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Murderbot: suck my dick

The Perihelion, an intellectual: inhale my richard

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One of the things that I think is so important to SINNERS is that, okay, obviously we have the overt racism of Jim Crow and the klan and the imminent threat of lynching.

And then we have this vampire, and there is this very obvious and literal feeding on black culture. Remmick straight up says he's going to take Sammie's stories. And also give (impose) his stories.

But here's the thing, okay, here's the fucking thing about that post-credits 1992 scene.

Here's Sammie. And he's done it, he's made his career as a musician, with all the power of his ancestors and his descendants, tapping into that magic.

And here's Stack and Mary, vampires, having all his albums but having stayed away because of the promise to Smoke. And Stack just says he thought acoustic was better than electric (tbh not sure if he said "reel" or "real" guitar)

And so... Sammy pulls out the acoustic and plays that same song he played that day, driving around with Stack, when they were free.

And here's the thing! Stack and Mary just... appreciate it. Feel the music. Remember.

Why couldn't Remmick?

Literally he could have been chill. He could have been normal when Mary came out to judge them, he could have legitimately just given them some gold and come into the juke and asked if Sammie could play again and just vibed. He could have done it. Even being a weirdo with bad vibes, that money could have gotten him in.

And THIS is how SINNERS draws the distinction between cultural appropriation and appreciation. Remmick wants to steal Sammie's power. He wants to take it for himself, he doesn't actually care about Sammie's roots or Sammie's life or loves, he just wants to take Sammie's gift for himself. He talks about sharing and love but it's bullshit because he's not actually interested in Sammie's history or culture! And you can see this as he vamps all these people and makes them dance to his tune!

But see, later on? When Stack and Mary come to visit? See, that is their culture. That's their family. That's their history. They don't have to vampirize Sammie because they're just there to appreciate him and his talent.

And isn't that why Sammie plays for them, and why they accept that he doesn't want to be vamped? He can share his gift because they ask, they don't demand, they don't try to steal it.

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The Neurodivergent Writer’s Guide to Fun and Productivity

(Even when life beats you down)

Look, I’m a mom, I have ADHD, I’m a spoonie. To say that I don’t have heaps of energy to spare and I struggle with consistency is an understatement. For years, I tried to write consistently, but I couldn’t manage to keep up with habits I built and deadlines I set.

So fuck neurodivergent guides on building habits, fuck “eat the frog first”, fuck “it’s all in the grind”, and fuck “you just need time management”—here is how I manage to write often and a lot.

Focus on having fun, not on the outcome

This was the groundwork I had to lay before I could even start my streak. At an online writing conference, someone said: “If you push yourself and meet your goals, and you publish your book, but you haven’t enjoyed the process… What’s the point?” and hoo boy, that question hit me like a truck.

I was so caught up in the narrative of “You’ve got to show up for what’s important” and “Push through if you really want to get it done”. For a few years, I used to read all these productivity books about grinding your way to success, and along the way I started using the same language as they did. And I notice a lot of you do so, too.

But your brain doesn’t like to grind. No-one’s brain does, and especially no neurodivergent brain. If having to write gives you stress or if you put pressure on yourself for not writing (enough), your brain’s going to say: “Huh. Writing gives us stress, we’re going to try to avoid it in the future.”

So before I could even try to write regularly, I needed to teach my brain once again that writing is fun. I switched from countable goals like words or time to non-countable goals like “fun” and “flow”.

Rewire my brain: writing is fun and I’m good at it

I used everything I knew about neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences. These are some of the things I did before and during a writing session. Usually not all at once, and after a while I didn’t need these strategies anymore, although I sometimes go back to them when necessary.

I journalled all the negative thoughts I had around writing and try to reason them away, using arguments I knew in my heart were true. (The last part is the crux.) Imagine being supportive to a writer friend with crippling insecurities, only the friend is you.

Not setting any goals didn’t work for me—I still nurtured unwanted expectations. So I did set goals, but made them non-countable, like “have fun”, “get in the flow”, or “write”. Did I write? Yes. Success! Your brain doesn’t actually care about how high the goal is, it cares about meeting whatever goal you set.

I didn’t even track how many words I wrote. Not relevant.

