imitationgame77

[imitationgame77]

Oh absolutely! If ART bothers to care, it can be polite and pleasant. I wrote in the original post [ART to non-crew humans] but what I meant was humans that matter to it. It cares about Murderbot's humans because they are people that its friend greatly care about.

As you say, ART is gentle with Amena as she is an adolescent human and it likes them. It also likes Amena for what she is, too. Dr.Mensah is very important, because she is such a significant figure to Murderbot, and her opinion would doubtless affect Murderbot.

ART could have its own support systems, like Holism has its support ships like SumTotal. But it doesn't. I think it usually doesn't care much about socialising or how its behaviour might impact bots/humans that do not much matter to it.

And yes, it must have been such fascinating experience to experience things differently through MB's feed and interact with someone who fights back with intelligence. An enigma.

ART's social skills

ART in any format is absolute shit at talking to other bots, says Murderbot in System Collapse.

Is that so? How does it talk to other bots/systems?

[ART meeting systems]

ShuttleSecSys tried to analyze ART and almost got itself deleted. I took over ShuttleSecSys, turned off the alarms, and deleted the entire trip out of its memory.

(Artifical Condition)

The SecSystem tried to block ART and I quickly put up a wall and deleted its memory of the contact. (ART really did not care to be challenged by other resident systems and I didn’t want the friendly SecSystem deleted.)

(Network Effect)

Okayyy, that was a rather aggressive response. But then, unlike SecUnits who are designed to interact with systems, ART is not built to be compatible with other systems. No matter how politely ART approaches them, they are not likely to appreciate its presence.

[ART interacting with other bots]

Plus ART, who was already cozying up to said bot pilot and would be keeping an eye on the shuttle during the brief trip. (ART’s idea of “cozying” being somewhat overbearing, I had already had to intervene once to assure the bot pilot that the big mean transport had promised not to hurt it.)

(Artificial Condition)

Size-wise, it's like a rhino trying to be friendly with a rabbit. Whatever it does might come across as overbearing.

A message came back: I could help you learn about it, if you’re interested. ART said, Stop talking to it. I think it’s just bored, I said. I don’t give a shit, ART said.

(System Collapse)

Holism is like your old classmate from primary school days that you never particularly got on that well, comes along, spots that you have made a best friend at university, and tries to ask out this said-friend while you are sitting together. A bit insensitive!

[ART introducing itself to SecUnits]

When it met Murderbot:

Then, through my feed, something said, You were lucky. I sat up. It was so unexpected, I had an adrenaline release from my organic parts.

[...]

It said, You’re a rogue SecUnit, a bot/human construct, with a scrambled governor module. It poked me through the feed and I flinched. It said, Do not attempt to hack my systems, and for .00001 of a second it dropped its wall.

(Artificial Condition)

When it met Three:

Contact requested: transport designated Perihelion, registered Pansystem University of—

Response, Transport: Who the fuck are you?

This is nonstandard communication. The contact is a transport bot pilot, but transport bot pilots can’t/don’t communicate this way.

(Network Effect)

Transport, on private channel: If you even think about harming them, I will disassemble you and peel away your organic parts piece by piece before destroying your consciousness. Do we understand each other?

(Network Effect)

ART is ... being very pragmatic there. It's not threatening. It's telling them how it's not a good idea to even think about destructive behaviour. (Though it could have been a little more tactful.)

Still, poor Three. It must have been terrifying.

[ART to non-crew humans]

Target Three, sarcastically: “If the ship speaks, why didn’t it come in person?”

Perihelion’s drone: You don’t want to meet me in person.

The Targets react with astonishment and some dismay.

(Network Effect)

What do they expect. They had kidnapped its best friend.

The first thing the new Barish-Estranza explorer had done was power up to ART and try to intimidate it/us. [...]

ART had dropped its main weapon port and transmitted, Targeting lock acquired.

The explorer had replied something to the effect that they didn’t mean to be intimidating and was the widdle academic transport crew scared, but in corporate speak, and ART had replied, It’s so easy for ships to disappear out here.

There was a pause, indicating a scramble to adjust operational parameters, then they made the mistake of trying to intimidate back with something like Oh yeah well you’ll get damaged, too, and I am not exactly an expert on nonfictional human interactions but that just obviously wasn’t going to cut it.

