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Me and my mutually administration assistance

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that’s a good one

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Do you think gurathin’s (incredibly comfy looking) jacket had that high neck/cowl so he could turtle?

Either because he seems like such a ball of anxiety or to hide his augment?

almost definitely yes!! the augments are way more rare on preservation, so maybe he'd want to hide them to fit in or just not seem out of place as so many anxious ppl do (myself included). the way he can also use it to look smaller AND hide a lil bit is a bonus.

once more we have mb 🤝 gura, this time in finding clothes you like that also hide you

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big fan of stories that, while undoubtedly being about the power of friendship, acknowledge that the power of incredible violence is just as important

the love was there. the love changed everything. the crowbar helped also

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My favorite small detail in the Murderbot Diaries is how many of the shitty corporations have names that sound like two names mashed together—GrayCris, BreharWallHan, Barish-Estranza, etc—because to me it just screams “corporate merger.” It’s something that real companies do with their names when they’re monopolizing, where two companies of comparable sizes just mash their two brands together to make a horrible Frankenbrand. Like how it’s Warner Bros-Discovery now, or the names of publishing companies like Penguin Random House and HarperCollins. It’s just some subtle worldbuilding that signifies how the dystopian capitalist hellscape of the Corporation Rim formed through the very mundane acts of corporate inbreeding that we see all the time

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In the show, after Mensah tells Murderbot it's coming with them back to Presevation where it won't be security, Murderbot says "We can talk about this."

I see this as Murderbot trying to let the PresAux crew know it's unhappy with the idea that it won't be security anymore, but the team is too excited about having their bestie back to notice. Murderbot doesn't have the context of the Sweet/Bitter game that the audience saw. It's only context with the exact phrase "we can talk about this" comes from when the PresAux crew was upset with it for killing LeeBeeBee.

It's trying to communicate in a language it thinks its clients/owners will understand. They just don't notice.

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I absolutely adore the intro 😍

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there is also something kind of gross to me about the constant insinuations that the "questioning social norms" component of autism immediately turns every autistic person into a genderfuckery kinkster leftist who don't give a fuck. and I say this as someone who is a genderfuckery kinkster leftist. autism isn't a political alignment, it's a disability. sometimes the autism 'sense of justice' is wrong. sometimes an autistic person will find a home in conservative ideologies for many of the same reasons as other autistic people will find a home in communist ideologies. sometimes the autistic communist will come up with dogshit analysis even as they're guided by their sense of justice, because good political analysis isn't a feeling or a neurotype, it's a skill that you cultivate. I know it would be pleasant and emotionally soothing for you to be able to believe that autism turns someone into a superpowered leftist but it's a politically fraught and deeply questionable line of thought to be feeding into

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Since watering means giving something water but milking means extracting milk from something that must means that water's default is to give but milk's default is to take. So water must be inherently kind while milk is cruel

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still so charmed by the way rose tyler is so unapologetically lower class without the narrative like. consistently telling you that. it’s all stuff you see between her flat and her bottle blonde hair with roots poking through and and her clumpy mascara and her clothes that don’t fit quite right and her passion for looking out for the underdog. it’s just so refreshing to have the protagonist of a show not be so squeaky clean and polished or a complete antihero but just some completely normal girl shaped by the way she grew up

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This is so wild I can't t comprehend the levels of thought-police here. You may not create. You may not put two things together unless an approved official has done so previously. You may not imagine things to be other than they are. You may not have joy in your life. You may not think. You may not breathe without permission.

I'm sorry I keep posting my tiktok comments but please. What does this mean. What do people THINK shipping is for anymore???

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System Collapse is great so far.

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Okay so some people can’t see objects in their imagination and some people don’t think in words and some people hear their thoughts like a voice and others don’t. I get that

But how many distinct channels do most folks have playing at once? cause my normal range is 2-4 and I though that was just what thinking was LIKE but CBD brings that down to just 1

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Media-illiterate twats treating everything like its a bloody murder mystery.

I hate this corporate American approach to telling stories where the two main aims are to a) drag things out indefinitely with endless series never wrapping anything up so they can keep the story going, and anything that differs or ends at a natural place being portray as CANCELLED because it wasn't nonsensically renewed to cash-in on the brand, or b) the stupid idolisation of 'shock factor' - not through clever subtle build-up the main plotlines distract you from, but by never planning ahead so the storyline doesn't make any sense. Of COURSE people will be shocked if you didn't have a plan from the start. Of COURSE it could go anywhere if you are writing aimlessly. FFS.

“sotr is mid because you already know how it ends” shut the fuck up, the point of the book is that despite knowing how it ends you would have never known what actually went down because that’s the point of propaganda, the whole book is about the power of propaganda

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You know what Murderbot made me think about, weirdly enough? Marie Kondo. Part of what she teaches is that the objects in your life matter.

