#or the message doesn't hold

[coquelicoq]

i can't stress enough that outside of this one moment in rogue protocol when murderbot wants to kill a human for betraying its sort-of clients but settles for the next best thing of menacingly hovering a drone in her face for 26 seconds while she's frozen in place by her armor, for the rest of the first four books mb is really only using drones for security purposes and doesn't have the time or inclination to be performing close-range facial analysis:

in ASR it doesn't seem to be all that familiar with drones outside of maybe using them to set a perimeter. it exhibits several other uses of drones as events escalate, but they're all related to protecting itself and its humans and getting intel on EvilSurvey. at no point does it mention watching a human with a drone; it's all "using drones to draw fire" this and "sending drones flying off in the wrong direction as a diversion tactic" that. et cetera.

it has no access to drones whatsoever in AC from what i can tell.

in RP it uses Ship's drones to record conversations between wilken and gerth, but it's not a participant in those conversations and it doesn't even watch them in real time. it also forgoes getting a good look at their weapons via drone because it thinks they would notice. later it takes control of a station drone to watch (from afar) their first meeting with don abene & co., but miki notices the drone and almost catches mb because of it, which freaks it out. then it hacks the combatbots' drones, but other than the aforementioned 26-second intimidation of wilken, it's too busy doing actual security work to use them to look at people.

in ES it accesses drones many times, including to observe its humans, but it only seems to actually control a drone to look at something one time, and only in order to zoom in on a suit logo. so at no point could it conceivably be directing a drone to get up in somebody's face, since it's just piggybacking on drones as they go about their normal business.

it does use cameras to watch people in the first four books, but in a much less obvious way: either it's using fixed cameras that are built into habitats/hoppers/whatever, or it's accessing mobile cameras (suit cams, station drones) but not controlling where those cameras go or what they're pointing at.

it's interesting, because while drones can be startling or intrusive, on the flip side, cameras that don't move don't draw attention to themselves and thus may make it easier to forget you're being watched (plus you have no way of knowing if that particular camera is being monitored at that moment or if it's just recording for later analysis). so in a way, having a drone in your face actively signals to you that mb is paying attention to you. it's making mb's gaze visible in a way it might not otherwise be. this changes the dynamic from "passive surveillance for datamining and threat assessment purposes" to "person actively choosing to pay attention to you in real time". one of these is covert and the other isn't; one of these holds the possibility of interaction and exchange and the other doesn't. maybe it puts a drone in your face to show you it cares.

[schmweed]

[paellegere]

"their relationship is romantic" "their relationship is familial" "their relationship is platonic" you're thinking too narrow. their relationship goes beyond labels. the family is inherently queer. their platonic love is romantic. the erotic is familial. each one is the other and the other is them

[kagrenacs]

Dealing with the revenue agency truly is Kafkaesque

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

Red bull is the villain, you say.

I ask you, is it not better to be loved by a villain that will burn the world down to save you, than a hero who will burn you to save the world?

[seagullcharmer]

I CAN'T EVIL BOOP!!!!!! TRAGEDY STRIKES AGAIN

[todayisafridaynight]

biggest fear for kiwami 3 is them retconning mines love for daigo (unlikely but it’s possible) or like something along the lines of that…. the minedai erasure would make me end it all

SUREST doubt of my life: even if you didn't want to interpret it as romantic, mine's love for daigo is an essential part to his character and motivation in y3. they coudnt erase mine's love without redoing his character

[sneez]

since i started testosterone in february i have been reading a stanza of andrew marvell’s poem ‘the garden’ every month to track the way my voice has changed. today i finished it :-)

[mayorofcattown]

Riku nendo photos time! Ft me swapping out his parts with my Natsume nendo now that I finally have more than one humanoid nendo

Riku with Natsume's faces, such as Polite and Eating paper

Keyblade wielder Natsume and Uncomfortably Blue Eyes Natsume

Amaterasu and Riku tag team! I'd make a joke abt this being a weird crossover but it's kingdom hearts. nothing is a weird crossover compared to kingdom hearts

Riku fights you with an even bigger sword, a bottle, and the book of friends (I would not trust him with it... sorry)

and he gets to pet the doggy And the kitty :)

[maeamian]

IMO, telling congress to pass legislation that averts a strike by imposing a contract rejected by the majority of union members, even if it is somewhat amended to partially cover the demand workers were threatening to strike over, is not a good idea. Averting a strike is not a natural good, it is only good if it is because the strike was averted due to the agreement of the workers with their contract, not because congress stepped in to enforce mediation. The good thing would be to tell your congresspeople to quit it with the scab shit, if the railroad bosses won't avert a strike by agreeing to a fair deal, there's no reason congress should be stealing the worker's leverage by forcing them to work with a substandard contract, and that's what I think your senator's office needs to hear.