I set an alarm for a short time (like 10 minutes) and forbade myself to exceed that time. The idea was that if I write until I run out of mojo, my brain learns that writing drains the mojo. If I write for 10 minutes and have fun, my brain learns that writing is fun and wants to do it again.

Reinforce the fact that writing makes you happy by rewarding your brain immediately afterwards. You know what works best for you: a walk, a golden sticker, chocolate, cuddle your dog, whatever makes you happy.

I conditioned myself to associate writing with specific stimuli: that album, that smell, that tea, that place. Any stimulus can work, so pick one you like. I consciously chose several stimuli so I could switch them up, and the conditioning stays active as long as I don’t muddle it with other associations.

Use a ritual to signal to your brain that Writing Time is about to begin to get into the zone easier and faster. I guess this is a kind of conditioning as well? Meditation, music, lighting a candle… Pick your stimulus and stick with it.

Specifically for rewiring my brain, I started a new WIP that had no emotional connotations attached to it, nor any pressure to get finished or, heaven forbid, meet quality norms. I don’t think these techniques above would have worked as well if I had applied them on writing my novel.

It wasn’t until I could confidently say I enjoyed writing again, that I could start building up a consistent habit. No more pushing myself.

I lowered my definition for success

When I say that nowadays I write every day, that’s literally it. I don’t set out to write 1,000 or 500 or 10 words every day (tried it, failed to keep up with it every time)—the only marker for success when it comes to my streak is to write at least one word, even on the days when my brain goes “naaahhh”. On those days, it suffices to send myself a text with a few keywords or a snippet. It’s not “success on a technicality (derogatory)”, because most of those snippets and ideas get used in actual stories later. And if they don’t, they don’t. It’s still writing. No writing is ever wasted.

A side note on high expectations, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism

Obviously, “Setting a ridiculously low goal” isn’t something I invented. I actually got it from those productivity books, only I never got it to work. I used to tell myself: “It’s okay if I don’t write for an hour, because my goal is to write for 20 minutes and if I happen to keep going for, say, an hour, that’s a bonus.” Right? So I set the goal for 20 minutes, wrote for 35 minutes, and instead of feeling like I exceeded my goal, I felt disappointed because apparently I was still hoping for the bonus scenario to happen. I didn’t know how to set a goal so low and believe it.

I think the trick to making it work this time lies more in the groundwork of training my brain to enjoy writing again than in the fact that my daily goal is ridiculously low. I believe I’m a writer, because I prove it to myself every day. Every success I hit reinforces the idea that I’m a writer. It’s an extra ward against imposter syndrome.

Knowing that I can still come up with a few lines of dialogue on the Really Bad Days—days when I struggle to brush my teeth, the day when I had a panic attack in the supermarket, or the day my kid got hit by a car—teaches me that I can write on the mere Bad-ish Days.

The more I do it, the more I do it

The irony is that setting a ridiculously low goal almost immediately led to writing more and more often. The most difficult step is to start a new habit. After just a few weeks, I noticed that I needed less time and energy to get into the zone. I no longer needed all the strategies I listed above.

Another perk I noticed, was an increased writing speed. After just a few months of writing every day, my average speed went from 600 words per hour to 1,500 wph, regularly exceeding 2,000 wph without any loss of quality.

Talking about quality: I could see myself becoming a better writer with every passing month. Writing better dialogue, interiority, chemistry, humour, descriptions, whatever: they all improved noticeably, and I wasn’t a bad writer to begin with.

The increased speed means I get more done with the same amount of energy spent. I used to write around 2,000-5,000 words per month, some months none at all. Nowadays I effortlessly write 30,000 words per month. I didn’t set out to write more, it’s just a nice perk.

Look, I’m not saying you should write every day if it doesn’t work for you. My point is: the more often you write, the easier it will be.

No pressure

Yes, I’m still working on my novel, but I’m not racing through it. I produce two or three chapters per month, and the rest of my time goes to short stories my brain keeps projecting on the inside of my eyelids when I’m trying to sleep. I might as well write them down, right?