ART transmitted, You can make this complicated situation simple for me. Which I can tell you was not any kind of posturing, it 100 percent meant that.

Barish-Estranza must have picked up on that subtext because they backed down and now they think ART is a human commanding officer who’s a giant asshole.)

(System Collapse)

They (Barish-Estranza) started it /shrug

This shuttle wasn’t armed, and a quick look through their security archive said nobody had planted any explosives or anything. She was bluffing.

ART-drone said, “I wouldn’t recommend it. I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.”

(System Collapse)

Again, ART is stating facts.

ART doesn't do smarmy corporate talk. It speaks its mind, calls spade a spade, like a Yorkshire person. Don't harm or steal its humans or its SecUnit bestie then you'd be safe.

Does it have good social skills?

I refrain from answering that question. It certainly gives extra purpose for Murderbot to stay with it. (To be the social facilitator for bot / system interactions.)

[imitationgame77]

That's an excellent point! There are many protagonists in fictions that turn out to be (1) the chosen one, (2) an accidental hero, (3) a reluctant hero, etc. Fate is rather boring, so, even if they are "the chosen one, their destiny written in the anceint scrolls, they usually discover that by chance or thrown into the role by luck.

But in case of Murderbot, I also think that its natural/nurtured temperament has played a large role. From what it says we know that "rogue SecUnits" are not just in media. They happen. Some of them do indeed go on some rampage. Others get re-captured. Some of these different fates might be due to luck, but it's also likely that it's due to what these units did when they're released from their governor module (GM).

It's true Murderbot didn't have control over its existence before hacking its GM. But after that, it did make a series of little choices that made a significant impact on what happened to it. It could have walked out before. There might have been opportunities. It could have got trapped in learned helplessness and done nothing. It wasn't just luck that it decided to watch many hours of media, learning and vicariously experiencing things. A different SecUnit might have saved Bharadwaj just like MB did, and even successfully ignore HubSys, but it's highly unlikely that it did what Murderbot did with Volescu.

A different rogue unit might have met ART, but it's unlikely that it ended up watching media together, bonding over the process.

Murderbot was certainly lucky, but I think it also has the temperament and learning capacity to make the best of it, drawing further luck.

I'd like to think that there are other SecUnits out there, quietly surviving. They are not known to Murderbot because they manage to stay hidden.

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.

[imitationgame77]

📊 How to Use Tropes Without Turning Your Story into a YA Checklist

You can tell when a book was written by vibes and TVTropes alone.

It’s got: ☑️ the reluctant chosen one ☑️ the love triangle ☑️ the mysterious brooding boy™ ☑️ the sassy best friend ☑️ the dead parents ☑️ the villain with daddy issues ☑️ the scene where someone says “you don’t know what I’m capable of” and walks away dramatically

And like… that’s fine.

Tropes are tools. But here’s the thing: they are starting points, not story goals.

If your plot reads like it was drafted by a checklist in a Pinterest caption, it might be time to recalibrate. Here's how to actually use tropes without turning your book into a YA Mad Libs generator:

─────── ✦ ───────

🧩 Tropes Are Patterns--Not Presets

A trope is a pattern, not a requirement. It’s not a law. It’s not a plug-and-play feature. And it’s definitely not your plot.

The “enemies-to-lovers” arc? That’s a container. What you put inside it, that’s where the originality lives.

The goal isn’t to avoid tropes. It’s to do something interesting with them.

→ Why are they enemies? → What does the “love” cost them? → What happens if they fail to become lovers?

Tropes don’t carry the story. The conflict does.

─────── ✦ ───────

⚔️ Complicate the Familiar

Here’s a trick: if a trope feels too easy, break it in half.

Examples: → “Reluctant chosen one” → okay, but what if they wanted it, and then hated it once they got it? → “The mentor dies” → cool, but what if the mentor fakes their death to manipulate the protagonist? → “Sassy best friend” → no. Make them real. Give them pain. Give them depth. No more walking punchlines.

Tropes are scaffolding, not shortcuts. Add weight. Add doubt. Add betrayal.

─────── ✦ ───────

🕳️ Interrogate Why You’re Using It

Ask yourself: → Do I love this trope or do I feel like I have to include it? → Am I doing this because I’ve seen it done… or because it serves my story? → Is this trope the only interesting thing about this scene?

