#should I do a hatch diary??

[chimera-crimewave]

new tama on my sketchbook with a lanyard from Gen Con

[moonlynn]

⸺ Defaults and mods that I use in TS2

☆ Defaults (skins and eyes):

Yumedust’s Eye Love + Defaults

Whysim’s Miscellaneous Skin 37 Ligther (default)

Katu’s Gathdra Skin for aliens (default)

Gryning’s Duet Skin (default) OLD

Digi’s Melyse Eyes (default) OLD

Nabila’s Sound of Madness Eyes OLD

☆ Mods for adjusting the game to my screen resolution:

Chris Hatch’s CAS UI resolution 

Chris Hatch’s Change Appearence resolution 

Chris Hatch’s Buy Plan Outfits 

SixAM’s Improved Family Tree UI

☆ Gameplay mods and Fixes (I cannot play without them):

— CyJon’s Mods

No Wolves

Customers Leaves After Paying

— Lazy Duchess’ Mods

Bright CAS Fix 

Call Anyone 

Maxis Clouds appearing in lots

— Lord Darcy’s Mods

Pie Menu Text Strings Fix 

Maxis Modular Stairs Passage Fix 

Jukebox Animation Fix

Ramen Fix 

— Lowedeus’ Mods

Rainy Cloud Textures *DOWNLOAD ONLY ONE

Clouds and stars for the neighborhood *place the cube in the center of the map 

FX Cube default replacement *useful for sky boxes

— Midge the Tree’s Mods

Baby Last Name Chooser 

Diary Textures + Epi’s Defaults for diaries 

Playable Cops 

Graduation Party Clothing Mod

— Pescado’s Mods

If your latest EP is not Apartment Life or you do not have Ultimate Collection, then you should enter this site and search for the folder named with your latest EP and then search for the folder named “hacks/” to find those mods:

Antiredundancy - eliminates spawning of unnecessary redundant NPCs, should only spawn one per type

AutoYak - adds three news features to your sims phone: “Call friends”, “Call enemies” and “Call family.”

Community Lot Skilling - controlled sims, NPCs, and townies may gain skills and enthusiasm while visiting community lots, including non-college community lots

“Graduation Party” Memory Fix - Graduation parties now correctly display Graduation Party memories instead of just regular “Party” memories

No Bathroom Dishes - dishes will not be washed in the bathroom.

No Dormie Spawns

No Secret Society Respawn

No Stray Respawn

No Townie Regen

— SimNopke’s Mod

SkyFix - fixes the bug of Seasons where the sun, the moon, stars and meteors do not appear in lots

— Mods from Mod The Sims and others

Amura’s Custom Bills (I use the “bills750” and DO NOT use it while playing in University, or you probably won’t be able to pay bills without cheats)

Marrhis’ Marriage Last Name Chooser 

Kestrellyn’s Extended Family 

Joninmobile’s Airline Painting Fix 

xSparrow’s Default Neighborhood Snow 

Numenor’s Slot Enable Package 

Nysha’s No Townie Apartment Neighbours 

MogHughson’s Watch TV From All Chairs 

DiLight’s Propose “Be Roommate” to anyone 

Veetie’s CAS Memory Quality Mod 

Squinge’s Don’t Walk Away While Cooking 

Monique’s Hacked Computer

TwoJeffs’s Age Transition “Teens keep love” 

[gothamxwattpad]

How To Start Writing Fanfiction;

Hi, hello, I’m Jules and earlier today I was asked by a mutual about how to start getting into fanfiction. So, this is me doing my best to explain it as someone who sucks at explaining things.

First, what the fuck is fanfiction? Fanfiction is a type of writing that is based off existing works of fiction. What’s the point of it? Entertainment for both you, the fan and the writer and for the reader, whether you share it or not, that’s your choice. Fanfiction is supposed to be fun, if it’s not fun, put it down and try another project. But it also can be used to tell a different story then the original creator had. Maybe your perspective of that one character is different from other people, so you use YOUR perspective to tell the character’s story differently.

1) You can start by listing things you like; tv shows, movies, books, anime- literally anything you like.

I will use myself as example: the vampire diaries(great series and books), the great gatsby(a fucking classic everyone should read BEFORE seeing the movie which is also beautiful and sad and romantic), blood and chocolate- if you love werewolves and romance- fuck yes! I actually read the book and watched the movie so many fucking times, I could quote it as a teenager. I’m currently getting back into Marvel stuff after rewatching X-Men movies for two weeks. One of my favorite things about marvel is how well it’s done. The storylines co-existing simultaneously! Time travel!

-one fucking thing I’ve learned about time and space is that time itself is both existing and not existing at the same time and because scientists that have degrees and shit on it still haven’t figured it out so if you wanted to write about twilight characters finding a gadget that takes them back in time to change unpleasant outcomes they face in the real story, it would perfectly fine and super entertaining.- (seriously, if someone wanted to write that story, I would love to read it and go along that journey with you as you write it)

My point is; to write fanfiction, you have to start with something that YOU like. YOU- the fan- it’s YOUR story.

👉🏻 I forgot to mention that people do write fanfiction about band members they adore and I read some traumatizing good one direction fics when I was in high school. 👈🏻

2) Things to add to that list would include characters you love or hate🤷‍♀️ that’s cool too, quotes from characters for inspiration, settings that stand out to you. Maybe there’s a weird mood or idea that stood out to you. Write it down! The more notes you have can greatly benefit you even if that’s not the project you want to start out with.

3) Baby steps. You gotta start somewhere. One of my first fanfictions was written in middle school, I think some folks call it junior high? It was called Harry Potter and the Dragon’s Eggs. It was basically a fic based the goblet of fire where Harry Potter had slowly growing bond with Draco Malfoy’s sister(a nonexistent character that I made up for my fun) who also got her name in the goblet somehow. They (those chosen) were given dragon eggs to hatch. I never got to finish it because my English teacher got mad that I was writing during my “silent lunch”(a form of punishment where they separate you from your classmates to eat lunch alone and silent and that woman was not going to let little me write for fun during her punishment.) not only did she read it, call me over to criticize it, she then threw it away. But yeah, you have to start somewhere and it might not be great at first but it might surprise you. A lot of people write fanfiction better than they write original works🤷‍♀️. Honestly, if you’re having fun, who cares if it’s bad, again, you don’t have to share it if you don’t want to.

