adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction

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last week I described my email inbox as a Sisyphean task to my coworker because that day I genuinely just could not get my email count down lower than 15, every email I opened and replied to would immediately be replaced with another new message, and today I walked into that coworkers office looking dejected again and she said “what’s wrong? Another syphilis day or whatever?”

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I would have definitely preferred a scene where someone gripes about how a paracetamol and a chemical ice pack don't count as a sufficient emergency kit by PresAux standards to the alien mating stuff.

I do agree that showing them make efforts while indicating a longer passage of time would definitely have been an improvement to make things feel more plausible and make the decision to go back seem less stupid.

I did actually like the delivery of the whole "come with me or die. I mean die from them. Not me" awkward bit, and SecUnit trying and failing to be reassuring.

But it carries on my general feeling about this show having moments that I like surrounded by large segments of me going, "why did you decide to adapt it that way/add in that bit?"

murderbot 1x07

A few preliminary thoughts:

The cold-open Gurathin backstory infodump was pretty clunky even by the standards of this show, but I do like the "we can talk about this" as refrain for incorporating emotional complexities & conflicts into the group's understanding of itself. In the books, SecUnit remarks on the team being without drama and conflict--at least, in terms of its frame of reference--but no group of humans is free of conflict and complex emotional dynamics. I like that they're showing that the PresAux team, and by extension Preservation society, have specific cultural practices for managing these things, instead of just being magic Emotional Intelligence Elves. Subpoint, the call-forward to Mensah admitting to SecUnit that they can be naive helps to underscore that these cultural practices work. Mensah seems surprised to hear Gurathin say that she's naive, but by the time of the conversation with SecUnit, she's incorporated it into her understanding of the group's emotional dynamics.

Murderbot, I feel like the fact that you have actually detected an incoming hopper is a key detail that you could maybe share, in order to get across the urgency of the situation.

Mensah, "stay alive" is a goal, not a plan.

I do not get what the scene of the hostile fauna mating was for. It wasn't terrible, and in a 26-episode season it's the kind of thing I'd love to see for worldbuilding and characterization, but I'm not quite grasping why that was important enough to add to the story when they're dealing with a runtime of (minus previouslys and credits) not much over 3 hours. Anybody have insight into something I'm missing about it?

Sidebar, but I dig how modular the crew uniforms are. I noticed the zip-off shorts early on, but I only just realized that the vest, the jacket, and the coat are all actually the same garment.

The first-aid kit that they use to cut out a chunk of SecUnit's spine doesn't include anything for treating infection and reducing fever? Really?

They're really hammering in the difference between the PresAuxes' reaction to a dead human enemy vs. a dead hostile SecUnit, huh?

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One of those days.

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Gemini is off on my phone, but recently it's started popping up notifications every couple of days telling me to turn it on. And there's no "go away forever" button, just a "not now". You'd think after the first ten times it would take a hint, but no.

Any idea how to turn off this notification to turn gemini back on?

Finally figured out how to permanently disable google assistant on phone

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Harrin was visibly unhappy, but said, "Yes, sir," as the captain left the room before turning to glare at Unit 57, adjusting their grip on the gun as though they wished to disobey and shoot it. 

Consider yourself tagged if you want to play

Last Line Tagging Game

Rules: Share the last line you wrote, then tag as many ppl as there are words.

Thanks for tagging me @the-written-wyrm :)

This truth Aziraphale hadn’t been able to explain, not to Crowley, not even to himself, loomed between them now, just like that.

Way too many words for tagging (I really should learn how to write shorter sentences), but maybe you'd like to share @rcreveal , @theriverspath, @luv4thethindarkduke, @catsteinbooks, @metalmiez? No pressure :)

And of course if anyone else who wasn’t tagged wants to share, go ahead!

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

In Red Dwarf, they rebuilt the sets between seasons 2 and 3, including the sleeping quarters. The change was never mentioned within the text of the show, but the new sets are labelled as "officers quarters" and are slightly bigger, with room for Lister to put a fridge and cooker into the space. So the implication is that at some point between the end of season 2 and the start of season 3, the characters decided to move to the nicer, slightly bigger officers quarters instead of staying in the room they were using when the rest of the crew were alive.

There are several other things implied by this.

Firstly, there's the decontamination. In the season 1 episode Confidence and Paranoia, Lister gets sick because he goes to the officers deck to snoop around when it hasn't been decontaminated. There's a discussion between Lister and Rimmer where it's stated that it was on Rimmer's daily goal list a week ago to decontaminate it. In response, Rimmer announces that it's on tomorrow's daily goal list.