If your answer is “because that’s what YA stories do,” delete it. Go deeper.

─────── ✦ ───────

💔 Tropes Aren’t Substitutes for Character Arcs

You can’t use “grumpy x sunshine” and call it development. Tropes are flavors, not meals.

Give us: → Choices with consequences. → Conflicting values. → Character growth that costs something.

Otherwise? Your grumpy guy is just a Pinterest moodboard with a pulse.

─────── ✦ ───────

🧨 Use Reader Expectations Against Them

You want to use a trope and not make it predictable? Weaponize it.

Example: → Start with a love triangle. Let the MC fall hard. Then have both love interests realize they’re in love with each other. → Use the “chosen one” trope… but make it about dismantling that myth entirely. → Introduce the “villain redemption arc” and let them choose to stay bad because it makes more sense for them.

Set up the pattern. Then snap it in half. That’s how you surprise a jaded reader.

─────── ✦ ───────

Final thoughts from your local trope goblin:

→ Tropes aren’t the problem. It’s treating them like a checklist instead of a narrative engine. → A good trope doesn’t make your story good. How you twist it does. → If a story reads like it was built from Tumblr quotes and nothing else—it’s gonna flop.

So go ahead. Use the trope. Then ruin it. Make it weird. Make it hurt. Make it yours.

—rin t. // story mechanic. trope thief. YA bingo card burner. // thewriteadviceforwriters

Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

[imitationgame77]

ART and Amena echoing similar thoughts

It's interesting that both ART and Amena tell Murderbot that it should express how it cares about the people it does care about. That they need to know.

ART must be recovering because it had to butt in with, Tell her you care about her. Use those words, don’t tell her you’ll eviscerate anything that tries to hurt her. ART, fuck off. The thing ART has in common with human adolescents is that it doesn’t like to hear the word “no,” either. It persisted, Tell her. It’s true. Just say it. Human adolescents need to hear it from their caretakers. [Network Effect, chapter 10]

I stood there accusingly, not looking at her. She tried to hold it in and managed it for almost six seconds, then burst out, “ART should know how you really feel about it!

[Network Effect, chapter 12]

As someone from a cultural background where people don't do public display of affection or constantly say "I love you" to their partners, I emphasize with MB's reluctance to express how it cares explicitly.

It's only to Dr. Mensah it says spontaneously, "I really like you. Not in a weird way.", knowing that she understands it.

But then, probably Amena and ART need to hear that more than Dr. Mensah, because Mensah is such an emotionally fully grounded person who probably doesn't require constant reassurances.

Both Amena and ART have upset Murderbot in different ways, and want to know that they are okay. In a way, Amena is better at understanding MB's reactions in a sensitive human way. (She calls it Third Mom, that indicates she is aware that MB is being protective towards her, not just as a job.)

It's harder for ART, because it cannot be sure MB being so self-sacrificing to save its crew is because that's the way MB is or it is (at least in part) an act of friendship for ART. It had seen MB risking itself trying to protect some random humans beyond the scope of their contract.

So, ART decides to show how it cares about MB by saying, I won't lose you.

And it's MB's way of reciprocating that when it lets ART listen to it saying to Dr. Mensah, "I like being with ART, and I want to keep on being with it."

Sometimes, it means a lot to hear that you are cared for, even if you know at the back of your mind.

[imitationgame77]

ART's social skills

ART in any format is absolute shit at talking to other bots, says Murderbot in System Collapse.

Is that so? How does it talk to other bots/systems?

[ART meeting systems]

ShuttleSecSys tried to analyze ART and almost got itself deleted. I took over ShuttleSecSys, turned off the alarms, and deleted the entire trip out of its memory.

(Artifical Condition)

The SecSystem tried to block ART and I quickly put up a wall and deleted its memory of the contact. (ART really did not care to be challenged by other resident systems and I didn’t want the friendly SecSystem deleted.)

(Network Effect)

Okayyy, that was a rather aggressive response. But then, unlike SecUnits who are designed to interact with systems, ART is not built to be compatible with other systems. No matter how politely ART approaches them, they are not likely to appreciate its presence.

