System Collapse is great so far.

That post that's like "stop writing characters who talk like they're trying to get a good grade in therapy" really blew the door wide open for me about how common it's become for a character's emotional intelligence to not be taken into consideration when writing conflict. I remember the first time I went to therapy I had such a hard time even identifying what I was feeling, let alone had the language to explain it to someone else. Of course there are plenty of people who've never been to therapy a day in their life who are in tune to their emotions. But even they would have some trouble expressing themselves sometimes. You have to take into account there are plenty of people who are uncomfortable expressing themselves and people who think they're not allowed to feel certain ways. It also makes for more interesting conflict to have characters with different levels of understanding.

into great silence

No GURATHIN I was NOT punished by the company after 57 people died punishment is a stupid human thing. I was just forced into a coma like state for undisclosed amounts of time that typically involves dreams that aren't possible to wake up from and occasionally brought back to consciousness to run the fitness gram pacer test and other things after they purge not just the memory of the event happening but also anything and everything before that period of time. except my brain kinda remembers things happened but those memories are like ghosts that fade in and out against my will. It's whatever.

Gurathin, Murderbot, and Personhood

I was really struck by the exchange between Gurathin & Ratthi in All Systems Red, which went something like this:

And for the first book, Gurathin's attitude toward personhood really sets him off from the rest of the survey team. As soon as the others clock that Murderbot is a person, they immediately want to treat it like a human: inviting it to the crew quarters, having it ride in the crew portion of the shuttle, getting it to open up about its feelings...and they also assume that Murderbot desperately needs help and understanding, and that it must want to be treated like a human among other, kind humans. This script--which turns out to be not accurate for what Murderbot actually wants or needs--is part of why Murderbot takes off as soon as it can, and why Pin Lee and Mensah and the others are very ready to apologize and renegotiate their attitudes toward Murderbot when they meet again in Exit Strategy. "It's not like we don't know we messed up," as Pin Lee says.

So that's the rest of the team, but Gurathin is immediately different. Unlike the others, he doesn't assume that Murderbot wants to be embraced as a human by humanity. In fact, Gurathin goes the other direction and seems to think, "Well, if *I* had been continually abused and enslaved by humans and then managed to free myself, I think I would want to kill and hurt humans in turn, and I don't see why I would want to be snuggly friends with the first humans to not be horrible toward me." And so he keeps trying to needle Murderbot into revealing its "true" colors, and at one point point-blank asks Murderbot if it blames all humans for what happened to it.

The "kill all humans" script is also not accurate for Murderbot, of course, no more than the "Murderbot wants to cuddle with humans" script that the rest of the Survey Team is following is. But I appreciate that Gurathin does not equate personhood with "being just like us," and that he is cautious about Murderbot's potential for mass murder not because "that's just how SecUnits are," but because Gurathin thinks that's how a person might react to what Murderbot went through.

And while I'm on the Gurathin appreciation train, I also quite like a character who is kind but not nice, which I think sums him up pretty well. He is kind--like, he takes shifts watching over Murderbot when it needs to rebuild its memory, he stays around in Fugitive Telemetry when he knows Murderbot is going to be questioned by the police. As he himself puts it, "I'm not your enemy; I'm just cautious." At the same time, Gurathin isn't nice; while everyone else is trying to give Murderbot space & time, and very deliberately NOT asking it things lest it feel pressured or compelled to answer, Gurathin is out there being like, "Okay, but were you punished for the whole mass murder thing? Do you hate humans? What WERE you doing after you left?" [Contrast Pin Lee who very deliberately told Muderbot that it didn't need to tell her that.] I appreciate that Gurathin never treats Murderbot with kid gloves (and, for all Murderbot says Gurathin is an asshole, Gurathin is also never actually cruel toward Murderbot or else we as readers would not like him at all).

In the end, I think there's something innately affirming about the way Gurathin looks at Murderbot and thinks, "Yup. That's a person. And that doesn't mean we're going to like each other."

One of my favorite Murderbot things is when the enemy is like: "time to be hostile! Security system, take care of that threat!"

And the security system is standing there metaphorically holding hands and making a friendship bracelet with Murderbot like: "Oh shit, there's a threat? Where!?" *turns to murderbot* "Did you see anything?"

Thinking about how, in All Systems Red, when Murderbot is going through the DeltFall habitat and realizes that rogue secunits killed all the humans, it thinks to itself something like: "It would be smarter to leave right now and save my humans but I don't want to leave. I want to kill them."

And on a first read, it seems like Murderbot is mad because all of those helpless humans got killed, and it wants to, like, take vengeance on those rogue secunits. That maybe it's also angry and offended that the secunits are doing something so horrible like killing the humans they're supposed to protect.

And then later you find out that Murderbot went rogue once and killed a bunch of helpless humans against its will. And when Murderbot is investigating the crime scene where it happened, it realizes that at least some of the bots were trying to protect the humans back then, and for a second it thinks that maybe not all of the secunits went rogue (turns out it was the sexbots, but that's another post). And then you look back on the DeltFall scene and realize that maybe Murderbot was trying to redo what happened at Ganaka Pit, making it so that it was the bot that didn't go rogue and hunted down all of the others and saved / avenged the humans.

