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for @sharpbutsoft

bonus:

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Unpopular opinion but I actually like how the Murderbot tv show took each of the character’s primary personality trait in the books and is apparently making that the endpoint for this season’s character arcs. Meaning they’re not there yet, they gotta work for it.

Pin-Lee in the books is known to be confident with a take no shit attitude? -> in the show they have difficulties setting boundaries and speaking up about their wants/needs

Ratthi is effortlessly everybody’s bff? -> Ratthi is kind of trying too hard, he keeps inserting himself into other people’s business out of what seems to be a lack of self confidence he is compensating for

Arada is a peacekeeper? -> Arada sucks ass at reading the room and intuiting what other people want/need

Baradwaj is understanding and non-judgemental? -> She kind of thinks she knows better than other people, either in her field of work or about the CR vs Preservation

Gurathin is quiet but self-assured in his skills? -> he’s a big ball of nerves that doesn’t feel like he fits in and needs to prove himself

Mensah is calm and decisive? -> unsure and anxious

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Ways I Show a Character is Emotionally Burned Out (Before They Even Realize It Themselves)

I love writing characters who think they’re fine but are actually walking emotional house fires with bad coping mechanisms.

They stop doing the things they used to love and don’t even notice. Their guitar gathers dust. Their favorite podcast becomes background noise. Their hobbies feel like homework now.

They pick the path of least resistance every time, even when it hurts them. No, they don’t want to go to that thing. No, they don’t want to talk to that person. But whatever’s easier. That’s the motto now.

They’re tired but can’t sleep. Or they sleep but wake up more tired. Classic burnout move: lying in bed with their brain racing like a toddler on espresso.

They give other people emotional advice they refuse to take themselves. “You have to set boundaries!” they say—while ignoring 8 texts from someone they should’ve cut off three emotional breakdowns ago.

They cry at something stupidly small. Like spilling soup. Or a dog in a commercial. Or losing their pen. The soup is never just soup.

They say “I’m just tired” like it’s a personality trait now. And not like… emotionally drained to the bone but afraid to admit it out loud.

They ghost people they love, not out of malice, but because even replying feels like too much. Social battery? Absolutely obliterated. Texting back feels like filing taxes.

They stop reacting to big things. Catastrophes get a blank stare. Disasters feel like “just another Tuesday.” The well of feeling is running dry.

They avoid being alone with their own thoughts. Constant noise. TV always on. Music blasting. Because silence = reckoning, and reckoning is terrifying.

They start hoping something will force them to stop. An accident. A missed deadline. Someone else finally telling them, “You need a break.” Because asking for help? Unthinkable.

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I had a dream that all public services were 'improved' and when we called for an ambulance we got some guy dropping off like 50 really poor quality pizzas and insisting that's what we really wanted so I think my subconscious is doing analogies for AI now

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obsessed with this video

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What do you think it is? The secret to happiness?

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I think 50 shades of grey did so much damage to BDSM writing in fic and like not because I think fic writers were taking inspiration from it, but we did get a lot of detailed explanatory posts about all the different ways in which those guys were Doing It Wrong, which is not in and of itself a bad thing but since then everybody got so hung up on making sure everybody in their fics was nothing like 50 shades of grey and actually demonstrates that yes I do understand the principles of safe sane and consensual and the traffic light system and safewording and aftercare and checking in that now everybody fucks like a 101 handbook and I think we've only just recently started to recover from it. love me a dynamic where it's two repressed freak idiots who accidentally invent BDSM all on their own and have to come up with the strangest most deeply harmful ways of navigating that situation

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Can't find the post but, someone on here headcanonned that Murderbot is a pirate (the torrenting kind), the way it speaks of Sanctuary Moon. It switches from Episode Number to Season Number fluidly, because it downloads bootleg torrent files which means no standardised Episode Numbering System.

These examples aren't pulled from the books but essentially, when Murderbot says "...from Epsiode 678 of Sanctuary Moon", and in another incident, "...from Season 16 of Sanctuary Moon" (or even the other shows it's watched). That's like sourcing parts of a show from EZTV and the other from YTS. But enough about that.

I posit that Pirate!Murderbot actually IS canon, and can be found in text.

Remember those "advertisements" SecUnit gets perpetually annoyed with? Those 'step on it and it blasts noisy, flashing adverts on your face' kind that it always complains about. Iirc it complained about them on Exit Strategy, during the rescue mission; and while in the PresAux space station, it was glad there weren't many of said adverts.

A rogue bot construct that's essentially a supercomputer with the capacity to hack into complex computer systems in a heartbeat, doing everything in its power to circumvent official lines and Avoid Ads At All Costs, piggybacking on existing communication networks just to get access to security, surveillance, AND restricted, paywalled media...

You cannot tell me it ever pays for a Netflix/Hulu/Prime/etc subscription in its entire existence. Absolutely no way its giving corpos any credits for access to the entertainment feed. That murder machine sails the high seas, 100%. And if it were alive in our time, it's definitely best of friends and cohorts with Fitgirl, QxR, FLUX et al. Heck I'd even argue Murderbot is probably just TGXGoodies irl.

Oh, and without a shadow of a doubt, Murderbot is one of the mods of r/piracy.

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Murderbot 1.07 Complementary Species

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today i offer u even more murderbot art. tomorrow? who knows

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I'm on a need to know basis, no one tells me shit unless I need to hear it

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Like we have to always remember that a person with health anxiety can get ill, a person with paranoia and psychosis can be in serious danger, a person with social anxiety can get bullied, a person with RSD can get rejected, a person with BPD can get abandoned, a person with depression can have a serious reason to be upset and so on indefinitely. We cannot automatically treat every concern of a person who has been labeled as mentally ill and irrational as if it isn't worth taking seriously and investigating. Making that assumption puts people in real danger.

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You know what I would kill to see on video game characters / in character creation: hair style sets. You pick the characters hair and it is a group of styles so they have the same hair but messy / normal neat / formal depending on their circumstances. Let long haired characters have their hair up for combat but down off duty, short haired characters have a spiky/slick gelled look when they've had time to get ready but messy when rolling out of bed/taking off their helmet. This would honestly be so much more interesting to me than increasingly elaborate hair physics but stuck in one style

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went into a wine shop the other day to buy pasta and they did not have pasta but they were doing a wine tasting so i thought what the hell. and got to chatting with the other woman there because we had both just come from the library and were comparing our books and sipping wine and turns out we’re both teachers so we got on the topic of phones in classrooms—and the guy pouring our wine was like ‘that’s actually a point of contention in one of my divorces right now.’

and i very delicately said ‘one of your divorces?’ and his eyes got really big and he said I’M A PARALEGAL