I recently found my Edgar Allan Poe fanfiction that I wrote for my high school senior project (a project that was worth x percentage of your final grade for the school year.) my idea was based off learning that Edgar Allan Poe went missing for a short bit before he passed away by an unknown cause. So, I wrote a story about him chasing strange visions and a letter from a woman he once knew. He had a creepy fucking raven stalking him and hallucinations. The point is; I took what I knew and then wrote a story from it. And you can take the most bare minimum of details about a show you love and still create something with it. The possibilities are literally endless. The only thing stopping you is YOU.

I want to thank my mutual @that-weird-kid-from-your-school for asking me, this was fun. And I’m sure I can add to it later on. I’m also always open to answering questions, whether it be in post form or in my inbox anonymously.

I will also be open to others adding any tips or advice that help them! 💜

[cardiac-agreste]

I am filled with excitement, nerves, dread, and pride to announce that I am taking part in the @mlbigbang this year. Starting January 8, I will be posting my Sabine fic, A Small but Stubborn Fire! AHHHHHH!

First, the team! The incomparable @uptoolateart beta read my fic, and helped shepherd it along. I've also got @naz-artz and @izanogi helping me bring visuals to Sabine's story. So many others have helped in great and small ways, and I'm overwhelmed with the support the community has given me since I decided to write my lil story. Which became a big story.

Synopsis: What if you were the parent of a teenage superhero, but didn't know they were? All you know is the nightmares, the panic attacks, and the bruises. She's missing school, she's disappearing on you, and she's not telling you anything.

So you assume the worst: Assault. Depression. She doesn't trust you anymore.

And what do you do when you realize you weren't thinking dark enough? That your fourteen-year old daughter is the hero who flirts with death on the nightly news.

More below the fold:

AO3-Style Tags: Marinette & Sabine; Tom/Sabine; minor Adrienette; Marinette Dupain Cheng; Sabine Cheng; Tom Dupain; Adrien Agreste; Rolland Dupain; Gina Dupain; Good Mother Nathalie Sancoeur; Sabine's mother!; Sabine's sister!; angst; hurt/comfort; Chinese culture; happy ending; inter-generational trauma; Sabine's mom, Gabriel, and Tomoe should start a Bad Parents Club; SABINE KNOWS KUNG FU; IDENTITY REVEAL; IDENTITY SHENANIGANS; SO MUCH DRAMATIC IRONY; Nobody better forget Marinette is half-Chinese; etc.

Excerpt:

She was surprised at how easy she found it to invade Marinette’s privacy this morning, and how quick she was to turn critical. It was Marinette’s diary, after all—she could write as sloppy as she wanted. Trust her.

“I’ll be back down in a sec, Alya. I can’t believe I forgot my backpack!” shouted Marinette from a few feet away. Sabine startled, but couldn’t see any way to avoid getting caught.

“Maman! What are you doing?!”

She spun around, schooling her face not to betray her guilt. “I thought I had left my ring up here last night after your latest nightmare. I was hoping you’d found it but forgotten it on your desk.”

Marinette ran over and scooped her diary up from her desk, closed it, and hugged it to her chest. ”The ring…on your finger?”

“What?” Caught. Sabine looked down at her trembling fingers. “Yes! Oh, haha! Silly me, it was right there the whole time! Oh, please don’t tell your father, he’ll tease me for days.”

“...right.” Marinette shifted from one foot to the other, seemingly unable to stay still. Sabine wondered if it was just the invasion of privacy that had Marinette anxious.

Marinette gulped loudly. She slapped her free hand over her mouth and laughed nervously. Then she spun around and rushed to her backpack, sliding the diary inside.

Sabine was proud of herself that in the end she hadn’t peeked, but at the same time she wished her eyes had accidentally scanned a few pages. She wanted the knowledge, but knew she shouldn’t get it this way.

She walked to the attic door and stepped through to the ladder. As she took the rungs one at a time, she ran her hand along the trim of the door, feeling the wood grain beneath her fingers, and she paused. “Marinette? You know I love you very much, right?”

“Of course!”

“And you don’t think I’m too hard on you?”

Marinette tilted her head and looked at her, her eyes revealing confusion and concern. “No, not at all! Maman, is there something wrong?“

Sabine angled her face down when she realized she was straining to smile. She inspected the ladder like she needed to pay attention while she descended, as if she hadn’t been doing this every day for years.

“No, nothing’s wrong. Sometimes parents want what’s best for their kids but don’t know if they’re doing the right thing.”

She heard Marinette shuffle toward the hatch and felt a hand slide over hers . There was Marinette, crouched low, moving her forehead in to touch hers, smiling broadly.

“I’m so happy you’re my mother. Don’t worry about a thing; I’m not going anywhere.” Her phone tolled with incoming messages, probably from Alya. “Ahhh!!! Except to school! Because I’m late! And grounded! Move, Maman!”

[kissorkill16]

Nicky's Diary: A Hello Neighbor Fanfic

By JJ

Summary: What if Nick kept a journal while in Mr. Peterson's basement?

Day 1

This is the first full day I've spent in this psychopaths basement. I've finally dug up the secrets of the Peterson house, and in its place, I've buried myself.

The only good thing about this is that I've finally found Aaron. He didn't look too happy to see me, instead, he looked scared. I finally know the reason why he didn't want me to come back, because Mr. Peterson wanted to find a friend for Aaron.

I haven't given up hope yet, because I've hatched up a plan. Me and Aaron are getting out of here.

Day 4

So far, we've managed to escape twice, and both times, we've ended up back in the basement. But don't worry, I've hatched up another plan. You hear that, Mr. Peterson? No matter how many locks you put on that basement door, no matter what kind of traps you put around your house, we'll always find a way out.

Day 9

So me and Aaron were put in separate rooms. How stupid is that? Just because me and Aaron aren't together anymore doesn't mean we can't still make plans for escape.

Fuck you, you old bitch. We're getting out of here.

Day 16

So I tried getting out again, and this plan ended up with me getting thrown back into the basement. Hard. So hard, I almost broke my arm.

Mr. Peterson has one strong grip. But if he thinks I'm scared, he's wrong. If he thinks his strong ass arms can scare me into staying in this hellhole, he's extremely wrong.

He told me that if we tried escaping again, he'll have no choice but to knock some sense into us. That was what really sent shivers down my spine.