[ART interacting with other bots]

Plus ART, who was already cozying up to said bot pilot and would be keeping an eye on the shuttle during the brief trip. (ART’s idea of “cozying” being somewhat overbearing, I had already had to intervene once to assure the bot pilot that the big mean transport had promised not to hurt it.)

(Artificial Condition)

Size-wise, it's like a rhino trying to be friendly with a rabbit. Whatever it does might come across as overbearing.

A message came back: I could help you learn about it, if you’re interested. ART said, Stop talking to it. I think it’s just bored, I said. I don’t give a shit, ART said.

(System Collapse)

Holism is like your old classmate from primary school days that you never particularly got on that well, comes along, spots that you have made a best friend at university, and tries to ask out this said-friend while you are sitting together. A bit insensitive!

[ART introducing itself to SecUnits]

When it met Murderbot:

Then, through my feed, something said, You were lucky. I sat up. It was so unexpected, I had an adrenaline release from my organic parts.

[...]

It said, You’re a rogue SecUnit, a bot/human construct, with a scrambled governor module. It poked me through the feed and I flinched. It said, Do not attempt to hack my systems, and for .00001 of a second it dropped its wall.

(Artificial Condition)

When it met Three:

Contact requested: transport designated Perihelion, registered Pansystem University of—

Response, Transport: Who the fuck are you?

This is nonstandard communication. The contact is a transport bot pilot, but transport bot pilots can’t/don’t communicate this way.

(Network Effect)

Transport, on private channel: If you even think about harming them, I will disassemble you and peel away your organic parts piece by piece before destroying your consciousness. Do we understand each other?

(Network Effect)

ART is ... being very pragmatic there. It's not threatening. It's telling them how it's not a good idea to even think about destructive behaviour. (Though it could have been a little more tactful.)

Still, poor Three. It must have been terrifying.

[ART to non-crew humans]

Target Three, sarcastically: “If the ship speaks, why didn’t it come in person?”

Perihelion’s drone: You don’t want to meet me in person.

The Targets react with astonishment and some dismay.

(Network Effect)

What do they expect. They had kidnapped its best friend.

The first thing the new Barish-Estranza explorer had done was power up to ART and try to intimidate it/us. [...]

ART had dropped its main weapon port and transmitted, Targeting lock acquired.

The explorer had replied something to the effect that they didn’t mean to be intimidating and was the widdle academic transport crew scared, but in corporate speak, and ART had replied, It’s so easy for ships to disappear out here.

There was a pause, indicating a scramble to adjust operational parameters, then they made the mistake of trying to intimidate back with something like Oh yeah well you’ll get damaged, too, and I am not exactly an expert on nonfictional human interactions but that just obviously wasn’t going to cut it.

ART transmitted, You can make this complicated situation simple for me. Which I can tell you was not any kind of posturing, it 100 percent meant that.

Barish-Estranza must have picked up on that subtext because they backed down and now they think ART is a human commanding officer who’s a giant asshole.)

(System Collapse)

They (Barish-Estranza) started it /shrug

This shuttle wasn’t armed, and a quick look through their security archive said nobody had planted any explosives or anything. She was bluffing.

ART-drone said, “I wouldn’t recommend it. I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.”

(System Collapse)

Again, ART is stating facts.

ART doesn't do smarmy corporate talk. It speaks its mind, calls spade a spade, like a Yorkshire person. Don't harm or steal its humans or its SecUnit bestie then you'd be safe.

Does it have good social skills?

I refrain from answering that question. It certainly gives extra purpose for Murderbot to stay with it. (To be the social facilitator for bot / system interactions.)

[imitationgame77]

LOL!

This is priceless - the bot pilot swooning XD

Thank you for getting inspiration from my story! (Obviously the original inspiration, I understand, is Exit Strategy!)

MB saving the Company botpilot in Exit Strategy. It goes around impressing every system it interacts with, the mysterious, powerful and skilled rogue secunit that appears, performs great acts of heroism and then disappears just as quickly, leaving a trail of broken bot hearts. it has absolutely no idea that its doing this.

Inspiration here!

