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“Haha. ‘Vandalism expresses our corporate loyalty.’ Right. Well, the joke is on you Barish-Estranza employee because not long after you did that, you got killed and/or mind controlled by alien remnant raiders. I know, it’s a logo, but I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because I was a thing before I was a person, and if I’m not careful I could be a thing again.”

-Murderbot, Network Effect (Book 5 of The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin R. Free

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“‘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.”

-ART and Murderbot, Network Effect (Book 5 of the Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin R. Free

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”It guided me to one of the empty vending booths which was completely enclosed. Telling it to shut the privacy door was such a relief, my performance reliability went up half a point.”

-Murderbot, Exit Strategy (Book 4 of The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin R. Free

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“When I put the new clothes on, I had a strange feeling I usually associated with finding a new show on the entertainment feed that looked good. I…. “liked,” these clothes. Maybe I actually liked them enough to remove the quotation marks around “liked”.”

-Murderbot, Exit Strategy (Book 4 of The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin R. Free

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“WhErE tHe FUCK Was TranRollinHyfa?”

-Murderbot, Exit Strategy (Book 4 of The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin R. Free

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But you can’t put something as dumb as a hauler bot in charge of security for anything without spending even more money for expensive, company employed human supervisors. So, they made us smarter. The anxiety and depression were side effects.”

-Murderbot, Artificial Condition (Book 2 of The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin R. Free

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literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.

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“‘(Theatrically dramatic) Don’t you understand?! He’ll kill me if you do. No matter how fast your security is, he’s faster- just look at that eye!’

‘He’s rubbin’ it an awful lot - is that part of his strategy?’

‘(Breaking from his dramatic tone) No, that’s- just an eyelash.’”

-Peter Nureyev and Nova Zolotovna, The Penumbra Podcast, S3E2

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“(Slowly, sounding suspicious) Madame Dauphin…. (Complete 180 of tone into energetic romantic) If that isn’t just the sweetest I’ve ever heard! Ohhh, when I have a man like your Monsieur I’ll be like a hyper intelligent squid in a candy store, all huggin’ and grasping and… -ANyway!”

-Nova Zolotovna, The Penumbra Podcast, S3E2

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“‘So, um. My question to you is what do you do with-with Kravitz. What sort of -ah- hang sesh do you set up with, with Kravitz when you contact him?’

‘…uuummmmm… (takes a deep breath) Let’s see, (musing to himself) I don’t want to seem too eager (exhales)’

‘-right. That’s important.’

‘…fishing issss… probably out…’”

-Griffin McElroy and Justin McElroy, The Adventure Zone, E50

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“Write your papers, eat soup for dinner, yell at your employees, think about cleaning the house, eat soup for dinner, eat. soup - for dinner. WOW, Miasma ate a - lot - of soup.”

-Juno Steel, The Penumbra Podcast, S1E18

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“‘Even his smile is unbefitting for a thief. It’s so… naive. With every flicker of feeling that smile shifts, daring a confident second in the sun, then hiding away behind his lips, then peeking again. You can read a man’s soul with a smile like that, can see his every hope and fear and love… and… (clears throat) Fold it away. File under, ‘For Future Consideration.’”

-Peter Nureyev, The Penumbra Podcast, S3E1

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“‘It is not actually me who is complaining. It is Aurora. Our starship.’

‘FUCK the ship.’

‘I do.’

‘Ew!’”

-Nastya and Jonny, The Aurora Strikes Again by The Mechanisma

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in the sixth months after graduating from college, with my very expensive degree from a good college, i ate nothing but bread. i worked at a bakery / cafe / restaurant and got half off one meal per shift but it was still too expensive even then. but at the end of every night we would throw out all the bread loaves that hadn’t sold, which was most of them, every night. we would fill up ten boxes to give away to a shelter and then we could take anything we could carry, and i couldn’t afford a half off deconstructed sandwich, but i could fill the cabinets of my apartment with bread. everyone who worked there was just like me, subsisting on discarded, overpriced bread. 

(when the managers’ backs were turned i was taught to leave the trashbags of bread behind the dumpster rather than inside it, because it was locked after everyone left to prevent people from stealing from it. we would say we were going out to stack chairs and instead stack prepackaged salads prepared that morning in the narrow space between wall and dumpster, but that’s not what this is about.)

we were working valentine’s day, a little bit miserable about it, because customers are somehow worse on a holiday about love ,and even if we were single we didn’t want to be here, and most of us had people we’d rather be spending the day with, and the snappish, hardass manager was working that day, and everyone could not wait for the day to be over. 

we had a boxes of those bakery tissue sheets around and i was twisting it in my hands and i thought about how the first night my uncle spent with my aunt he had to get up early for work but didn’t want to wake her and the whole thing hadn’t been planned, exactly, so he (a roofer by trade and a golden glove boxer by sport) went into the kitchen and took some paper towels and twisted them between his big, scarred hands until it formed a sweeter shape and when my aunt work up it was to a paper towel rose on her pillow. 

so i used a couple sheets of bakery tissue to make a rose and walked up to my coworker who stared at me with a rictus smile and i gave it to her, trying not overthink if it was a weird thing to do. her smile slipped and she asked “you made this?” holding it carefully, like it wasn’t something her two year old son could have made with his pudgy hands, and i shrugged and got more milk from the back. 

then another coworker held the steamer too long when frothing milk, not on accident but because he was irritated, so i rolled another rose and tucked it in his apron pocket as i walked by. then it was just one more of us up front and it was nothing, thirty seconds of twisting paper to take the stack of cookies out of her hands and hand her a tissue paper rose, her lined face lifting into a grin as she proudly tucked it into the chest pocket of her shirt and i may as well have been standing in front of the ovens for how hot my face felt. 

it was such a silly thing to do, i felt ridiculous, giving away hastily constructed tissue paper roses on valentine’s day, clumsy artful garbage. then one of the servers walked by and noticed and so i made her one too, and then other servers came by, leaning over the glass, and complimenting the flowers with big eyes, and i laughed and made more, still not sure if it was sincere, but even if it wasn’t, i figured making them one and handing it over was better than saying no. 

then i went to the back again and the dishwasher yelled out “where”s mine? what about us?” and he was too sweet to ever be anything less than sincere, so someone kept an eye on the door to the manager’s office as i stood in the sweltering kitchen and rolled clumsy tissue paper roses, enough for everyone 

and by the time the day ended, everyone had one, everyone wore one, tucked in their shirt or their apron or stuck in their hair or taped to the top of their pen. everyone was a little less miserable, smiling like we were all on in on the joke, although i don’t think any of us knew the punchline 

this story doesn’t have a punchline either. i just sometimes think of how much better some crumpled tissue paper made things and think that it can be that easy, sometimes, if we’re sincere and don’t overthink it too much

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“‘Edward, have a seat. (Long silence.) I meant on the chair.’

‘-the desk is fine.’”

-Jonathan Crane and Edward Nygma, Rogues! The Podcast, S4E15

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“‘What if… what if I am scared?’

(In the warmest, wrap-you-up-in-a-blanket voice possible) ‘How can I help?’

(Exasperated) ‘I don’t know!’

(With a grin) ‘Then get out there and call me when you do know!’

-Juno Steel and Mick Mercury, The Penumbra Podcast, S4E29

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“I tell you, Juno, I wish I cut a more heroic figure for you, but for a moment all I had was gallon jugs and all it had was a face to deposit them in.”

-Nureyev, The Penumbra Podcast, S4E29