These short stories started out as self-indulgence, and even now that I take them more seriously, they are still just for me. I don’t intend to ever publish them, no-one will ever read them, they can suck if they suck. The unintended consequence was that my short stories are some of my best writing, because there’s no pressure, it’s pure fun.

Does it make sense to spend, say, 90% of my output on stories no-one else will ever read? Wouldn’t it be better to spend all that creative energy and time on my novel? Well, yes. If you find the magic trick, let me know, because I haven’t found it yet. The short stories don’t cannibalize on the novel, because they require different mindsets. If I stopped writing the short stories, I wouldn’t produce more chapters. (I tried. Maybe in the future? Fingers crossed.)

Don’t wait for inspiration to hit

There’s a quote by Picasso: “Inspiration hits, but it has to find you working.” I strongly agree. Writing is not some mystical, muse-y gift, it’s a skill and inspiration does exist, but usually it’s brought on by doing the work. So just get started and inspiration will come to you.

Accountability and community

Having social factors in your toolbox is invaluable. I have an offline writing friend I take long walks with, I host a monthly writing club on Discord, and I have another group on Discord that holds me accountable every day. They all motivate me in different ways and it’s such a nice thing to share my successes with people who truly understand how hard it can be.

The productivity books taught me that if you want to make a big change in your life or attitude, surrounding yourself with people who already embody your ideal or your goal huuuugely helps. The fact that I have these productive people around me who also prioritize writing, makes it easier for me to stick to my own priorities.

Your toolbox

The idea is to have several techniques at your disposal to help you stay consistent. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket by focussing on just one technique. Keep all of them close, and if one stops working or doesn’t inspire you today, pivot and pick another one.

After a while, most “tools” run in the background once they are established. Things like surrounding myself with my writing friends, keeping up with my daily streak, and listening to the album I conditioned myself with don’t require any energy, and they still remain hugely beneficial.

Do you have any other techniques? I’d love to hear about them!

I hope this was useful. Happy writing!

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...might've discovered a new genre to lose my mind about, hold please

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I actually do feel like the "unemployed friend on a Tuesday" meme actually helps de-stigmatize unemployment because it frequently affirms that when you don't have a job you're more likely to be getting up to some weird shit rather than just lazing around. But I also feel like the unemployed friend is frequently up to some random shit because there's a whole pile of miscellaneous life tasks that full-time employment keeps people from. The unemployed friend is helping their cousin move, or babysitting, or checking in with a neighbor with mobility issues. The unemployed friend is a walking thesis on the inflexibility of our current labor landscape and just how much work exists outside of work.

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On the “Murderbot” Tv Show and Queerness

This is probably going to be my last post about Murderbot tv - because I don’t think I can bring myself to watch any more episodes of this show -, but I really want to get something off my chest about an issue that’s been increasingly concerning to me throughout these first five episodes, on the topic of the representation of queerness and the changes the show has made from the book.

And maybe, if I can, I will give you all a new prospective to consider, since I’ve seen many people praising the writer’s representation of Murderbot’s asexuality and aromanticism, just because they said they respect it in an interview. But I encourage you to instead look at what they have actually written in the show, and not just what they claim to believe in, when it comes to queer representation.

There are a few different but interconnected examples I want to talk about, starting what I’ve just mentioned,

1) Murderbot’s asexuality

First of all, Murderbot in the tv show is still asexual and aromantic, there’s no doubt about that. My issue comes with the way the show has decided to represent it, and the many, many scenes where Murderbot is actively tormented and harassed because of it.

In the books, Murderbot expresses its disgust and disinterest for sexual and romantic relationships plenty of times. It is an important part of its personality, and a constant source of exasperation for it.

But nobody else, human or bot, is ever concerned with Murderbot’s lack of romantic or sexual interest (with the exception of Amena in Network Effect, but even then she is talking about MB’s queerplatonic relationship with ART, using relationship terms because that’s what it she knows best and what best describes the situation (and even Murderbot has to begrudgingly admit her examples apply)).

Meanwhile, in the tv show, Murderbot’s asexuality is mostly shown through the perspective of the human characters, and/or as a reaction to being constantly sexualized. Mensah’s shocked stares at its lack of genitals, Ratthi calling it handsome, Leebeebee’s ogling, her focusing – once again, unnecessarily - on Murderbot’s penis or lack-thereof, and her kissing it without its consent.

