#Fuck everyone who thinks it's okay to ''fix'' Murderbot's touch-aversion

[rjalker]

Abene said, “Were you hit?” She stepped toward me, reaching to push my jacket aside.

I jerked back a step. She stopped, startled. Miki turned, its visual sensors focusing in on me. I checked its camera and got a view of my face. I thought I had gotten good at controlling my expression, but apparently only when I wasn’t feeling actual emotions.

In our feed connection, Miki said, ::Abene won’t hurt you, SecUnit.::

[rjalker]

The rest of you people in the Murderbot fandom better start calling out the fucking aroacemisia, ableism, and transmisia in this fandom or you're just as a fucking bad, for the record.

Correct people when they misgender Murderbot if they're new to the series and are doing it by honest mistake.

A simple "Just so you know, Murderbot's pronouns are it/its, not ___ :)" can fucking suffice. You can literally even copy and paste that and just put in whatever pronouns it's being misgendered with.

Call out people who are doing it purposefully and knowingly.

Refusing to use someone's pronouns is always fucking transmisic, and it's not okay to misgender people who use it/its pronouns any more than it's okay to misgender someone who uses he/him, she/her, or they/them.

Any fucking argument anyone tries to use to justify misgendering Murderbot or any other character who uses it/its pronouns in this series is an argument that is used to justify misgendering me and other real people who use it/its pronouns.

People using it/its pronouns is not some hypothetical theoretical idea that only exists in fiction. We are real people and we deserve respect, and if you can't even pretend to respect our fictional counterparts, then you just need to admit you're a transmisic.

Call out people who erase Murderbot's touch-aversion and act like it's something that needs to be fixed/something ~love~ can or should fix.

The Murderbot Diaries is literally the only fucking actual representation of touch-aversion I have EVER FUCKING SEEN where it is actually portrayed respectfully without being treated like a joke where character A says they don't like hugs and character B immediately hugs them and refuses to let go and says A needs to just admit they love it already.

I swear to fucking god. I finally find actual representation for touch-aversion that does it right, and of fucking course ableists in the fandom have to fucking ruin everything by pretending "it's not actually touch-averse, it just has trust issues! It's not actually touch-averse, it just tells itself that so it doesn't think about how much it wants someone to touch it!!!! It's not really touch-averse, it's just never been touched by someone it likes!!!"

Literally shut the fuck up. Touch-aversion is not something that needs to be fucking cured. It is not something you have the right to fucking erase when The Murderbot Diaries actually fucking portrays it respectfully.

Call out people who erase Murderbot's aromanticism to pretend like it's just asexual. I am so fucking sick and tired of aromisia. Everyone acts like they're totally fine with ace people now but nooo, respecting aro people is taking it too far, apparently.

Fucking amisics spent years hating on and and sending death threats to anyone who used the Split Attraction Model, but now aromisics think it gives them a free pass to insist that characters who they'll admit are ace can still be shipped romantically because being ace doesn't always mean you're aro!!! The exact same fucking way amisics said only "lgbt aces" were fucking acceptable.

Murderbot is not just ace. It is not just repulsed by sex. It is aro. It is just as repulsed by the idea of being in a romantic relationship as it is of having sex. It literally said it would rather stab itself in the face than listen to people talk about their romantic relationship or have sex. Its reaction to being asked if it has "a relationship" with ART is horror and disgust to the point that it's shouting, even after Ratthi clarifies that he didn't mean a sexual relationship. Murderbot still finds the word 'relationship' disgusting, even when it's been clarified that it's not referring to a sexual relationship. It still finds the idea of being in a romantic relationship, literally this is a quote, "disgusting"

Literally here is the quote:

It still sounded disgusting. “Do you have to call it a relationship?”

Aromisics arguing that there's no evidence for Murderbot being aro and claiming "that's just fanon" because the word "aromantic" itself is never used is just fucking absurd. By that reasoning, Murderbot isn't fuckng asexual either, or touch-averse, or nonbinary, since the word "asexual", "touch-averse", and "nonbinary" aren't ever fucking used either -.-

Literally imagine being so aromisic and obsessed with shipping that you look at a character who literally says it'd rather stab itself in the face than listen to conversations about romantic relationships and arguing that "there's no evidence that it's aromantic". Literally imagine being that fucking aromisic and obsessed with shipping.

Murderbot does not need to be in a romantic relationship to be happy. Murderbot does not need to be in a sexual relationship to be happy. Murderbot does not need to "admit it enjoys being touched" to be happy. Murderbot does not need to change its pronouns to be happy.

You people are just transmisic, acemisia, aromisic, and ableist.

You are missing the entire fucking point of this series -- that people who are different from you do not need to become like you in order to be treated with respect.

If you refuse to interact with media without frantically searching for romance to ship, go read literally any other fucking book series, or find something by literally any other fucking author. Martha Wells has been writing aro characters for years.

If you think Murderbot's not aromantic because the word "aro" isn't ever specifically used, you are, quite literally, an aromisic. Are you going to argue next that it's not really nonbinary since it the word "nonbinary" isn't ever specifically used, either????

Literally not even in reference to Rami does the actual word "nonbinary" get used. Are you gonna argue that Rami is actually totally a binary man or woman, then????

Other fucking people in this fandom better start calling out this fucking bigotry. I'm sick of it.

This is literally the only thing I have ever seen where touch-averse characters are actually treated with respect, to the point that before I read these, when I made a post criticizing the fact that no one literally ever respects touch-averse characters in any stories I've ever seen and just treats our boundaries like hilarious jokes to violate, I had half a dozen people in the notes recommending this series. Because it's literally the only fucking representation anyone's ever fucking found.

If you do not use it/its pronouns, you have an ever greater fucking responsibility towards calling out people misgendering Murderbot in this fandom. I am tired of having to fucking call out people who are being transmisic towards people like me. I am tired of having to listen to their arguments about why it's actually perfectly fine to misgender people who use it/its pronouns.

Call out the bigotry in this fucking fandom, especially if you are not the target of that fucking bigotry.

If you are not aromantic, if you are not touch-averse, if you don't use it/its pronouns, you better do your fucking part to defend the people who are.

This fandom won't be fucking welcoming to people who are actually like Murderbot unless the people who aren't step up and do their fucking part to make it hostile to the bigots who think they can erase every part of Murderbot's identity that's inconvenient for them.

If you claim to care about Murderbot as a character, then do your fucking part to make this fandom actually safe and welcoming to people who share the same fucking identities that Murderbot has.