armadillo1976

[armadillo1976]

After so much work it’s finally done! My painting of Murderbot is complete!

This book series has meant so much to me and MB is 100% my top comfort character! I’m really proud of how well this came out!

My besties @blessedbenightwingsass did the base sketch for me since I haven’t learned how to draw bodies yet. She did great!

Media used: acrylic, alcohol markers, and gouache on wood

[armadillo1976]

my humble first attempt at a murderbot. i think i accidentally took 400 billion creative liberties but that's ok <3 i hope the fandom accepts my offering. please vehicular manslaughterbbot fandom im.baby 🙏

[armadillo1976]

I’ve really enjoyed that the show is not only complicating the PresAux characters, but Preservation as a whole, and has done both with a lot of respect for the humanity of their situations.

One thing that gets brought up in the books is that Preservation is terraformed, and that by and large terraforming isn’t great. It’s usually half-assed, and done just enough to make a planet livable. One would imagine that Preservation as a society has sunk a lot of their efforts into making it far more than livable, making it the best planet it can be. They are actively trying to make a place where all citizens have their needs met, have enough to chase their dreams without fear of salary or losing health care or food or shelter. They are working toward a utopia.

But they don’t live in a utopia.

Their internal society is moneyless, but the external societies around them are not. And they don’t have everything they need. They don’t have magic replicators that create all their necessary resources from nothing. They are post-money, but not post-scarcity. They are stubbornly holding to their values to keep providing all their people with what they need, because that’s one of the non-negotiable pillars on which their society is built. These folks we’ve met especially are the true believers in Preservation ideals, in working toward building their society.

It would be easy to give in and join the Corporation Rim, and I like that some people want to take the easy way out. Because that’s people, isn’t it? Some people want what they don’t have, they want more or shinier or simply different. Just because your society is trying to build utopia doesn’t mean you’re all going to agree on what that looks like. And even in a communal society, you still have individual people who are going to want other things.

So they’ve come up with a workaround. It’s not perfect, but likely it’s the best way they can figure out to get external resources they can’t yet produce internally, while still holding to as many of their ideals as possible. They send teams out to do scientific work. That work either helps them further their internal goals—getting resources or knowledge that can make them more and more self-sustaining—or that work can be sold, likely in trade for goods or resources Preservation simply cannot provide at this point in time.

Even sending their planetary leader on these missions makes sense from the communal mindset. Of course the leader needs to do that work. They have to see the risks taken, the compromises made, the dirty parts of supporting their society. They have to be down in the dirt with everyone else, never above and able to ignore the realities of what must be done to make their better world.

They don’t have luxury space communism. They are a communal society with limited resources surrounded by corporate sharks. And some of their people want to become sharks, betraying the heart of their society. So they have to fight for their culture and their world through their actions and their decisions. They have to make compromises and work with outside forces they don’t entirely (or even remotely) agree with for the benefit of their people. And even in this group of true believers there’s internal disagreement! Bharadwaj sees this as scientific endeavor for the greater good, and she’s right! Gurathin sees it as selling knowledge to corporate fucks who will likely misuse it, and he’s right!

It’s sticky, it’s less pleasant than perhaps some book readers were hoping for. They wanted perfect luxury space communism with all scarcity problems already fixed and everyone living in harmony. They wanted the utopia rather than the pre-utopian work and compromise and challenges.

I don’t know, man, I just really like seeing a communal society of space hippies get portrayed with such care and respect for their humanity and their struggles. I like that they get to be people. I like that we get to see them doing the work and living by their ideals even when (especially when) it’s hard.

[armadillo1976]

One of my favorite things about That Scene in ep6 was how the arrival of SecUnit clearly DOES make Gurathin feel safer. Because he immediately gets angry.

Like, he had to be pissed before, on some level. Especially when the person in front of him confessed to (as far as she knew) murdering Mensah. No way some part of him wasn't screaming for revenge. But all he showed externally was fear, grief, shock. Because those passive, even submissive reactions are the only acceptable ones he's ever been allowed to show in a situation like this, I'll bet on it.