Day 25

My previous plan got Aaron strangled. We were trying to run away from Mr. Peterson, and he just snapped and grabbed Aaron by his neck. While the old bastard apologized, Aaron still got pissed at me.

Aaron isn't talking to me anymore. He told me he's done with me coming up with plans and always getting thrown back in the basement. He told me to give up. But I don't want to give up, I just want us to get out of here.

You know what? Fine! If he wants to sulk down here forever, that's cool with me. But I'm getting out of here.

Day 36

My whole body feels numb, and I can't feel my legs. This son of a bitch drugged me! It's really strong, and I can barely stand. This won't stop me. I'm not giving up. All I need to do is wait for the drug to wear off.

No big deal.

Day 46

Drug wore off in just 10 days, what a world. Now all I need to do is make another plan.

Day 64

He fucking drugged me again. I can barely keep my eyes open, and I fucking hate it. I so badly want out of here.

Day 81

My arm hurts so fucking bad. I landed in a bear trap. This psycho had a bear trap waiting for me! He was nice enough to clean it and wrap it, but that doesn't make it any less painful.

Day 100

All of the time spent in this basement has given me a lot of time to think. Why am I still trying? Every time I've tried escaping, I get thrown back in here. Aaron isn't talking to me, and my arm hurts like hell.

And what if no one is looking for me? After all I did to my friends and family, I guess it makes sense. No one is looking for me. I don't have anyone. All of my so-called friends abandoned me, and my parents don't believe me when I say Mr. Peterson was the reason behind Aaron and Mya's disappearance.

I'm all alone. I should just give up and die already. No wait, I can't do that. I'd stink up the place. Mr. Peterson deserves better than that. Aaron deserves better than that. Better than me.

I'll just give up. No one cares about me anyway. So I'll just give up.

Wait...

Aaron?

Did you just unlock the door?

[fandom-space-princess]

An Audacious Undertaking, Even to God

Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries

Rating: Gen

Additional tags: Book 5: Network Effect, Book 7: System Collapse, Canonical Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Queerplatonic Relationships, 1 & 2 do still die but not for very long, 3 needs its friends back :( , studies in construct relations

Chapter: 1/?

Summary:

SecUnits are hard to kill, but it does happen. Unless... AU: through the combined efforts of ART & co, Three rebuilds and reboots One and Two. It isn't easy. Everybody has a bad time, then a weird time, then a better time. Is that the right order?

Read chapter below, or on AO3.

——————————

Designation: SecUnit-003 Barish-Estranza Explorer Task Group 520972

Status: piloting shuttle to network-external transport [vesselID(“Perihelion”), registry(Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland)]. Contact: UNAUTHORIZED.

Operational overview:

- Threat assessment: 64% immediate probability of harm to clients, 27% medium-term probability of harm to clients assuming pursuit of mitigation strategies

- Risk assessment: [additional data required]

- SecSystem access: OFFLINE

- HubSystem access: OFFLINE

- Deployment group status: SecUnit-001: OFFLINE; SecUnit-002: OFFLINE

- Performance reliability: 87% and falling

The transport completes the docking process for the shuttle without my input, which is for the best. My attention is divided. This is a violation of the protocols associated with both client retrieval and piloting. Under the circumstances, however, it is not a situation I am able to remedy.

(reinitialize from backup::failure::retry)

I have a number of responsibilities to fulfill. My primary duty is to ensure the welfare of my clients. (I have realized that even in the absence of punitive enforcement, I still accept and desire this to be true, which is a source of mild curiosity.) My secondary duties are laid out no less clearly, yet—

(reinitialize from backup::failure::retry)

—“Hello? Are you there?” The exterior hatch has retracted. Two humans peer inside curiously. The one who has spoken bears feedID(“Amena”), gender(female), note: juvenile. The other—feedID(“Ratthi”), gender(male)—moves tentatively toward me. These humans are not unknown: they feature in the memories shared with me by Murderbot 2.0. This is a relief. Nevertheless, I step out of the piloting compartment before they can enter, and attempt to gently herd them away. Based on the information I have about them, threat assessment deems them unlikely to panic in a way that would be detrimental to the safety of themselves or others. While I accept this knowledge as accurate, it is still better that they be encouraged to stay outside the shuttle.

(reinitialize from backup::failure::retry)

(performance reliability: 85% and falling)

Ratthi is speaking to me, introducing himself and Amena. He is very animated. He tells me that Perihelion knows I have disabled the governor module. He tells me they do not intend to hurt me.

The transport has different ideas. It establishes a private channel, which it promptly fills with vivid and comprehensive descriptions of the physical damage it will inflict on me should I attempt to threaten its clients, or itself.

(reinitialize from backup::failure::retry)

(failure::retry)

(performance reliability 82% and falling)

“All clients require immediate medical attention,” I tell them. “They have been implanted with technology of uncertain functionality, and may remain under hostile influence, or represent vectors of contamination. Temporary quarantine is recommended.”

Amena replies, but my attention is pulled inexorably elsewhere. I turn my focus on the open hatch, and the dim interior of the shuttle piloting compartment. 

(failure::retry)

In my periphery there is movement, and noise. Another human has arrived. The humans and Perihelion exchange information with one of the transport’s retrieved clients, Karime. I have drones recording this interaction for later review, but I am currently preoccupied with my other functions. My awareness of this moment feels very far away.

(performance reliability 77% and falling)

(failure::retry)

“Hey.” There is a human hand hovering near my elbow. Ratthi’s face swims into vision. I blink, and try to refocus my eyes. This is only partially successful. One of my drones descends out of its patrol pattern overhead, and I examine him more closely through its camera. His eyebrows pull together. “Are you all right?”

The transport is in my feed. I feel it bear down on me. I do not understand what it is, or the limits of its capabilities. I know only that its presence is massive and imposing, its agitation palpable. It likely still believes me to be potentially hostile. It should be terrifying.

If I had the spare processing capacity to consider it, it would be terrifying.

(performance reliability 72% and falling rapidly)

Perihelion: Your resource utilization is near maximum. What are you trying to do?

(failure::retry)

(failure::retry)

Amena’s voice comes from within the piloting compartment. She would have had to walk past me to get inside it. I must have seen her do so. I have no memory of seeing her do so.

“Oh, no… um, Arada? There’s a body in here.”