The fact that the end of season 1 and the entirety of season 2 happens between this conversation and the change in sets implies that Rimmer took over a year to get around to doing the task that he put on tomorrow's to do list. Honestly, mood.

There is another possibility. Season 3 reintroduces Kryten and we first see the new sleeping quarters after Kryten has joined the crew. So it's possible that Rimmer never got around to decontaminating the officers deck, and that the reason they were able to move in season 3 was because Kryten was the person who actually finished the job.

The other thing to mention is the fact that Rimmer and Lister are still sharing a room after the move. I can't remember the exact size of the crew, but I think there's a mention in an early episode of there being more than a hundred people on the ship. So there are enough beds free that they could easily have a room to themselves. The fact that Rimmer moves in with himself in Me2 is evidence of this. Rimmer and Lister chose to move quarters between the end of season 2 and the start of season 3, and yet, despite how much they claim to dislike each other, they chose to continue sharing a room.

Obviously the doylist explanation for this is that it's a lot harder to have a sitcom when two of the characters can easily avoid each other the entire time, but from a watsonian perspective, it has some interesting implications about the fact that, despite everything, Lister and Rimmer will continue to share space with each other even when they clearly don't have to.

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There was a thing going around tumblr a while back (it may still be going around but on blogs I don't follow) that I caught glimpses of around bike helmets. From what I could tell, there seemed to be a group of people going "you should wear a helmet when you ride a bike because it protects you and can prevent severe injuries". There was another group of people whose stance seemed to start from "there are a lot of potential dangers to riders that helmets won't protect you from, and we should pressure the governments to build better infrastructure because that will have more impact on safety."

These two groups are not on opposite sides. Both groups want the same thing: for people to ride bikes to be safer. They ought to be allies, and there were some people I saw waving the "nuance" flag and trying to explain that both sides had a point, but it still seemed to turn into two sides arguing with strawmen of the other side. They were busy fighting, when both statements can be true simultaneously and they could have been taking the energy they were pouring into infighting and instead using it to argue with their local authority about better bike lanes.

This is a really minor example of a common pattern, where people who ought to be on the same side end up arguing of minor details instead of focusing on the main problem. You and me vs the issue is much better than you vs me while no one actually has any time left to deal with the issue.

They say that the way you should view disagreements in relationships is “us vs the problem” and not “me vs them” and I think that to a certain extent that mindset can also be helpful when engaging in political or ideological movements

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Floating face down in a blank word document file, while not physically possible, is nevertheless a tangible authorial state.

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Call for Submissions!

Cripplepunk Soliloquies will be a literature magazine for celebrating the lives and experiences of the disabled community. In the spirit of the cripplepunk movement, it will put a spotlight on the whole spectrum of our specific experiences with physical disability; whether it’s joyful, angry or melancholy, it’s welcome here.

We’re looking for fellow disabled artists and writers with works in any medium. Everything goes, as long as it relates to the disabled experience. Our hope is for this magazine to be an opportunity for our community to be able to unmask through their art.

Follow this link to submit writing

Or this link to submit art

Deadline: August 31st 2025

This is our first edition! We are planning on getting the funding for production from kickstarter. While we cannot offer financial reimbursement to contributors for our first edition, we will be putting proceeds towards being able to offer that for subsequent issues.

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summer is the worst time of year and I do not want to do things in hot humid air. may I please have some cooler air? I can’t find a label on me that says “store in a cool, dry place” but I’m sure it’s there somewhere.

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Omg omg omg omg omg!!!! A new short story in the MURDERBOT universe!!!!

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Fun times at work. Mostly, the project is going fine, and the key person on the client side is really happy and loves what we've been doing. But there are a couple of people that we have to work with. One of them just doesn't appear to do anything ever. The other actively makes things harder.

On the plus side, the key project guy was at least as annoyed with the latter person today as I was.

It's not the worst client I've had to deal with by a wide margin, but I'm just thinking it would make life so much easier if we could just send that guy off on holiday for the next three months and carry on without him.

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wrote a book

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I don't know if anyone was actually judging me - but allotment fear of judgement is real when everyone around me seems to have a better handle on the weeds than I do

I went to the allotment about 8 to do some watering because it's been so hot today and it was the busiest I've ever seen the place. It seems like absolutely everyone decided that 8pm is the only time to be allotmenting today.

I only really went to do watering but I did a little bit of weeding while I was there to make things easier on myself the next time I go up (and because everyone at all the other allotments would see if I just did the watering and left again so I felt peer-pressured into weeding).

Why is it that my carefully sown and tended plants will die of the heat if I don't go up and give them a shower every day, but the weeds seem to be doing perfectly fine?