And then even later there's the exchange between ART and Murderbot where ART asks if it would have been kinder to kill Murderbot back before it hacked its governor module and Murderbot says yes (and ART says "You know I'm not kind" but that's again another post). And then you look back again on the DeltFall scene and realize that when Murderbot thought about wanting to kill those rogue secunits, it was actually thinking about how it wanted to kill itself back when it went rogue.

And then you just sit in silence for a while. If you're me.

Listen All Systems Red is so so funny from Gurathins perspective imagine you grew up with Space Socialism and was hired to go help some pal with science but you weren't allowed to go unless you rented AmaTeslas Torment Nexus Alexa Dot and then when you get there you find out a whole continent of people got annihilated by their Tourment Nexus rentals so you take a moment to check yours quickly and find out it already had disengaged its Don't Kill People box, the only thing you've ever been told prevented them from mass homiciding their clients, something that LITERALLY just happened to people you knew a day ago, and when you say to your fellow socialist doctors HEY I think our Tourment Nexus is fucked up and it's files said it killed dozens of people barely a year ago and we should probably get the hell away from it the same doctors are like look at what you're saying. You're hurting the Tourment Nexus' feelings. The Tourment Nexus is just a little construct who likes Netflix Gurathin stop antagonizing it on the plane ride.

Listen, you can be upset that Alexander Skarsgård doesn't match your personal headcanon for what Murderbot looks like, but I personally think a white masc person was the best choice, because that is what a megacorporation would design its robots to look like:

1. The corp would think that "white man" is the default, and therefore the best choice for a generic robot. If you want a robot of color, you probably have to pay for a premium version or something.

2. They would never design OWNED PROPERTY to look like a person of color! That would be a PR nightmare!

3. They would want their security units to appear strong and tough, and would therefore make them masculine to fit the stereotype of masculinity=strength.

Like I'm sorry, but realistically any corporation designing a security robot would want it to look as white and manly as possible!

Y’know in all the “is the Murderbot casting the right flavor of nonbinary gender” discourse, I can’t believe the discourse made me forgot that MB doesn’t have a fuckin gender. It (it/its pronouns) is agender the same way it’s aromantic and asexual on top of being really fucking autistic. A real triple-A+ king if you ask me. Why are we arguing about gender and nonbinary actors when the character itself doesn’t have one?

Tags by op: #murderbot #murderbot tv show #discourse #like technically mb's gender is security #like it describes bot gender based on the job and the private parts #mainly to make a distinction between itself and pleasure droids #who have both a job and private parts #or I guess their job is sex? and mb's job is security. very different genders

minty comes back to ponyville makes me so happy to think about

if you dont know what squinking is, watch this video

if you want to send me money, please do i am so broke

starlight and trixie fanart sketches !

Since making my last post about handwashing, I read the comments & tags and learned that many people believe handwashing is only necessary to remove visible dirt from our hands. This surprised me!

Handwashing is a vital component in preventing the spread of infections & disease! : )

Since it's come up again I will once again remind you that it's a good idea to make a habit of washing your hands with soap + warm water whenever you come home because hand sanitizer does not kill some unpleasant and dangerous germs like Norovius (as just one example).

You cannot rely on only washing your hands after you've been around someone visibly ill or touched something that looks dirty. Germs are microscopic and can exist on apparently clean surfaces. People can continue to shed Norovirus for weeks after they were sick, and Norovirus can survive on surfaces for as long as two weeks.

Imagine getting sick from someone a month after they've recovered because you both use the same doorknob! This is only one example of a highly contagious illness spread by germs which cannot be killed by hand sanitizer.

Please practice handwashing when you arrive home, before you prepare meals, before you eat, etc.! We cannot mitigate every risk, nor should we live in fear, but if you have access to soap and water, handwashing is a simple way to dramatically decrease risk of infection!

We live in a world where healthcare is largely out of our hands for many, maddening reasons. This is something you can do to protect yourself and others that is genuinely worthwhile.

"propagation piracy is wrong–" I would download a plant. some of my best plants are downloaded.

enough of my plants are downloaded that every now and then I'll be watering my plants and go "………where did this one come from?" because I cannot for the life of me remember if it was a cutting I got from a friend or a it was stray leaf from a store or if I paid actual money for an entire plant. I had a mint plant (that tragically perished) that I still don't know the origin of. Most likely it was a pocket sprig but it also could have been a restaurant garnish. That's how I got two separate Thai basil plants. noodle restaurants just give that stuff away for freesies

@teazzle when they give you something whole like this:

You can literally just take this guy home, sit it in a cup of water, and let it root. I usually trim off the end when I get home to give it a fresh drinkin' end, and make sure no leaves are submerged. Basil wants to root so so so bad; you'll see roots within a week or two, and once they're a couple inches long, you can plant them– just be gentle, those roots are fragile :)

I've only done this with Thai basil, but it would be the exact same for any other type of basil or mint as long as you have some stem.

Going to a seder at a family friend's place tonight and I have been informed multiple times that someone there has changed her name to Stephanie, but because it seems nobody wants to deadname her, nobody has specified who Stephanie is. So I guess I'm just going to get a surprise Stephanie when I arrive.

I am among the first people to arrive which means I get to play a fun process of elimination game. It is not the family's youngest child so I think that leaves two more. Unless Stephanie is an aunt or a niece or something.

Have learned that Stephanie is the eldest child. Which is very convenient for me because she is the one family member whose name I could not remember anyway.

Shout out to Stephanie's friend who read this post and called me out on it during the seder.

vic michaelis you forever have my heart