But the second Murderbot steps into the room and eliminates the threat, he goes off on it. And like, it's darkly funny on a lot of levels, yes, but also a sign that the terror's let up enough that he's 'allowed' to show anger. Whoever LBB represented to him that he was afraid to even look her in the eye, Murderbot clearly doesn't fall into the same category. He yells at it. Thank god, my man is yelling, he's gonna be ok.

[armadillo1976]

One Gurathin thought I had after this episode:

When Gurathin gets shot, he stifles every noise so hard, and all I could think of was him telling Bharadwaj that he “learned to be quiet”.

It’s so chilling to see how internalized that is that even when he is severely injured his first instinct is to not make a fuss, to not upset someone with power over him by making too much noise. It’s the same as all the self-soothing wrapping his arms around himself like he’s both hugging and protecting himself. He’s so intensely self-contained it feels like he’s going to shake apart at the seams trying to hold himself together.

There are just so many physical acting choices made in this episode that have really horrifying implications, and I am so here for it.

[armadillo1976]

Started rereading The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery thanks to posts by @batrachised, and a few things stood out.

First, I think this may be LM Montgomery’s angriest novel. It’s very funny, but it’s also very angry. In the Anne and Emily books small-town small-mindedness is satirized, but often with an affectionate or gently amused note. Not here! The satire is biting. Valancy’s family are small-minded, dried-up, without love or sincerity or purpose.

Secondly, the book is specifically angrily Christian. It sets itself furiously against an empty religion that consust of going to church, saying the right things, and never causing any scandal. Valancy’s path to liberation is bracketed with Biblical references. When she goes to keep house for Roaring Abel and Cecily, she feels, “Old things had passed away; everything had become new,” a reference to Revelation (“the old order of things has passed away”; “I am making everything new”). At the moment when there is a chance of Valancy turning back, when the minister comes to browbeat her into it, she is saved by a “still small voice” in the of her consciousness, a reference to God speaking to the prophet Elijah in the book of 1st Kings. Valancy’s first major change is going to care for a sick, socially outcast, and dying girl whom everyone is avoiding because she’s not ‘respectable’ (she got pregnant outside marriage and her father is regularly drunk) – and Valancy does so out of love and compassion, not a barren sense of duty, and she finds joy in it. The echoes of the Gospel fighting against the Pharisees are very strong. She is rejecting the lifeless religion of respectability and compliance and choosing a Christianity that is characterized by joy, love, and liberation.

Third, I had completely forgotten about the rosebush and it made me laugh! It finally getting roses after Valancy hacked it to pieces is probably accurate horticulturally (some things do need to be pruned!) and also a fantastic metaphor for Valancy’s life. It is only when she hacks off the carefully-tended green leaves of obedience and being ‘well-behaved’ that she gets the roses of life and love that had been eluding her.

Fourth, the similarities between Valancy and Jane Eyre stand out to me in that the difference between each of them being “small and insignificant” or “elfish and bewitching” largely lies in whether they are fulfilled or are being trodden on, whether they are free or being kept down, and whether they are seen through eyes of love. Although Valancy does specifically make Barney Snaith promise that he has no other living wives! 🤣

Fifth, the futility of Valancy’s attempts to avoid censure and trouble from her family by “behaving”, which just lead to the same handful of minor things (eating a jar of jam as a child, losing a spoon) being continually cast up to her, while as soon as she starts rebelling they’ve got too many things to handle!

Sixth, the intense limitations on her life, the way the least things are treated as dangerous (going out without a flannel petticoat in May!) leaves Valancy not safe, but rather with very limited ability to assess actual danger. Going alone to the Chidley Corners dance was actually a very bad situation for her to be in, and both Barney Snaith and Cecily knew it! But all the things she “wasn’t supposed to do” (which was practically everything) were all of a piece to Valancy, so she had no basis for understanding that!

And seventh, the twist about Barney Snaith’s identity is in retrospect telegraphed pretty heavily, especially when the passage below is later followed up with his forest-creature friends at the Blue Castle.

“I’ve been watching a woodpecker all day,” he said one evening on the shaky old back verandah. His account of the woodpecker’s doings was satisfying. He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the wood folk to tell them…Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him. It reminded her of John Foster.”

This line made me hope that LM Montgomery got to read Jack London:

“Those silences at the back of the north wind got me. I’ve never belonged to myself since.”

The Northland Wild!