[kedreeva]

I’ve never watched z nation before. What is it about/would you recommend it?

The premise is that the main antagonist (Murphy) gets injected with an experimental vaccine against the HZN1 (zombie) virus, and becomes the only person in the entire world with working antibodies against it. He is delivered accidentally to a group of survivors who become tasked with getting him safely from New York to California, so that a vaccine can be made and distributed to everyone that's left, despite the fact that Murphy does not want to do this. However, it has become the main protagonist's (Roberta) sworn duty, so he's going to Cali whether he likes it or not. Shenanigans ensue.

It is, for the most part, a light-hearted zombie show. Hope is a member of the group, traveling at their side from beginning to end. The group becomes a family, even when they are separated. They lose their way a few times, and get dragged back by the others. There are whacky adventures, but in the nice self-indulgent sort of way. I enjoy the diversity of the cast; the group is led by a black woman, the main protagonist is queer (and there are two more queer folk in the main group), they have a range of ages, and they pick up or meet all sorts of people along the way (this is actually often the case with Asylum films, I have found, they tend to have a pretty interesting group for the cast which is GREAT because I'm faceblind and having different shapes and colors means I can actually tell who's who as opposed to media cast entirely of square faced white boys and blonde white girls I absolutely cannot tell apart). It focuses largely on the plot and doesn't really do romance, it barely touches on sex (especially post S1), which is refreshing especially since there's clearly tons of LOVE going on, just not romantic love.

IMO it's a good show, and if you like the genre of media it's in, then I would absolutely recommend giving it a shot. It starts pretty good, and only improves from there; I actually think S5 was the best one. It's got excellent characters and good character development, it's got a good (if completely unhinged) plot, it's got a happy ending that satisfied me. It is a FUN show and that's evident in every part of it; you can definitely tell the writers had fun, the actors were enjoying it, special and practical effects people went ham… like there's a lot of love evident.

[thedreadvampy]

Got a paramount+ trial subscription. Just finished watching all of Strange New Worlds (review: solid star trek shenanigans, pretty much all bangers with the exception of the Spock-is-human episode which just suuuuuucked and the Klingon war trauma episode about which I have let's say Philosophical Reservations in that it could have been more Space M*A*S*H. not as gay as I was promised, in fact I would say disappointingly heterosexual. adore uhura, hemmer and la'an. cannot believe they gorned my boy 😢)

Off sick all week with COVID can't really do anything except lie around and watch TV.

[pastafossa]

i’m so so sorry about your cat, i’m keeping you in my thoughts 💔🫶

thank you so much friend. It's been really, really hard. I'm desperately trying to figure out what's wrong just in case it's something I can fix, even if finding out means I find out I can't fix it. At least I'd know there wasn't anything else I can do.

[palaceoftears]

What did consort Shu even see in him? Like I do get the teenage crush part, but then in the harem he never treated her with genuine care untill he felt bad for his own doing. Don't get me wrong, I felt awful for her and hated the emperor as always, but I still think her character was way too bland, like a Ruyi 2.0 but without all the things that make her a complex character, only with her loyalty to the emperor that in this case didn't even make sense. I think Yihuan was there to be an example of what the emperor is capable of doing because of his paranoia, and also to contrast Yanwan's opportunism with her devotion. It is funny though that the drama is showing you how Qianlong screws everyone and that being loyal to him changes nothing, but also romanticizes devotion all the time (I'm talking about all those scenes with Ruyi & Yihuan being refered as different from the others because they're the only ones that care for him). The madonna/whore complex may be a too western term to talk about this (and also I hate it when it's thrown around randomly for any comparison of two female characters) but there's definetly a patron of good girlies that genuinely love the emperor always being shown praying & charming him w their knowledge and the manipulative evil ones that use him for their own interests potrayed as seductive, sexually active (w this I mean they are the only ones whose sexual relations with the emperor are implied via more than just getting pregnant) and yearning for other men that don't love them.

[jasonsmirrorball]

sending a kiss to everybody on the dash tonight i hope the day is kind to u

[sgkjd]

oh so me not being able to respond to text messages/emails timely is my pda in action. how come i'm realizing this just now