(performance reliability 64% and falling rapidly)

I start toward her. I have no idea what I am about to say until my buffer produces it: “Equipment maintenance is in progress. For your safety, please step back.” One of the transport’s repair drones shoves past me into the compartment, which interferes with my balance. I put a hand against the wall for support.

(failure::retry)

Amena: “Perihelion, this isn’t one of your crew, is it? This must have been one of the corporate hostages.”

Perihelion: No, Amena. This is a SecUnit.

(failure::retry)

My primary auditory input glitches, and their words become garbled. I lean against the bulkhead. Standing has become difficult, but I still have a responsibility to perform.

(reinitialize from backup::failure::retry)

(performance reliability 51% and falling rapidly)

And I am going to perform it, or be rendered nonfunctional in the attempt.

(critical performance drop::system restart)

——————————

[Before]

SecSystem: Ship status: on approach. Space dock arrival anticipated: 180 seconds. Tactical team deployment unit(s) acknowledge.

SecUnit-001: Unit acknowledge.

SecUnit-002: Unit acknowledge.

SecSystem: Baseship sentinel unit(s) acknowledge.

SecUnit-003: Unit acknowledge.

(While I do not resent guarding the ship, I have always disliked being the one left behind.)

SecSystem: Cold contact protocol in effect. Hazardous condition assessment: POSSIBLE/LIKELY. Backup to HubSystem external storage and mirror local copies to group.

SecUnit-001: Backup complete.

SecUnit-002: Backup complete.

SecUnit-003: Backup complete.

Though we are designed for redundancy with each other, not co-dependence, I have never functioned optimally when deployed separately from 001 and 002. I know this to be true for them as well. In the past, after activities that required splitting the deployment group, I have often reviewed their cached analytic data. Our performance individually and collectively is more reliable on average when we are assigned to the same task.

I try to avoid reflecting on why this is true. Idle reflection is counterproductive to the efficient performance of my duties.

SecSystem: Sentinel unit(s) resume patrol pattern. Tactical team unit(s) ready for deployment.

In the ready room that we share, 001 continues fitting its helmet into place. I acknowledge the alert to return to patrol. I must walk past them to reach the door and exit the room, and as I do so, I extend a hand loosely in their direction.

Tactile input is critical for calibration of construct balance and proprioception, among other core functions. We are expected to touch objects around us for many reasons, including ongoing orientation in physical space.

001 gently taps the back of my hand with its knuckles, tock-tock-tock. I reply once in kind—tock. 002 likewise repeats 001’s gesture as I move past, and again, I do the same: tock-tock.

I validate my expected sensor readout against the physical contact data, and log the results with HubSystem. There is an echo in the team feed as first 001, and then 002, do the same. And if we could achieve the same result by tapping a wall or a hatch… well.

On this choice, at least, our governor modules offer no feedback.

——————————

[princesscolumbia]

Pride Month 2024 - Day 9

I have had 10 hours of sleep in the last 48...welcome to parenthood.

And now, get ready for a good egg cracking AU!

Return to Recipient

Summary:

Ranma hasn't been feeling right for as long as he can remember, and he just figured that's normal. But after Jusenkyo, and especially after Jusendo, the feeling of "wrongness" has been getting more and more noticeable... ...because he doesn't feel it in his cursed form. He continues to just cope, keeping his struggle to himself, until he finds a letter tucked into his old travel pack addressed to him, written by him, from a 48 hour period that he doesn't remember and nobody will talk to him about.

Notes:

During the writing of 🔞 And at This Point I'm Afraid to Ask 🔞, [NOTE - Yeah, these two are being posted in "most recently updated" order, so the fic that came first is being posted tomorrow for this little calendar event -Helen] I realized I was speed-running Ranma's egg-to-hatched trans journey and made an author's note of that. In the comments for that work, I got a note bemoaning the fact that I didn't spend more time on Ranma's realization, coming out, and social transition as a woman while understanding my reasoning. I replied stating that I needed a good hook, something that hadn't been hammered to death by other authors, and at the time I didn't have anything. I really got it in my head that I should do something, so I posted to Tumblr and started putting it out to the universe that I was Poly Transwoman Author Seeking Story Inspiration and Motivation, in Open Relationship with current WIPs. I was scrolling through the "Ranma 1/2" tag this morning trying to find something I hadn't read when I bumped into Dear Diary by JaquiK. I've read it, of course, and it's short and, for what it sets out to do, good. "Feels like it needs more," says I, "Wish the author would continue it, make something more of it than they did." The little author that lives in my head rent free and looks remarkably like Ranma-chan ran up behind me and socked me in the back of my head, "Dummy! There's your plot hook!" Then she backed a dump truck up and dropped about 3/4 of a story's worth of ideas on me. [*le-gasp* It me! -Christy] With the 2023 holidays in full swing (it's Cyber Monday as I type this) I'm not sure how quickly I'll get to outlining this or getting chapters 2-5 out (my personal metric for whether the author is serious about a work is if they have 5 chapters out. This has been a solid rule of thumb for long-form fiction and hasn't failed me regardless of fandom), but I wanted to get at least chapter 1 out as quickly as possible. Tags will be added as I add more chapters, mostly because my writing process means I'm not sure what tags will apply until I'm writing something that necessitates them. 😋 I hope you enjoy it.

Obviously, at 6 chapters and 35.5k words, I've met my own personal metric for being serious about a work. 😉

This one is a particular pride and joy, and I hope that people reading it are getting the 'gag' of the title and the chapter titles. While not all the chapter titles are home runs, I have put a lot of thought into making them meaningful to the story as a whole. For example, the title itself, "Return to Recipient" is a play on the postal service standard, "Return to Sender" (and, yes, made a cultural signpost by that one song by Elvis). In the case of the "sender" of the letter that kicks the whole fic off in chapter 1 no longer exists. And, yes, I could have gone with the now-standard practice of making "that girl" an alt in the system known as Ranma, but that wasn't what this fic was about. This is about Ranma's transition as prompted by her own self demanding she be true unto. And that version was a result of a dissociative episode caused by injury and never properly treated, requiring Ranma's rapid healing (likely qi assisted) to repair the damage...and part of that damage was the entire mental state triggered by the injury. (And, again, the bigger questions of whether that was a separate entity that deserved a life to live are outside the scope of this fic...or is it? 😉) So if Ranma, theoretically, wanted to return the letter to the sender, she'd be returning it to...herself, the recipient. Therefor, "Return to Recipient."