[imitationgame77]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: ART | Perihelion & Murderbot Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), ART | Perihelion, a gunship bot pilot Additional Tags: unconsicous bot magnet, POV ART | Perihelion

[imitationgame77]

A story of the augmented human hubsystem from System Collapse

KyleVale (2308 words) by ImitationGame Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Val (OC) & HostileSecUnit2 Characters: Val (OC), B-E Augmented Human HubSystem, HostileSecUnit2, Adelsen, (mentioned), ART | Perihelion (indirectly mentioned), Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries) (mentioned) Additional Tags: Book 7: System Collapse, Lower than canon-typical violence

Summary: From System Collaplse, A B-E employee, an augmented human with multiple interfaces embedded into their temples, forehead, and the back of their skull, sat in an acceleration chair behind the pilot’s seat, their head wreathed in a visual feed display. They were monitoring via the feed and with their eyes at the same time. So they were like an augmented human HubSystem? Weird, and fucking inconvenient.

This is a story of this weird "augmented human HubSystem" - from their POV.

[imitationgame77]

Interesting post.

About a year ago, I struggled with the concept of aromanticism, as I had not heard of it before. (Asexual, I had heard of)

I think you can have your own interpretation of the characters and their relationship, and if people disagree with that idea, I'd say you can just agree to disagree. Personally, I don't think people are invalidating your identity by saying Murderbot is aromantic. (They may feel invalidated by others saying Murderbot is asexual/alloromantic, etc.)

My biggest misunderstanding was to think that being aromantic meant these people didn't want / were incapable of / were repulsed by a close relationship. That they were repulsed by intimacy.

Part of my misunderstanding was due to some differences in the interpretation of "romantic" which has a lot broader meaning in my culture, but that's another story that I have posted about before.

The important thing I've learned was that you can have a profound and intimate relationship with someone without that being a romantic relationship. The person can be your partner, soulmate, a love of your life, and still not be your romantic partner. It is up to the people involved in the relationship. The observing outsiders have no right to say that "What you have is romantic" because it is after all very subjective experience. Other people's comments can be harmful...

I liked that MW said she'd thought that "ART was probably the love of Murderbot's life", and I think it could be so without them thinking of each other in a romantic way. (That's probably too human, anyway)

One of the things I have issue with fandom is that they tend to kind of package aro/ace together and as someone who is in the ace spectrum and definitely not aromantic, I find it baffling that people who read the Murderbot books say so confidently that Murderbot is aromantic. To the point that if I (as someone who relates to it immensely) imply that I think it has romantic feelings, people are acting like I am invalidating its identity?

The books explicitly state that Murderbot is ace. It never explicitly states it as aro. You are free to read its romantic orientation as you wish. If it feels aro to you, yeah sure. But it's equally (and I think more) likely that it does have romantic feelings! Just because it doesn't like any kind of physical intimacy (non-sexual included), it doesn't mean that Murderbot is aromantic. Romantic intimacy can be more than physical. It's not the neat little categorization of "if you don't like sex you are ace and if you don't like cuddles you are aro".

I just feel like we don't have nearly enough alloromantic ace people in media and when people insist on Murderbot being aromantic, I feel like people are invalidating my identity based on strict definitions of what they think being aromantic is and then come to me and get angry at me as if I am being delusional or being acephobic somehow? I just feel so frustrated with that!

Also!

Spoilers for books under the cut

Marta Wells herself calls ART the love of Murderbot's life in one of her interviews! Also I think it is in love with Mensah too. Not the way it is with ART but in a different way. Because love can take many forms and it's something you share with people! I have never fallen in love with someone the way I fell in love with another person. Every person is unique and so the way that the puzzle pieces of you and them coming together will make a unique picture. In a book where there are many poly couples and constructs who have varying levels of sexual/romantic urges (so they aren't necessarily aroace by default), how is it that difficult to imagine a. multiple romantic relationships and b. non-physical romantic intimacy. I am just baffled.

Murderbot is just too new to everything to have names for stuff like that and it is not experiencing its emotions in a way that is recognizable from media and its interactions with people! And it doesn't like labeling stuff with human terms because it is not a human! It has its own unique feelings and experiences! I honestly relate to that so much because everyone try to dictate how I should feel too...

Again, if you are aroace and thinking Murderbot as one resonates with you, I respect that! But let me have my alloromantic ace bot too. Thank you.