A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness – a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility.

Finally, the book doesn’t revolve around Valancy and Barney on the island as much as I though. They get to the island on page 151 of a 250-page book! It seems roughly split into five parts: 1) An introductory section showing in grim detail the sheer depressingness of Valancy’s life; 2) Valancy’s initial rebellions; 3) Valancy at Roaring Abel’s; 4) Valancy’s marriage to Barney Snaith and her Blue Castle; and 5) Valancy after she realizes she is not going to die.

It feels so much more modern than LM Montgomery’s other novels, too! You don’t imagine a car in Avonlea. Or movie theatres! They don’t belong there! But this one takes place in the Muskokas of Ontario, so those things can exist without profaning the sacred soil of Prince Edward Island.

[armadillo1976]

Blending in

[armadillo1976]

"You have to shut the fuck up if you don't like the murderbot show because the author likes it" oh I'm sorry I didn't know being part of a fandom meant you had to agree with everything the author likes. silly me. i guess everyone talking about how it made them feel mocked as an queer person or uncomfortable from the constant sexual jokes aimed at the asexual main character or even just wishing it had been done better should Shut Up and Sit Down because the Author expressed support for it at the beginning of its production!

You don't want to acknowledge the CONTENT of any of the criticisms do you. Even when we frame it in the most polite 'I'm happy if you enjoy the show' way. You don't want to hear WHY it feels upsetting to see asexuality and polyamory and other forms of nonconventional relationships mocked and made out to be ridiculous when they were handled so well in the book. You don't want to hear WHY it's upsetting for them to introduce an entirely new character just so she can ask prying questions about murderbot's "pee-pee" and attempt to kiss it when it clearly was uncomfortable. You don't want to hear WHY it feels odd to see the show frame a team of socialist, gender and racially diverse scientists as incompetent hippies that the (cast as a white man) main character scoffs at. You don't want to see any of it, but instead of blocking and minding your own business, you tell us to shut the fuck up instead. And I think YOU should think about why.

[armadillo1976]

Small clams court. Sand dollar lawsuit. Who gives a fuck

[armadillo1976]

The Secret Language of Swimming Pools - Aimee Erickson ,2019.

American, French b.  1967 -

Oil on canvas ,  36 x 48 in.

[armadillo1976]

So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on.

[armadillo1976]

thinking about an article i read recently about how one of the reasons former athletes struggle during retirement is that, somewhat paradoxically, they find it difficult to adjust to life without constant surveillance and examination (and by extension the imposition of alternating praise/punishment) by coaches and other staff members and it is this loss of constant supervision that makes them feel unfocused, and at a loss on how to navigate the non-sports world.

[armadillo1976]

[Podfic of] towery city amongst the stars

A full-cast multivoice of @liesmyth's excellent pre Nona the Ninth fic about John's upcoming midlife crisis, plus lots of fun cohort worldbuilding :D

Rating: Teen and Up No Archive Warnings Apply Length: ~48 min

Cover by irrationalpie

With the voices of: @tipsyxkitty @notesofadelfa @thefluxqueen @sierrajanesims @flightlessnotfightless @boppinrobin @polynomialpandemic and more.

Listen on AO3!

[armadillo1976]

psa

[armadillo1976]

Kyiv-based artist Alexey Kondakov uses surrealistic documentary photography to superimpose figures from classical artwork into everyday scenes of modern life. He is renowned for his Photoshopped collage series in which Kyiv, Ukraine served as the backdrop for characters from old world masterpieces. The artist merges the past and the present, showing with a deft eye how classical figures fit seamlessly into contemporary situations that, in themselves, are timeless.

[armadillo1976]

roy/jamie + season 3 (part 1/2)

[armadillo1976]

some ideas about murderbot design i have in my head while reading the books

i specifically made it look androgynous since SecUnit is never actually described looking more like one or the other. In the book its used both male and female names for its disguises and i like to imagine that maybe it could look like either. Which also plays into the fact that SecUnit identifies as "it" so it's neither

also in Network Effect its mentioned that The Company actually has a name, but Murderbot actually redacts it from its own story. i thought that element was really fun when it was mentioned. So instead of a logo i made it more scribbly, as if it was erased from the picture and written over