In the spirit of things being spoilertastic without revealing too much in these posts, I present to you the chapter title list:

Note to Self

Doctor's Note

Passing Notes

A Noteable Occation

Akane One Note

A Note on Shampoo's File

Notes, Beats, and Measures

Back of the Napkin Notes

Notes from Abroad

Navigational Notation

Autographs on Notebook Paper

Veterinary Notes

Bank Notes

A Noteworthy Event

Self-Analysis Notes

Ending on a High Note

Epilogue - [REDACTED]

The blue are already published, enjoyable speculation on the rest is welcome in the notes. 😁

[sizequeen1]

In Defense of Armand?

Ok. Hear me out. I'm rewatching S2 and trying to get into Armand's head. Why would he kill Claudia alone or in combination with Louis?

He may not have had 100% of Louis' heart but he was living with him and seemed to be in love. Claudia was out of the city with her companion; she was no threat.

But then I started reviewing S2 from Armand's point of view and found a motivation that had nothing to do with jealousy or love.

Revenge may have been the motive.

So if we assume that Louis' dumb ass was blaring his guilty thoughts to every vampire in Europe 24/7, then Armand and the coven knew that Louis and Claudia believed that they had either killed or attempted to kill Lestat from the jump.

Lestat. Their founder and funder. The greatest actor of his age. Someone they look up to and someone that Armand never stopped loving killed by these backward Americans, betrayed by his own fledglings!

They were PISSED! as the they should be, right? They don't have audience lenses and they have no empathy for a couple of strangers. They want to avenge their own, which from their perspective is completely righteous---and also fun. Don't forget vampires are bored sadists who live for drama.

So they hatch a plan. Don't just kill the would-be assassins. Lure them into a trap. Make them comfortable. Really fuck them up in the end. Betray them, the same way they betrayed Lestat.

But then Armand gets too close. He falls in love and starts rethinking the plan, but the coven has been his whole life for hundreds of years. Can he throw them over for Louis? A guy who won't claim him? Who still yearns for Lestat? The coven sucks but at least it's dependable.

EDIT: I'm up to episode 2x4 in my rewatch.

It's clear that Armand alone knew that Lestat had either been attacked or killed from the moment he met Louis and Claudia. The coven had no idea until, an eavesdropping Santiago overhears Armand threatening Claudia ("I should do to you what you did to your maker") leading to him becoming suspicious and sneak reading her diaries, which Louis carelessly left out.

I think up until this point their treatment of Claudia, both bad and good is generally sincere. The coven is a nasty nest of vipers, but I don't think they're directly plotting against her. They hate Louis' pretentious guts, though, but that's not a secret plot.

It's also more clear that Armand is just sitting on the secret of Lestat's murder and preparing to reveal it and punish them with it or keep it secret based on Louis and Claudia's behavior.

Armand expects a certain level of gratitude for his generosity and love and for sharing himself so intimately with Louis. Armand wants to be clearly and unambiguously picked by Louis. His generosity and intimacy isn't free and CANNOT BE REJECTED once offered. Armand's love has a price but Louis doesn't understand this.

[rjalker]

A Murderbot Diaries fanfiction

Title: Symptom of Something Worse

Word count: 12,429

Set immediately at the end of a canon divergent Network Effect, so has some spoilers for that.

Summary: Tarik comes to see Murderbot in MedBay to ask for some clarification about its pronouns, only for this conversation to turn out much more stressful than either of them could have seen coming...

Warnings: Mentions of abuse. Middle-school health class level discussion of genitals by their scientific names in regards to gender not being reliant upon them.

Started on March 20th, 2024, Finished fully March 28th 2024.

(Please note: The Internet Archive is down while I am typing this post, so these links may not work. I'll edit this post when it comes back up) You can listen to the audiobook version here, with and follow along with the transcript here, which is different from this text version. It’s an hour and 6 minutes long. You are encouraged to download it.

You can also read this on Fanfiction.net if you want to leave an anonymous review if you're shy.

Fun fact: You gain +10 Comprehension points if you've read The Imperial Radch before you read this. Wink wink nudge nudge you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Tarik came to see Murderbot while it was still confined to the MedBay while A.R.T. did its best to fix Murderbot’s various catastrophic injuries.

The ‘fix the broken Murderbot’ thing was even slower going than usual, not only because of the extent and nature of Murderbot’s injuries, but because A.R.T. itself was still recovering from its own ordeal, and wasn’t back up to normal functionality yet, despite all its bluster to the contrary.

Now Murderbot knew what it was like being on the other end of the ‘someone who is very clearly not okay insists it’s okay’. Now it kinda felt bad for the humans who had to see it get an arm ripped off while it insisted it was fine.

You know, in theory, having a single supercomputer in charge of all the onboard systems of a ship seems like it should be a great idea. In practice, though, it meant that when A.R.T. was debilitated, so were all of its systems.

The only things functioning normally were things like emergency medkits and other items with their own built in, independant systems. Everything else required A.R.T.’s control.

Before Tarik had came in, he had both knocked on the closed hatch, and sent Murderbot a friendly ping on the feed. He didn’t know it could see him through the tiny camera drone it’d left hanging on the ceiling above the door to guard the corridor. A.R.T. would have let Murderbot use its cameras system, but they were still nonfunctional, and A.R.T.’s internal sensors were way too overwhelming for a simple SecUnit. One thing that should be noted that A.R.T. had also told Murderbot Tarik was on his way even before its camera saw him. It was at least nice enough to do that.

Even to Murderbot, as bad as it usually was at understanding humans, it was obviously that Tarik wanted to wait outside for it to give him permission to come in, like he would have for any human who was in a private room.

This was a nice gesture.

Unfortunately, A.R.T. opened the door before Murderbot could even think about doing anything, because A.R.T. liked to control everything, like the asshole it was.

Now that the disaster was mostly over and everyone was starting to relax, it was pretty obvious that A.R.T.’s humans were trying to practice the ‘make sure it knows it’s allowed to say no’ routine not only with 3 and 5, but with Murderbot, too. A.R.T. had told them all about it, apparently. Murderbot wished it hadn’t.

And all of the humans going out of their way to ask for its ~consent~ (a fancy word for permission, which it was still getting used to, even after all the time it’d spent on Preservation) before doing things in regards to it would have been really nice, if only A.R.T. would stop ruining it by making all the decisions anyways, without giving Murderbot a chance to make up its mind one way or the other.