[imitationgame77]

-Network Effect, ch8

Is it proof that ART was holding out on MB? If ART has the array of internal sensors that MB describes would it also need cameras? What for? It can sense and understand everything going on inside itself just fine. When the humans need to see another part of the ship it doesn't give them a camera view, it whips up a hologram. ART is a deep-space research vessel, the visual input it's used to getting is probably more like the James Webb space telescope than a security camera. And once it made friends with SecUnit in AC there was no particular reason not to allow camera access: there was no-one else on board to spy on and its research modules weren't attached.

If, however, you're a humungous space reaseach ship and you're used to looking at supernovas way the fuck over there and using your spidey-senses for stuff happening in your hull then it makes sense that visual media might not grab you. It's not encoded with heat, density, motion: it's mostly just optical. Which, you're a hyperintelligent supercomputer, you can parse it into a format that you can understand, but. Ugh. Why? There isn't even any gravitational lensing. It's like reading something boring in a language that you've got a rudimentary grasp of but aren't fluent in: you can do it if you make the time and effort but it's a lot of work for something that isn't even fun.

And then Murderbot shows up and gives it a three-week intensive course on Why Visual Input Is Fun, Actually. It gets a lot of practise and ART learns very quickly. So now that it's tagged and released Murderbot back into the wild it needs to upgrade its on-board systems to provide an appropriate habitat for once its multi-step plan to find it again and convince it to stay forever comes to fruition (hopefully the plan did not originally involve kidnapping).

[imitationgame77]

the big thing about worldbuilding is that it’s ALL about tone. The other thing about worldbuilding is that it’s about repeated tropes that keep showing up in aggregate. You can control your story’s tone but unfortunately your story exists in conversation with all the other stories in its genre and you can’t control those, only how your story engages or doesn’t engage with the trends those other stories set.

“why are there potatoes in this Generically Vaguely Medieval European Fantasy World?” gets mocked a lot but it’s a question worth asking. If your world has Wizard McDonald’s with a McDragon (dragon hamburger) and Magic Fries no one is gonna be asking where the potatoes come from because you have set the tone of the world: it’s silly and satirical and those aren’t the relevant questions to be asking.

There’s also something very fair to be said for the Vaguely Medieval England Fantasy World, like the Vaguely Star Trek Sci-Fi World, as a known setting: we all know it, we all know its tropes, we all basically know How It Works, so authors don’t HAVE to do any meaningful worldbuilding any more than they’d have to if they set their story in, like, London, or New York City. Anyone in the English speaking world is at least vaguely familiar with how London or NYC work; similarly, the Generic Medieval Setting and the Generic Space Setting are places English language genre readers Basically Know. It’s a pre-made world full of inbuilt connotations to drop your characters/plot/concept into. There’s value in that, imo particularly for short-form works.

But if you take your secondary fantasy world to stand seriously on its own, to support a fantasy epic of your own, it can fall apart at the seams under the conflicting weight of own casual assumptions, and that’s what the “where do the potatoes come from?” question is all about. It’s about assumptions. The potatoes question is basically a synecdoche for, “if your world has the (literal) fruits of nonwhite people’s labor and cultures in it, does it have any nonwhite people?” The Shire has potatoes, tobacco, and iirc sunflowers and strawberries: all plants native to and domesticated in the Americas by Indigenous American people. The question is for you to ask yourself, why are potatoes a quaintly charming English thing for hobbits to eat, while, say, a hobbit eating quinoa or avocado toast would be jarring? Why do the royalty of Westeros eat lemon tarts but not curry? Why is coffee normal in this temperate-climate setting, but papayas and bananas would break immersion? Why are some foods “normal” and others “foreign”? What does this indicate about the assumptions baked into your story-world about what is Normal and what is Foreign? And why are potatoes, in particular, so common in fantasy worlds that are Vaguely European? Why is this a Normal Part Of The World but quinoa or maize corn (other South American Andean staple crops) aren’t? Why don’t we think of potatoes as a South American food?

It’s not about the potatoes, not really. It’s about whether you’ve thought about how Your World works, whether you’re being deliberate with the tone and the type of expectations you set, or if you’re just repeating what Feels Normal without digging into what’s Normal and what’s Foreign and why.

[imitationgame77]

Love that scene!

