump hour 25 minutes week after week, but i am very okay with this state of affairs

his tragic backstory and mensah calling him "darling" and those delicious direct parallels between him and secunit and dramatically passing out all in one episode??

and we still had time for... plot important giant bug sex?

i am really disappointed that they did gurathin antagonizing secunit until it threatened him because he's dramatically dying of infection and not as a calculated risk assessment thing though :(

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>:V in bits ART pays attention (and birds shit, and secunit gets shit on with attitude)

ANYWAY i dont actually have a justification for jerma ok - i was just watching clips late at night sob sob -- but he does throw out some good productions....maybe sec unit would love the idea of a sadistic audience controlling what can happen in a dolls house who knows

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I love having mutuals. #myfriends<3

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he is such a fucking weirdo (affectionate)

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Little knitted pigeon enjoying come crisps on the pavement…

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fuuuuck i just realized that the future idealized version of myself cant exist without current me being the catalyst for change and doing hard things. has anybody heard about this

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a detailed list of things i hate

hot weather

high temperatures

heat

warmer than average conditions

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coming up with new and exciting ways to type an em dash is an essential part of the writing process

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Is the Preservation team's communitarianism and alternative lifestyle really being played for laughs or are we just uncomfortablel/not used to seeing a noncapitalistic noncisheteronormative society on screen that isn't a joke?

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not all ships are For wanting them to be in a happy healthy relationship together. sometimes shipping two characters means you want them to be erotically obsessed with each other and become entwined in a mutually toxic love affair for a few months and then horrifically break each other's hearts and never speak again. sometimes you want them to be codependent best friends with enough repression to explode a submarine who only make out/have sex when they're at their worst. sometimes you want them to pine after each other for years, never say anything, and then die. sometimes you want them to kill each other. this, too, is shipping

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like, okay, consent does literally just mean agree. which is what enables this little rhetorical trick. because there's all this cultural emphasis on sexual consent, which is just expressed as consent, a lot of phrases whose intended meanings are "rape is bad" can be taken literally to mean "i should get to agree to everything that happens in my vicinity."