When you fold laundry, fold each piece according to its particular shape. Check it for holes or stains or signs of wear, so you can care for it. When you're trying to clear out clutter and decide that an object no longer has a place in your life, say thank you for what it did give you before you throw it away. Maybe having less stuff is okay if each piece of that stuff has more thought and care put into it.

It's the absolute opposite of the Corporation's philosophy of selling as much cheap shit as they can get away with as quickly as possible so it can be thrown out and they can sell more cheap shit. It's a lot closer to how the Preservation team moves through the world.

They make their own clothes and jewelry. They paint their habitat, which early MB snidely dismisses as defacing it for aesthetic purposes. They fill the standard-issue interior with textiles and plants.

This stuff came up in my mind because of Gurathin's visit to his old dealer, and the way this man who lives in a sad apartment block is convinced Gurathin must be having a hard time of it outside Corporation Rim, on some "podunk planet." The way he obviously sold out his colleague so he could get that Level 3 clearance and afford that apartment in the first place.

And of course, there's our repeated peeks into how SecUnits are built, maintained, and used: with utter contempt and lack of care, from beginning to end, not just towards the SecUnits but towards other humans, as well. They're all objects to be used for profit. They're all trash.

The strikers in the finale looked poor and working-class - they weren't the Gurathins or the SecUnit techs of this world. The scientists and engineers are the ones scrambling for scraps, shitting on each other for the amazing prize of maybe finishing out their indentures or getting that precious Level 3 clearance.

The strikers are being paid in food. They don't even have the capitalist promise of material comfort to keep them going - just the threat of starvation if they stop.

The Gurathin we meet at the start of the season still has traces of that CR sneer, though he's trying to get better. And then MB comes along, a representation of everything Gurathin loathes about the Rim. The object to be treated with contempt.

But as we see over and over again, MB and Gurathin are the same person. The way Gurathin treats MB is the way he treats himself. So to see MB as a person, to hold all of it inside his mind in all its fullness - that was Gurathin seeing himself as a person too. He wasn't a contemptible object. No one is.

Again and again, we see humans spitting on constructs, harassing and assaulting them, forcing them into humiliating acts, all to feel like they're somehow in control and powerful. But it's not the constructs who are lessened by those actions - it's the humans. And the way they treat the objects in their lives is the way they treat themselves.

If you think everything is rancid disposable trash, baby, you are, too. But there are other ways to be. The corporate spy can be a trusted friend. The cheap-ass prefab habitat can be beautiful. Maybe your local transport bot would appreciate some premium quality entertainment. And maybe you're actually a person, and you should live like one.

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Fanfiction is great because you can see so clearly how people learn to write.

Some people, it's clear, learned almost entirely through absorbing the world around them. Grammar and punctuation will be all over the place, spellings are approximate, but the voice of the narration will come through so clearly. You can hear the dialect of the people around them as of they're telling the story. It's not a written story, it's a transcription of how they talk in their day to day life.

Some people learned through reading a gazillion books as a kid. Grammer and spelling will be rock solid, formatting occasionally based on the single tab of physical books rather than the double tab of online scrolling, but dialogue is often stilted and overly formal. You might notice a lack of contractions and very rigid rules they made for consistency that actually have a lot more flexibility than they think. They tend to have a fantastic grasp of sentence flow, though.

And other people formally learned how to write. This could be anywhere from taking school classes seriously because they enjoyed writing stories as a kid to literal certifications and jobs in the field. Grammer is flawless. Punctuation is triple checked. Foreign words are in italics. Characters have distinct voices. But their self indulgence is tempered by perfectionism. They know precisely what they want from a fic. Authors notes often feature mutterings about their happiness with the chapter. Kaomojis often appear! They seek a style to their writing, and it makes for some wonderfully clever plots! These are the ones most likely to get fun with formatting!

And some people.... Some people examined it all. They dissect dialogue, people watch, cross reference behaviours and compare characters to people irl. You can tell almost immediately who had formative experiences with Terry pratchett and/or ghibli, because it's these people. While others see writing as fun, expression, craft, they see it as art. Plain and simple. Sure, the grammar is occasionally sacrificed on the altar of creative freedom, and the occasional sentence might miss a full stop, but these people seem to self reflect on themselves as part of the art making process. On occasion, these people have the most masterful grasp of dialogue and invocation and hand sewn characterisations. Formatting is pretty standard because all the focus is on the actual words. These fics can be edited to the moon and back!

All of these can vary wildly in forethought and quality, and betas can often catch individual problems before they hit post, but just. Isn't it so cool? What's that one Oscar Wilde quote about every mask just being another fragment of yourself?

Did you recognise yourself?