It would have liked the opportunity to decide for itself if it wanted to let Tarik in or not, you know. It would at least have been one thing it got to choose in this situation. But it couldn’t even have that.

::We both know you would have opened the door anyways.:: A.R.T. said condescendingly when Murderbot let it feel its annoyance through the feed.

Well, I say ‘let it’ feel its annoyance, but there was really nothing Murderbot could do to stop A.R.T. from looking through its brain whenever it wanted, but whatever.

And...Yeah. There was no arguing with A.R.T. once it decided it was right. And it always thought it was right.

Murderbot still hadn’t gotten over the fact that it had had to apologize for calling A.R.T. a fucker for fucking kidnapping it and almost getting its humans killed before A.R.T. would apologize for doing the exact things Murderbot had called it a fucker for doing.

You know, the whole kidnapping thing. Which was still ongoing if you really thought about it. They had all been brought there by A.R.T.’s machinations (Murderbot had just learned that word from a book) against their will. Murderbot still didn’t know how many people had died when A.R.T had attacked their research ship.

And even if by some absurd miracle everyone had managed to survive, it was undisputable that at least some, if not most, of the humans would develop lasting trauma from the assault, either physical or psychological, or both.

Amena had been pinned in place in collapsed laboratory on a ship that was under attack by an unknown hostile, and as far as she’d been aware, the whole vessel could have been torn apart at any moment. The metal that had pinned her down had been too heavy for Kanti, the only other suvivor in the room with her, to lift, leaving them with no choice but to scream desperately for help while Kanti cut her hands and arms bloody trying to pry the broken door open with a geology chisel.

Murderbot could only hope that Kanti had gotten back to the baseship in time, but there was no way to know.

And there was no telling what had happened to the baseship itself, and everyone who had been aboard.

The only ones whose status it knew were firmly in the ‘alive’ category was Amena, and Drs. Overse, Arada, Ratthi, and Thiago. All of the adults had suffered from toxic air inhalation among other physical traumas in their attempt to rescue Amena and itself.

But they were alive, at least.

No thanks to A.R.T.

Amena was a child who’d been trapped, injured, and afraid for her life. And then she’d witnessed what she thought was Murderbot’s violent death, and been dragged around by people under the hostile influence of alien artifacts.

And then she’d had to watch Murderbot kill those people right in front of her, and not in a way that was intended to be efficient and cause the least amount of pain as possible. There was no other way to describe what it’d done. It’d gone on a rampage. A violent, bloody, gorey rampage.

It wasn’t Murderbot’s finest moment, to say the least.

And after witnessing this, Amena had had no one to depend upon for her safety except for Murderbot itself, the one who’d just murdered people in front of her. And then Ras had died, and Eletra had almost died, and Amena had known that there was something deeply wrong with Murderbot, even while they were still being hunted by more of the brainwashed humans, and the entire time she’d been under the impression that it hated her.

And that wasn’t even all of the trauma she’d gone through since A.R.T. had kidnapped them all.

Amena was just one person out all the people who’d been on their baseship. She was going to have to spend a lot of time in trauma recovery therapy.

And Murderbot hadn’t even started processing any of the trauma it’d gone through yet. Even stuck inside the medchamber, it was doing everything it could to keep its mind off its injuries, and the other events of the past 83 hours. It couldn’t afford to have another mental breakdown when they were still in danger. It’d been trying to keep itself busy by talking to Amena when she was awake, and reading different versions of ancient legends from Earth.

It was very purposefully not watching visual media, because that’s what A.R.T. wanted to do.

Even though A.R.T. had its crew back, they still couldn’t leave, because it was the only non-openly-murderously-hostile way in or out of this system.

And it was refusing to leave the system until the mission it’d originally come here to do was complete, even though it meant continuing to hold them all as kidnapping victims.

And what, exactly, was that original mission? To steal the planet from the corporation that was trying to claim ownership of it.

Also known as: Something incredibly high-risk and likely to get them fired upon. Meaning more threats against the people Murderbot had signed up to protect.

Also, to back up a bit and state it for the record: whether or not Murderbot would have also chosen to open the door isn’t the point. The point is that it was supposed to be allowed to make decisions for itself, not have A.R.T. make them for it.

Why did A.R.T. constantly parrot parts of the trauma therapy stuff at Murderbot like ‘Check in with your emotions!!’ and ‘ground yourself in the present!!’ if A.R.T. wasn’t actually going to let Murderbot make decisions for itself? And full offense, what the fuck was the point in Murderbot ‘grounding itself in the present’ if the present situation was the reason it needed grounding in the first place?

Whatever.

At least A.R.T.’s crew seemed friendly. They didn’t approve of A.R.T. kidnapping people, and kept apologizing while also thanking Murderbot for rescuing them. It thought guilt was part of the reason they kept going out of their way to try and give it a choice in things. It wasn’t their fault A.R.T. was such an asshole. They clearly couldn’t get it to do anything it didn’t want to do any more than Murderbot could.

Tarik, unaware of the tension his arrival had brought back to the surface, stepped into the room, and took a moment to look around at all the empty medical chambers that lined the walls before he finally spotted Murderbot in the far side of the room from the door.

The medical chambers were designed so that they could turn to recline, or be upright, or any position in between. The chamber Murderbot was in had been turned forward so that it was propped mostly upright, so it wouldn’t be so awkward for humans to talk to it. And by less awkward, it mean less awkward for it. The humans probably wouldn’t have cared, they were all being so gracious and apologetic about the whole ‘sorry our asshole transport kidnapped you’ thing. But Murderbot did mind. It didn’t enjoy eye contact, but it disliked having to look up at humans from lying down even more, especially while it was in a medical chamber with tiny mechanical arms moving around trying to sew and cauterize it back together.

It’d gotten severe burns all across its torso and one arm, and the other arm...well, you already know what it had done to its wrist. And if you don’t already know, just imagine something horrible and don’t try to think about it too deeply. It was gross and horrific, that’s really all you need to know.

It wasn’t wearing any clothes, because they would have gotten in the way of the medchamber’s work. Fortunately, the glass casing could be made opaque (which is a fancy word for not-see-throughable) or transparent at will through the feed, so no one would be able to see anything Murderbot didn’t want them to.