In the show, Murderbot’s asexuality and aromanticism became an otherness, something that separates it from the humans, and something that has to be challenged, again and again and again. Murderbot is punished for it, by the same characters that even this early on into the story were supposed to be respectful of its boundaries and its personhood.

(But let’s not get into the completely butchered dynamic between Murderbot and the PresAux’s humans, that’s a whole other depressing mess I really don’t want to explore right now.)

Even the narrative and the plot focuses a lot more on romance and relationship drama than it ever did in the books, which brings me to my second point,

2) The Throuple

In a book series that contains plenty of healthy, established polyamorous relationships, the Murderbot tv show has for some reason elected to take one of the few monogamous relationship of the whole story, a relationship between two women, and add a man to the mix. This decision is…….. questionable.

And equally questionable is the way this throuple comes to be, with Arada having to literally beg her spouse to consent to it, Pin-Lee more than once throughout the episodes appearing to be awkward, uncertain, and uncomfortable about the situation. Just like for Murderbot’s asexuality, polyamory is not a normal part of the world-building and the characters life anymore, but it becomes a source of comedy and of unnecessary conflict.

(And I can already hear people’s objections to this, telling me that Well, the show is expanding the story and showing other people’s points of view, these are things that could have been happening all along and Murderbot just wasn’t paying attention to them.

And to this I will respond that No, Murderbot’s job is literally for the most part to stop the humans under its care from killing each other, so it is always paying extra attention to this kind of things. And at the beginning of All Systems Red, it specifically comments on how pleased it is that the PreservationAux team aren’t having any stupid relationship drama.)

Oh, speaking of stupid relationship drama!

3) Gurathin and Mensah

All I really want to say about this is why, but I am going to elaborate because once again, my personal discomfort with this plot point aside, I think there’s concerning undertones with the decision of having Gurathin be in unrequired love with Mensah.

In the books, Gurathin is the only human main cast member not to show any interest in sex or relationships. The narrative never says that he is asexual and/or aromantic (just like it never uses labels for any other character, as society has by this point evolved past its need for labels), but it is still something that could be easily argued to be true, especially once we consider that Gurathin is similar to Murderbot in many other aspects, like his paranoia, his awkwardness, and his bluntness.

The show didn’t have to explore this, as, again, it was never canon, but it is definitely a missed opportunity considering how much it connected Murderbot’s asexuality with its lack of genitals and its not being human. Having an asexual human characters would have helped to underline that asexuality isn’t something alien or robotic, just a natural part of the human experience.

But actually what bothered me most about this plotline, having Gurathin be in love/obsessed with Mensah, is unrelated to whether Gurathin is asexual or not. There’s a bigger issue, something that connects all of the points I have talked about so far, which is,

4) Men and women

Before I get into this I want to clarify, so please don’t misunderstand me, I am not trying to devalue bisexuality or to say that is not queer enough or anything like that. Arada and Pin-Lee are bisexual, and that is queer, and I appreciate the show including it, just like I appreciate them respecting and adopting Pin-Lee’s actor’s pronouns.

What I do want everyone reading this to think about, is the fact that of the three big romantic/sexual addiction the tv show has made from the book, 1) Leebeebee’s attraction to Murderbot, 2) Ratthi joining Arada and Pin-Lee, 3) Gurathin loving Mensah…

… All three of those involve adding attraction between men and women where before there was none.

(Again, I know Murderbot isn’t a man, and if it was played by a nonbinary actor instead of recognized male sex symbol Alexander Skarsgård, I would not bring this up at all. But Leebeebee’s comments, her focusing specifically on Murderbot having a penis, didn’t give me the impression she was considering it to be genderless.)

In the books, romantic/sexual relationships between women and men are so much rarer compared to relationship between same sex partners or nonbinary people that it would be funny, except that - in a world and a media landscape saturated with heterosexuality -, for a queer reader like me, it’s actually just…. Refreshing. It was comforting.

And the show changed that not once, not twice, but three time.

And to me, that feels deliberate.

