What if instead of waking up in the mushroom body, sqq woke up in a doll.
Something something while lbh was away in the abyss, sqq without noticing offended a misterious (demonic-succubi-esque???) cultivator with a weird thing for making dolls. She had dolls all over her secret workshop that she very kindly let him into when she heard about the famous Xiu Ya sword being in the city.
What she wanted of him? Who knows, sqq couldn't bring himself to care. She probably wanted his money or try to steal his hair, the hair of those dolls seemed very much like real hair, although he had to admit the level of details on these dolls were amazing.
(she wanted to trick him into buying one of her cursed dolls and steal his life energy little by little, but got wifebeamed by widow sqq during their conversation about how talented she was to be able to make so many dolls, and without really understanding he rejected her with little to no emotion on his face)
So she cursed him, and since sqq didn't feel anything bad at the moment he thought it just didn't work and left, not sparing the curse a single thought after their encounter.
The rest of the story goes as usual, excep that after he self detonates his soul doesn't go into the mushroom body, instead it got directly into the shape of a doll in the workshop of this woman.
His first thought is thinking someone snitched the mushroom body bc wtf wasn't he supposed to wake up under the dirt??? Why this place smells slightly familiar? Like paint and humidity and floral perfumes?? and why everything looks fucking giganourmus?!?! A teapot should NOT look that big from his position....Oh no, did the mushroom body turned out as small as a squirrel? WhAT is happening?!
And then he looks at his arms and legs, and he has joints. White paper skin with joints in his wrists, elbows, torso, waist, knees, feet. And he panics, a lot.
The woman who cursed him starts monologuing about how she trapped him now, and you are mine, I made this doll specially for you master shen, this is my revenge for your insolence to leave me yada yada- Sqq stoped listening a while ago.
Somehow he manages to escape from this woman and now he is roaming around as the size of some apples. Everything is huge. Everything is dangerous, even the grasshopers! And this body is fragile! He can't feel heat nor cold, neither hunger or other things, but he is useless with no spiritual veins inside, and if someone is not looking carefully, they might crush him. And the way back to cq is gonna be a hell of a trip! But he needs airplane to fix this. He can't stay as a doll forever! He needs a mushroom body and then fly into the sunset far from this mess! Adiós! Goodbye! So his new plan is to infiltrate into cang qiong, look for that rat and disappear. Sneaking into some disciple's pouch must be enough to break in.
Something something it only had passed a few months since lbh stole sqq's body and everything is still very fresh. CQ mountain is a hot mess. Sqh frankly needs to lay down and take a nap. Lqg keeps figthing with Lbh practially every day and coming back beaten bloody, he has his king pestering him and a lot of paperwork to do, Lbh is a pain in the ass, Yqy is really close to snap and start a war with HHP, and he knows nothing about his bro. So yeah. Such a great time to be alive.
The mushroom bodies should had been ready, right? He must be alright...Yeah. He has enough already to keep him busy. Cucumber bro is gonna come out and stumble across at any moment. No one would bat an eye if he takes a nap, right? He deserves it. He is overworked enough for another lifetime, his head hurts, his bones hurt everywhere, a short nap should be fine...
Until he feels something small tugging his robes and a cold tiny finger poking his eyelids. But he doesn't want to. He is very comfortable on the floor of his office. Whatever bird decided to pick a fight with his face can keep trying.
"AIRPLANE, WAKE UP, YOU HACK! I NEED YOU TO FIX THIS! WHY IS A WITCH WITH ANACHRONISTIC HAUNTED DOLLS IN THIS NOVEL? THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"
That voice. That fucking annoying voice was of just one person and one person only. He opened his eyes, looking for the source of the unmistakable voice of his No1 hater, but he came across with a pretty porcelain doll. With a very ugly sneer in it's face.
"W-Wha-?...Bro-?!"
"Fucking finally! Why are you sleeping on the floor in your ofice?! I was looking around your bedroom like an idiot! Do you know how close I was to falling from your window?!"
-TBC-
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Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.
Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):
In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.
It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]
The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]
Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]
In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]
In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]
Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.
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Nerd-to-nerd communication
Something super pointless and self-indulgent I've had on the backburner for a while. I love trying to make the pieces they gave us fit together!
Al-AN and Robin would absolutely bond over learning about each other's biology. I could talk about this forever but I'll get into all of the headcanons I have for these two in another post eventually
Below the cut is another version with some extra bits and pieces and the transcription
Transcript :
Architect Anatomy
A. Architect "Brain" - Doesn't "store" information so much as allow for easy communication with the network
B. Brainstem - connects the information received to the central nervous/circulatory system
C. "Heart" - Circulatory system pumps the bioluminescent fluid to other organ systems and surface veins. Each node connects to a vast vasculature network
D. "Kidneys" - Organs that filter the bioluminescent "blood" and other bodily fluids, absorbing and distributing collected material
E. Nerve Center - Receives raw sensory data and filters it. Filtering can be unconscious or intentional
F. "Respiratory" Tract - Intakes gases or liquids and filters out material for use. Disposes of waste on exhale. Provides cooling to internal systems
The respiratory tract functions less like a set of lungs and more akin to a computer's cooling system, with the ability to absorb material from the environment to use in other parts of the body. It also would likely help the architect's body analyze the environment it is currently exposed to on a molecular level. It is also truly unidirectional, with the intake vents near the "collarbone" and the exhaust vents on both sides of the abdomen
The architect organ cache in-game felt like it was definitely not a complete model of the internal organs, so I wanted to come up with something to fill some more space. I also just really liked the idea of Al-An being capable of something similar to breathing, without having a respiratory system in the traditional sense.
Feel free to use any of this in your own headcanons if you would like :)
BONUS - a gif of all the layers!
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