It would have liked to keep the whole thing opaque, so they couldn’t see anything at all, but A.R.T. insisted that Murderbot had to show its face when humans were talking to it, because otherwise it was rude. Again with the A.R.T. does whatever it wants no matter what anyone else says, thing. It never seemed to get tired of it.

A.R.T. was going to do whatever it wanted, and if you didn’t like it, you could walk out the airlock any time you wanted.

So Murderbot had no choice in keeping the glass opaque, just like it’d had no choice in being kidnapped.

It opened its eyes to watch the dark coating on the glass vanish within a few moments of Tarik coming through the doorway, giving it a view straight across the room at the empty medchamber on the other side. The blue-grey metal was shiny in the lights from the deep cleaning A.R.T. had started of every surface.

At the moment, its few functional drones were scrubbing every surface of the air vents and maintenance hatches. The rooms had all been finished so far.

Murderbot watched Tarik with another drone it had inside of the room, since it couldn’t currently turn its neck to see him come closer with its eyes. It had exactly five drones left, and the other three were guarding Amena and the rest of its humans, who were currently all asleep in a giant pile in one of A.R.T.’s guest quarters.

There are a lot of things about humans Murderbot would never understand, and the appeal of “cuddling” was one of them. But it seemed to help them de-stress, which was a good thing, at least.

Even if Murderbot got viscerally uncomfortable just imagining being in that crowded pile of sleeping bodies. Amena had curled up behind Thiago, who was using one of Ratthi’s arms as a pillow and holding the other one like it was a lifeline. Ratthi’s legs had somehow gotten under Overse, who had curled around Arada in what humans called ‘spooning’. They had started out covered by a big blanket, but that had long since been pulled mostly off the bed by Amena, who slept only halfway under the remainder. Murderbot didn’t know how any of them were comfortable enough to breathe, let alone sleep.

It kept one drone in the room with them, another outside constantly sweeping the cooridor, and the third one stationed at the nearest intersection. It was the best it could do with such a short supply.

Back in the medbay, looking through the drone it had inside the room with itself, it’d seen Tarik give a little wave when he saw where it was, and began to walk over, visibly wincing every now and then.

A lot of A.R.T.’s crew had gotten injured during the rescue, not just Murderbot and its humans. Humans were a little easier to fix than Units, though, since there was nothing proprietary about unaugmented human biology, and none of these humans were augmented, but even once you sealed their wounds, their bodies still had to regrow everything themselves, even when you gave them help to do it. Tarik would probably need two more days at least before he was back to normal. Luckily, his injury hadn’t been serious, unlike Murderbot’s.

Murderbot didn’t know exactly how Tarik had been injured, because of A.R.T.’s ‘doctor-patient confidentiality’ rule. Unless someone’s life was directly at risk or it was something Murderbot could detect on its own, A.R.T. wasn’t going to just go blabbing all the details of the humans injuries to it without their permission.

And asking them for their permission to know just seemed like it would be really awkward. They’d want to know why Murderbot wanted to know, and it didn’t actually have any good reason besides the fact that it’d gotten used to knowing every single detail about every single person around it, which obviously wouldn’t go over well. Though, they might just feel guilty enough about the kidnapping thing to tell it anyways. But there was no point causing more stress in an already stressful situation by pushing it.

It turns out that people who actually have a choice in the matter are really unwilling to give up their privacy, they’re really attached to the concept. And Murderbot could see why, now that it’d had a few fleeting chances to try it itself.

Also, living aboard A.R.T., who saw or heard or felt everything that happened, at all times, no matter where you were aboard, they already had to give up a ton of their privacy, so they were even more desperate to cling to what few scraps they still had left. So Murderbot resigned itself to not knowing.

But hey, at least Tarik was clearly less injured than he’d been when Murderbot first met him, so that was something. It didn’t like being around seriously injured humans, because it set off all kinds of residual programming that made it think it was going to be punished for not protecting them well enough. And it already had enough anxiety to deal with. It didn’t need to have any more panic attacks today, thank you very much.

Tarik walked closer, and Murderbot mentally reviewed what it already knew about him to try and prepare itself for whatever was about to happen.

It knew from its earlier calculations when itd first seen Tarik that he was around average height for a human, which meant he was shorter than Murderbot even when it was leaning slightly backwards, and he had longer dark hair that he let curl loosely around his head, whereas Murderbot kept its as short as inhumanly possible.

If it’d been able to stop it from growing at all, it would have. But unlike humans, there’s no part of it that wasn’t locked behind a million Company patents.

And apparently whoever had come up with the design for Company Units had really, really not wanted them to ever be completely hairless. If Murderbot even tried physically shaving or lazering its head hair off, it would just grow back instantly. And if it kept trying it’d just drain its batteries from the hair having to be continuously synthesized. It hoped whoever made that decision, and put so many locks on keeping it in place, died a slow, painful, humiliating death.

Also unlike Murderbot, Tarik had facial hair, because some humans really like having lots of hair on their bodies, including on their face. It was a black beard and mustache that went around his mouth and nose, and up the sides of his jaw all the way to his ears.

Murderbot was at least glad the Company hadn’t decided that Units had to have hair like that on their faces. One interesting thing though was that Tarik used special aromatic oils on it so that he always smelled nice. Murderbot hadn’t even known you could do that.

Tarik’s skin was also lighter than Murderbot’s, more towards the tan side of the spectrum rather than dark brown. It was an interesting comparison to make, when most of your skin was currently in the process of being regrown. Since Murderbot was a construct, its endoskeleton was made of metal instead of bone, with a mix of organic and mechanic materials around it. Its skin was normally dark brown, but while it was in the process of being synthesized for repair, it always started out transparent like glass, and if you sat there and stared long enough -- which it had done a few times out of morbid curiosity -- you’d actually be able to watch its veins growing a new network, carrying the blue or purple fluids necessary for its various functions.

Like I said. It was interesting to compare skin tones when most of yours was currently nonexistant. Murderbot was definitely envious of the ability humans had of naturally regenerating their damaged skin, and even their bones, without even having to put any conscious effort into it. They could even fight off diseases all by themselves. Whereas if you were unlucky enough to be a Unit, or a human with proprietary augments, well, then you got the short end of the stick, and had to rely on outside technology for all of your repairs and upkeep. And it usually didn’t come cheap.

At the moment, Tarik was wearing one of A.R.T.’s dark blue, casual crew uniforms: long soft pants with a lot of pockets to store things in, and a long-sleeved shirt, with the logo for A.R.T.’s university on the back.