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Girls practice chinese lion dance

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Saw multiple people use gendered pronouns for Murderbot in reviews of Fugitive Telemetry, y’know, the book where there’s an entire scene that explicitly points out that Murderbot has no gender and you can’t miss it because Murderbot posts, for everyone in-universe and reading to see, “Gender = not applicable.” 

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Today a traditionally published author emailed me a list of helpful suggestions about getting published.

Their biggest piece of advice: Remove the main gay romance that is central to the plot.

Thread.

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Finally figured out how to permanently disable google assistant on phone

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one of the tragedies of Murderbot is that—it IS extremely smart, competent, clever, brave, motivated, careful, and good at what it does! It is also so, so painfully lucky. That smartness, competence, cleverness, bravery, motivation, and care wouldn’t have had a chance to mean much of anything if it hadn’t gotten those schematics downloaded by accident, if it hadn’t had the time to investigate and experiment with them. If it had been ordered into something suicidal before it got a chance to figure it out. And then it would have probably stayed with the company and miserable forever if it hadn’t been assigned to PresAux. It’s fun and interesting to think about reasons Murderbot might have been assigned to PresAux—theories that either as an unstable unit with a violent past it was less desirable and thus foisted off on freeholders who didn’t know any better, or that as a unit which had shown a ln unusually high uneaten client stat that it was deliberately given to a head of state with a very expensive bond—but we don’t see any of that. What we see is that after four years of shitty contracts… Murderbot got lucky and was assigned to PresAux.

How many other constructs could have been as brilliant and never got the chance? Murderbot is so many great things but it was not, ever, in control of its life or what happened to it. It got lucky. It seized its opportunities, but it was rare that it even got them. And that’s the tragedy, that it is just one SecUnit out of hundreds or thousands or who-knows-how-manyfor whom the stars aligned for it to get out. Not more deserving than any of them. Just lucky.

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Man, the stories I could tell about the ringleaders of those 10 people. They end up blocked by a lot of folks, including people who were genuinely willing to give them a chance, because their lack of regard for other people's boundaries is so hard to deal with.

And well they should be blocked. The racism and acephobia are not exaggerations; I have personally had one of these people insinuate to me on a public server that she knows better than me, a nonbinary person of color, what Martha Wells intended to write because she's a White cis woman like her. The same person sent unsolicited irl slavery/racism comparisons to a friend of mine to prove that Gurathin shared an axis of oppression with Murderbot; another time, an ace friend received unsolicited DMs proselytizing this person's rarepair, which eventually devolved into snide insinuations about asexual fans taking up too much space in fandom. Other people in this circlejerk regularly tout aphobic rhetoric, claiming that shipping an aroace character is the same as slash shipping a straight character, or that "queerplatonic" is an incoherent term to apply to aros because aro people can't have emotionally intimate relationships, or talking up how the big appeal of their rarepair is that it fulfills the fantasy of making a person who doesn't want romance want it anyway, that is, denying the queerness of an aro person's identity and agency. Real welcoming, open-minded bunch! /sarcasm.

So yeah, to echo op's words, far be it from me to tell people what to do- but when people jump feet-first into shipping in this community, they should be careful who they land next to, y'know? Use a little good sense to evaluate where those others stand, and how close to stand by them. And use the block button judiciously. Because it's a small community, and for my own peace of mind I will certainly hit the block button if others won't.

hell forbid me from telling people what to do, but. right on the clock. predictable as ever. in a show that has only two white-looking guys (in a main cast of seven, mind you). there are already a lot of folks mainlining Gurathin/Murderbot. while ignoring everyone and everything else. white fandom will never change.

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A master to his action-hero trainee says, "Your movements are sloppy. You lack awareness of your body when you fight. Your hands move and yet you do not hold them in your mind's eye. Come. We will remedy this."

And then the master paints his trainee's fingernails and orders the trainee to complete a series of complicated tasks without smudging the nail polish.

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What if all the Station Security humans think SecUnit is really cool and they want to befriend it. But also they don’t know anything about SecUnits so it’s not going great for them

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using my adhd superpowers by deleting ugly asks, blocking shitty reblogs, and then legitimately completely forgetting not only the subject matter but the actual incident itself. good luck pissing me off suckers; I can't even remember if I had breakfast, much less you