#its still happening now lol

[wellgoslowly]

lucy carlyle is the type of girl to describe an insane medical phenomenon she experiences on a daily basis and look at george and lockwood's shocked expressions and go "wait that's not normal?"

[bunnieswithknives]

Gore, Violence and Blood under the cut

What a mess

[turtletoria]

beardleitner revival

[dimeadozencows]

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before

I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son

[ribbononline]

Still trying to finish other things but in the meantime- updated design for my older May! She's an Ace Trainer

[pixlatedvampire]

I havent finished anything in a bit so please enjoy my favorite Grima doodles lmao 💗🥰

[scificrows]

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.

[ganondoodle]

(zelda comic rough draft)

im still unable to draw anything ... except for really slowly getting the chapter 2 rough draft further for some reason, another screenshot from page 59

[the-sunlit-earth]

a lot of clipping to fix, but hey I got it moving at least! I'll get the Telvanni robe properly physic'd if it's the last thing I do >:0

[bmpmp3]

finding out ur coworker is way older than you thought and having to very quickly reorient how you talk to them

[shithowdy]

realized a drawing i'm doing rn is almost identically posed to one i did 8.5 years ago of a different oc, except the old drawing was instantly tainted by one of the players featured messaging me asking if i could take it down because their abusive, possessive rp partner saw it and got jealous of them "roleplaying behind their back" and i said "nah" and it became a whole Thing that i should have walked away from at that exact moment but didn't and the 6 months that followed contained some of the most truly condensed batshit i have ever witnessed in an rp community already well-known for its batshittery.

... anyway i love my friends. so happy to accidentally redeem the pose.

[parisoonic]

that pyro and spy drawing reminds me of the marshmallow test to be honest

hah! I can see that! We've seen Pyro running a (very) successful business so he'd probably be able to wrangle both treats off Spy whether by hook or crook. I sort of like to imagine that money doesn't really mean anything to the mercs...they all get paid such ludicrous amounts and either have goals that don't align with 'wealth' or that the their personal wealth is a means to a very silly end (Heavy and his custom bullets, Spy single-handedly supporting the Italian haute craft industry through his tastes etc) that you end up with a bunch of people who are like out of touch British politicians when it comes to finances. Miss Pauling totally gives them all crib sheets on how much a pint of milk costs when they have to do public outreach. So in Spy's eyes how much could a lolly cost anyways? 500 euros?? I guess. Might as well. 🤷‍♂️

[timetravelstudies]

This got long and annoying so its under a cut now

The way in the fight w the museum director insul gets the same big injuries he has given trianon (so far), aand particularly the ones that T thinks back on often as specific sources of fear/humiliation/control (pepper sprayed in the eyes; kicked in the balls; choked with smth small and thin ((wire / car window)))….. im too tired to formulate a proper Thought abt this but the fact this all happens right in front of tjat one painting of dante & virgil in hell + insul and the director are in the exact same pose right as insul is about to die* is obviously so meant to evoke the idea of contrappasso….. at this stage trianon isnt “””strong””” enough (doesnt understand Insul enough and most importantly doesnt fully inhabit himself and his own strengths) to be able to pay back Insul’s violence (as he does later, though not in such a literal way anymore) so tje director will do for now🥰 bc they both need to descend into hell they both need to be subject to physical and psychological violence in order to strip down layers……. so its cool how the director serves that purpose for this phase 1 both in story for insul himself (who eats shit in this fight) and also as a sort of alert for the reader like make no mistake they are BOTH gonna get put thru the ringer. even the top has to wade through cocytus! or smth

[fuzzbuns]

Misc other stuff

[b4kuch1n]

hahaha wheee haha

[v-arbellanaris]

although i get why they did it (except i dont) i kind of wish that the final confrontation with solas doesnt offer him the opportunity to have mythal come in and like idk address what happened. like i get it but also idk... if theyre framing it as an abusive relationship with a power imbalance (as opposed to like. a toxic relationship between two equals) the reality is that often you don't have your abuser like... ever taking a smidgeon of responsibility or absolving you of any responsibility for a situation. you dont get that apology, you dont get that regret, and a lot of the work that goes into healing from that kind of relationship, whether its a parent or partner or whoever, is coming to terms with the fact that youre likely probably never going to get even an acknowledgement that something fucked up happened. and you didnt deserve it and it wasnt your fault. you still have to find a way forward without that. idk it feels.. not to say unnecessary, though i do feel it is unnecessary to have mythal show up and like 'absolve' solas/acknowledge it wasnt all his fault, but for the kind of relationship theyre trying to portray - having solas basically cowering and flinching away from her, sobbing, holding out a knife for her to ostensibly kill him with - it just doesnt really fit to me nor does it feel... idk? satisfying? realistic? idk what the word is. but to have solas' heel face turn happen after a conversation with mythal where she basically goes 'dw it was also kinda my fault lol' when the story paints her as his abuser just feels like it falls short in some way