vaysh11

[vaysh11]

MURDERBOT | 1.10 The Perimeter

[vaysh11]

Great news everyone!!

We’re getting season 2!

[vaysh11]

The little ‘pinging local SecUnits’ before it steps onto the platform 😭 I’m dying 😭

[vaysh11]

I’m just!!!!

MB saying it needs to check the perimeter, which has meant this whole season that it doesn’t know how to react to something, and Gurathin reaching out to be like “I can help! I was where you were once, PresAux sticks together, you’re one of us, I will help you” because that’s what he thinks it means.

But then MB says it again, and Gurathin just stops because he KNOWS. He knows MB doesn’t mean “I don’t know what to do” this time. He knows it means that it knows exactly what to do, and he knows that this time when it says that it needs to check the perimeter, it’s really saying “Goodbye.”

And then he just says it back, finally communicating on even footing and on MB’s terms!!! “You need to check the perimeter,” Gurathin says, but what he really means is “Goodbye.”

[vaysh11]

In the time it took to beat this one into shape, it seems like those involved have also forgotten what made the first one work, the replacement of director Gina Prince-Bythewood with Victoria Mahoney leading to a considerable drop in action sequence effectiveness while the original’s rather groundbreaking queerness has now been almost entirely excised. The first film had a surprising, swooning kiss from immortal lovers played by Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, but this time around, their foreheads briefly touch instead. There’s also a coy confusion over just what the relationship is between Andy and her one-time partner, who are gay in the comics, but are presented as, ahem, longtime companions here, the film acting as an amusingly abrupt end to Pride month.

This.

[vaysh11]

Been thinking about this all day, and I think the main thing this movie failed to understand about itself is this: the immortality was supposed to be the premise, not the plot.

Like, the immortality piece fuels the villains in the first film, but the unknowability of it is part of the point. It’s a dreadful curse, to outlive all your loved ones. Or, it’s a powerful gift, to grow and nurture a relationship for centuries on end. Or, it’s a complicated responsibility, a way you are uniquely positioned to help make the world a better place, and how much of that mantle should you take on? It’s the premise, the vessel through which the themes and characters can be explored.

The point was never to find out the “rules” and drop a bunch of lore about it. This movie took the premise and made it the plot, and that I think was its cardinal mistake.

[vaysh11]

I read Winnetou's death when I was a eight or nine, and it broke me for a while. I never re-read the scene until I was in my forties.

fuck it, i'm curious. reblog and tag with the first fictional death to ever rewrite your brain chemistry and/or make you cry like a baby. mine was ares from the underland chronicles (who, for context, was a giant bat.) to this day i will weep if i think too hard about it. okay, go.

[vaysh11]

Billboard Berlin Torstraße/ Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 06-19-2025

[vaysh11]

Here [in ep. 6], Murderbot lowers its guard and shows a bit of its true self to Mensah for a brief moment of genuine connection. How does it do that? By showing her an episode of Sanctuary Moon of course.

As it will later, with ART. :)

[vaysh11]

good smut is really a character study and that is final. i need it to be about vulnerability i need it to be about trust or lack thereof and most of all i need it to be emotional agony. thats what sex is for

[vaysh11]

MURDERBOT | 1.06 Command Feed

[vaysh11]

A lot has been said about Leebeebee's existence, much negative, but personally I think she's a great addition. Not only because I like when characters being handsy/flirty/objectifing are portrayed as being weird and creepy as fuck so everyone can feel how I (an ace) feel 94% of the time, but because I think she's there, in large part, to be a counterpoint to Murderbot itself.

LBB is weird. She has no filter, no apparent social skills, and she is soooooo suspicious. Like, it is really obvious she's up to something by the time she finally pulls that gun out. But no one, with the possible exception of Gurathin (I can't quite tell if he's suspicious or just like this with anyone he doesn't know well) really bats an eye at her. They think she's a bit odd, but they wave it off as cultural differences or shock or whatever. She gets the benefit of the doubt.

Unlike Murderbot. Who is questioned and side-eyed for almost everything it says. It's on the verge of a nervous breakdown for the first four episodes because they're paying attention to it and they are thisclose to guessing something is up. If even one other person was as wary as Gurathin, Murderbot would have been toast (going by Ratthi's 'you don't trust anyone' comment I'm guessing Gurathin tends toward the paranoid, especially with company people/equipment).

Because LBB is human. And Murderbot is not. And it's not that the PresAux bunch are lying when they say they believe Murderbot is a person, they do - theoretically. On paper. But that doesn't stop them from having preconceived biases. It doesn't stop them from consuming the same media as everyone else, where SecUnits are always going on murder sprees. So their guard is up around MB even when it hasn't really done anything (see: their suspicion that it's been hiding the faulty maps from them) and it is not up around LBB, even when she's asking for specifics about their research and asking where monster attacks happened.

And I think that's very deliberate. The PresAux people are good people, but good intentions don't automatically give you the tools to be a good person in every circumstance. They believe Murderbot is a person on an intellectual level, but they're having trouble getting that belief to an emotional, instinctual level. Mensah is the closest, after getting to see it watching its show and singing its theme song. But it's a viewpoint that's going to take work, and I think the difference in how they treat LBB and how they treat MB really helps show that, and I think that's doing a lot of good build-up for how season 1 is (likely) going to end

[vaysh11]

“To me, it was a character we hoped would be relatable to people in the neurodivergent community, but also in a lot of fans in the LGBTQ community,” says Alexander Skarsgård. (Apple)

[vaysh11]

Source: Do Androids Dream of Anything at All? in the The New Yorker.

Great read but warning for use of wrong pronouns for Murderbot.

HUGE DAY FOR ANNOYING PEOPLE!!!!!!!!

[vaysh11]

*incoherent laughter*

[vaysh11]

I knew it. / for @superheroes