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AND YET A TRACE OF THE TRUE SELF EXISTS IN THE FALSE SELF

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Sophie loves to go dancing, but she rarely goes with Nate. He takes it too seriously, and he always get involved in the dance hall politics. Plus, as technical and detail oriented as he is, he isn't really good at dancing. He can do the steps, but he doesn't understand how to let himself get swept away by the music.

The first time she asked Eliot, he laughed at her. Said there was no way he was going to spend his night off in some dusty ballroom when he could be at home relaxing. She'd shrugged it off, having anticipated his refusal, and had gone by herself, intending to find a partner when she got there.

Except when she showed up, she found Eliot dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, his hair pulled back in a pony tail, mumbling something about not wanting her to have to go without a partner.

The next time she asked, he complained about how slippery his shoes were and how handsy Mrs. Gunderson had been during the open dance, but he picked Sophie up at 6 and dropped her off at 10 and smiled most of the time between.

A week after that, she found a flyer for a foxtrot competition slipped under her door, with the note "I'm free on Saturday" scrawled across the bottom.

(They won.)

They go several times a month now. Hardison laughs when he finds out, but Eliot says it's good exercise. Parker is very excited about their trophy but loses interest when she finds out it's plastic. Nate comes to watch sometimes, because as much as he dislikes dancing himself, he appreciates the skill involved.

(Maybe he's picking up pointers. He'll never tell.)

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absolute menace but still such a good boy :')))

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I think like. The thing I keep coming back to about the Murderbot show is that I cannot remember ever seeing another tv show give an “Oh” moment to platonic love.

But my god, when Murderbot shows Mensah Sanctuary Moon to help with her panic attack. You see her look at it, and you see her realize…

Yes, she has been thinking of Murderbot as a person, that’s why she went back for it at the DeltFall habitat. But it’s all been very theoretical—the way you might help a stranger up if they fall, but that doesn’t mean you want to get to know them. It doesn’t mean you’ve reckoned with their interiority.

But as Murderbot murmurs, “Breathe, breathe, breathe the crystal light” to itself, you see it all click into place for Ayda Mensah.

This terror she’s experiencing? All-consuming and confusing and soul-crushing? SecUnit has felt this. And it had to face it alone—not just in the sense that there has never been anyone to offer it comfort, but in the sense that no one even thought that it—it as an entity, it as a being capable of fear—exists.

So it found this show. And Mensah has been so pissed at it for potentially getting them all killed because it thought a stupid fucking soap opera mattered, but oh, oh, oh fuck, this show is the only thing in the universe that has ever given it comfort. This show has offered it context and escapism and asked for nothing in return. It absolutely is critical matériel.

And that brings her to now, to herself, to herself and Murderbot. This person next to her, who she is technically in possession of, who has had to claw and scrape for even a thimbleful of peace, who was only able to protect that peace by never ever ever letting anyone know it existed. She and her team have ripped away its impossibly precious privacy, exposed its secrets… and here it is handing her part of its soul anyway, because in this moment she needs it.

Because it knows what it’s like to be scared and alone, and does not want her to feel that way.

And so she falls in love, and you get to watch it happen.

My ace ass has a lot of messy feelings about love and the way it appears on screen. Few things have hit me as hard as getting to witness the exact moment Dr. Ayda Mensah’s soul met Murderbot’s and decided it was home.

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TOS: what if, one day, we get past all of this? What if we get past all the wars, past our own prejudices, and support each other? What if we actually learn to work together?

TNG: and what if we keep going? What if we get past some more prejudices (surprise - we weren’t actually done with that one yet by a long shot, and we may never be actually. But we’ll keep trying)? And what if we get past our consumerism and manufactured scarcity? What if we give everyone what they need to survive and thrive without requiring anything of them in return? What would we become, when we don’t have to be anything? What do people do when they don’t have to?

DS9: and what if these ideals meet more complex situations? What if they meet complex cultural interactions, and the horrors of war? What if they meet people who disagree with them outright? What if we’re confronted with the way that building our ideal little world has isolated and abandoned some of our own people in the process? How can those ideals persist? And should they?

VOY: and what if you’re alone? Truly, utterly alone. With no backup coming, no reputation to carry you. What if it’s just you, one tiny little ship, and your ideals, in a vast quadrant that either doesn’t know them or opposes them entirely? Can Federation values persist? Can we stick to them and survive?

ENT: and what if we’re not even there yet? One day this path may be a major highway, but what if you’re the first one to take a step on this journey? Can we even get there?

DIS: and what if we’re just too far gone? What if you acted against those ideals, and did unspeakable, unforgivable, unredeemable things? What if the people who are supposed to support and represent those ideals the most lose their way, and weaponize them, and weaponize you? What if it’s all been lost? And the worst has happened? What if you find yourself in the aftermath of a war and disaster you can’t hope to understand? What if you aren’t just alone, but you’re alone and everyone here already knows you? Not just that, but they laugh at you when you try to make a difference? What if hope is lost? Can it ever come back? Sometimes today’s world makes me wonder. If we are more far gone than any of us imagined possible, can we still get back to the world that TOS and TNG promised?

SNW: and what if asking all these questions has taken us away from the mission? What if we’ve lost the plot? What if we take all those things that TOS and TNG were trying to do and update them to a modern world? Do they still fit? Is that form of hope, by itself, still relevant to a modern world?

PIC and most of the movies: and what if everyone tells you to step down, to yield to progress, but you aren’t done yet? Should you? Can you?

PRO: and what if you aren’t even there? What if it’s just the ideas and the means to carry them out? Is that enough? Is that enough for someone, even a child, even a group of traumatized and scared children, to adopt those ideals and carry them forward? Do they actually work without you forcing them? Do they have value devoid of cultural context?

LD: and what if you’re not the hero? What if you’re just some dude, just doing a job, just living a life in this world? Is it really all it’s cracked up to be? At the end of the day, can you still build community, and discover yourself, and grow?

Star Trek: no matter how dark things get, can we still hope?

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Is my heart safe with you?

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embroidery from peacockandpinecones my friends and I have been losing our minds over all morning.

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everyone has dreams about being lost at school, late to work, cant find bathroom etc but whats yalls most common Uncommon stress dream. ill always have dreams about having various problems with my fish tank

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upstream, mary oliver; gravity and grace, simone weil; journal of a solitude, may sarton

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Existence is Resistance 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

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No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.

Check out my stuff!

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I literally heard myself wheeze at one point reading these. 😂

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INFORMATION I WAS NOT PREPARED TO LEARN. MAYBE WE *ARE* ALONE. BECAUSE WE ARE SO *EARLY*. IF THERE IS EVER GALACTIC CIVILIZATION THEY WILL NOT REMEMBER US AT ALL. BECAUSE WE ARE NOTHING. CELLS, JUST BEGINNING TO FORM LIFE. SORRY FOR SCREAMING. BUT ARE YOU LISTENING. ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT IT.

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Miss Piggy's response to misogyny and fatphobia is physical violence and I think we should all take something from that

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I love when a meme gets so many steps away from its source material that it would be completely incomprehensible if I didn't know what today's date was