Holism is violating the Maxim of Quantity (Grice, 1989)

@ship-bigger-than-yours

I sent, ETA on shuttle arrivals.

ART said, 7.32 minutes at the same time as Holism said, 7.3247 minutes. The resulting silence on the feed was stony.

[imitationgame77]

Oh hello!

Thanks for recommending my fic❤️

The drawings are beautiful!

I read fic about augmented human HubSys yesterday and remembered that I have some sketches. I drew them when I was rereading the book. The fic is great! I highly recommend it!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66376477

[imitationgame77]

Reblogging with a new invite-link.

We are primarily a server where we talk about "The Murderbot Diaries" book series but we have a channel and threads for talking about the the tv show ase well.

Our current audiobook listetning-along event is on "Fugitive Telemetry" (published 6th, but chronologically 5th, so we are listening to it as the 5th story)

Murderbot Discord Server - Transit Hub

For those who are new to The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (and to those who are not new, too!), I'd like to post an invitation to our Discord server "Murderbot Transit Hub", currently run by myself and @broken-risk-assessment-module.

There are multiple Discord servers for the fans of Murderbot, but our server is created aiming to be beginner friendly. It has separate channels for each book, so that people can join at any point and have discussion without having to worry about seeing spoilers for the books you have not read yet. It is also a gateway to other servers, as it has links to many of them.

Currently, we are planning to start audiobook listening-along events for Exit Strategy. (We have done ASR, AC, and RP so far.) Basically, we stream one chapter per week, and people can just listen, participate in text-chat, share their thoughts in the relevant channel, etc.

If you are interested in joining, click on the invitation link below:

[imitationgame77]

Simply priceless 🤣

here have some mid-tier murderbot tv show memes based on the first four episodes

[imitationgame77]

Androids Enjoy Soap Operas?

[some spoiler of the show]

After watching Ep. 1-4 of Apple TV show "Murderbot" (which feels totally difference from the book series I love), every time I see the Show-in-the-Show "Sanctuary Moon", I get amused in a slightly cringy way.

Then when I saw Murderbot singing the theme song from its favourite show "Rise and Fall of Sanctualy Moon" (for a tactical reason), I suddenly remembered Kryten (an android from the UK comdey series Red Dwarf) singing the theme.

That was an interesting show inside the show with the end credit with endless list of androids.

[imitationgame77]

Why does is matter so much if the B-E SecUnit recognises Murderbot as a SecUnit? (System Collapse)

In the early part of System Collapse where Murderbot reluctantly returns to the planet surface to rescue Ratthi, Iris and Tarik from an AgBot. Suddenly a Barish-Estranza SecUnit (designated B-E Unit1) appears (along with its humans, including Sub-Supervisor Dellcourt) and shoots it down with its specialised bot-busting weapon, nealy dropping the heavy ag-bot on top Murderbot.

The first reaction MB had when it noted the sudden appearance of the B-E Unit1 was, Oh shit, it's Barish-Estranza.

This is understandable. From the moment their back-up arrived in the system, Barish-Estranza had been showing hostility, jealously claiming everything and anything on that planet belonged to them.

However, Murderbot particularly didn't want to be identified as a SecUnit by them.

After this point, MB goes out of the way to pretend really hard to look like a human, groaning, even asking Ratthi to pretend to help it up. It was so nervous that it avoided looking at the B-E Unit1.

On my recent n-th re-reading, it suddenly struck me as a little peculiar.

Why was Murderbot so worried about being identified as a SecUnit? It had met B-E Supervisor Leonide, even though it had made it look more like a standard SecUnit with its hair flat, no human-motion-imination codes running at the time. Leonide must have reported to the new arrivals that University had brought a highly competent SecUnit. She may have even shown some footage from the meeting on her ship.

Was it because MB generally wanted to be avoid being identified as a SecUnit by humans other than its humans? Was it because the university group bringing their unit on the planet would cause more disputes? Or did it think that B-E Unit1 would report it to Dellcourt and he would order it to kill MB with some feeble excuse?

While MB was a lone rogue unit, as ART had pointed out, passing off as a human was crucial for its survival. However, at the time of its encounter in the scene above, I'd have thought B-E had no grounds for killing/neutralising/stealing Murderbot.