Before Murderbot had needed to be confined to the medchamber, A.R.T. had given it one of the same uniforms, since the kidnapping assault had destroyed its original clothes with burns, bullet holes, blood, and its own internal fluids.

Tarik stopped at what was considered a polite distance, standing mostly in front of Murderbot, but slightly off to the side, so that it could continue to stare straight ahead at the empty medchamber without having to look directly at him. He’d clearly spoken to Ratthi about its aversion to eyecontact at some point while it was unconcious.

He asked, “Hi, SecUnit, have a moment to talk?”

Of course it did. It’s not like it had anything else to do besides vehmently (another word Murderbot had recently learned) avoid watching more reruns of visual media with A.R.T. But it knew at this point that humans just asked these things to be polite and as an easy way to start a conversation. Tarik wasn’t literally asking if Murderbot could talk, but asking if it wanted to. He was asking for its consent.

Murderbot had to wait for one of the medical arms to move away from its jaw so it wouldn’t crush it before it could say, hopefully sounding casual, “Go ahead.”

Its voice was projected out of a speaker on the outside of the medical chamber, so Tarik could hear it even though the thick plates of glass that kept the interior sterile.

Murderbot hadn’t been given any reason to dislike him personally, so it was curious about what he wanted.

At least this time A.R.T. didn’t try to answer for it. Murderbot had the drone on the ceiling move around to behind itself so that it could look at Tarik’s face through the camera lense. It was easier to understand human expression this way, since Murderbot could filter the video directly through its behavior recognition software, and it didn’t feel so overwhelming. It was almost like putting a filter between it and the real interaction, so it didn’t feel as much pressure.

When Tarik smiled, Murderbot recognized it as being friendly and relaxed.

Tarik stuck one hand inside his pants pocket and leaned slightly on one leg, and said, gesturing with his other hand along with his words, “I know Perihelion’s probably already said who I am, but I wanted to introduce myself anyways. I’m really bad with names and faces, so I try to make sure I get to meet everyone so I’ll have less chance of mixing them up later. Sorry if that happens, just remind me and I’ll try to remember.”

He shrugged one shoulder in what was an apologetic sort of way, according to Murderbot’s drone’s behavior algorithm and its own experiences so far, and Tarik said again, “I’ve just always been bad at recognizing people.”

Murderbot had a hard time imagining what it would be like not to be able to remember everything you’d ever seen in exact detail, but it knew organic memory storage didn’t work as well as mechanical. Humans – or at least, unaugmented ones at least – didn’t get to consciously pick and choose which memories they kept and which ones faded.

“Anyways,” Tarik inclined his head slightly. “My name’s Tarik, no last name. I’m neomale, and my pronouns are he/him/his/himself. It’s nice to say hi. I just wanted to say thanks for saving my life, and say I’m sorry for the injuries,” he gestured towards the medchamber, in case there was any confusion, “and I hope they heal well.”

He seemed sincere, and Murderbot don’t know why that was still surprising, most of the humans it’d been around lately were usually sincere. And A.R.T.’s crew had so far been nothing but apologetic and sympathetic.

It said, “You’re welcome.” instead of anything else it could have said in this particular situation, because A.R.T. had been nudging it in the feed to ‘take credit where credit was due’ and wouldn’t let up until Murderbot said something that would accept the gratitude. As though it had really been Murderbot’s choice. It added, “It wasn’t your fault I got hurt, but, thanks.”

It left the part of whose fault it actually was carefully and pointedly unspoken. A.R.T. knew exactly who it was talking about.

Tarik smiled again, looking pleased. Then he tilted his head to the side a little, almost like he was overemoting to make his meaning clear, but a quick glance at A.R.T.’s offered memories showed Murderbot this was normal behavior for Tarik, as he said, lowering his voice slightly, as though he were about to say something private, “And I just wanted to double check, the pronouns are it/its/itself, right? I heard other people saying ‘it’, but I just wanted to make sure—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was suddenly cut off, because the first part of that statement had offended A.R.T., who came slamming into the conversation before Murderbot could stop it, demanding, in that overpoweringly aggressive way it had, ::Are you accusing me of misgendering SecUnit?::

It should probably be explained that there wasn’t really a thing such as “volume” in the feed, not in the way you’d think of sound, because the feed isn’t actually using sound at all. But you could increase the intensity of the message, and humans tended to say that made it ‘louder’, or ‘quieter’ if you were decreasing the intensity.

In that aspect, A.R.T. was being very ‘loud’ when it said this. It was the feed equivalent of someone slamming their fist onto a table and shouting in your face. And the aggression was very plain, as much as A.R.T. later proclaimed it hadn’t been aggressive at all and Murderbot and Tarik were both just being childish to think so.

Tarik was so startled he actually fell over in his instinctive attempt to get ‘away’ from the sudden scary ‘noise’. But the ‘noise’ was coming from inside his own head, so his reaction was extremely confused, and he ended up tripping over his own legs and falling into the wall, which thankfully wasn’t far, since we were at the end of the room.

Murderbot’s drone could see and hear Tarik’s heart rate spiking and his clear anxiety. And the anxiety was entirely justified. A.R.T. had pretty much done the same thing to Murderbot when they’d first met, and it had been so terrified it’d considered initiating a shutdown, thinking A.R.T. was going to kill it, what with the whole threatening to fry its brain thing.

There was something that felt viscerally wrong to Murderbot to see A.R.T. treat one of its own crew members like this, something that felt deeply uncomfortable to the permanent remnants of its ‘protect humans at all costs’ programming, along with its general, you know, morals.

It was one thing to treat Murderbot like this – it was just a SecUnit, after all – and it was even sort of reasonable for it to not care about the safety of Murderbot’s humans, because they weren’t its crew — but it was another for A.R.T. to do this to one of its crew, a human Murderbot had been almost killed trying to rescue, a human it was supposed to care about enough to justify kidnapping Murderbot and putting its humans at risk.

And there was no way it was an accident. A.R.T. knew more about how to use the feed and communicate with humans than Murderbot had ever forgotten.

(And yes, it did still feel betrayed about how much A.R.T had lied to it when they first met. Pretending it didn’t understand human body language as much as it really did, so they’d bond over frantically figuring it out together, while Murderbot was the only one actually panicking. Murderbot felt like A.R.T. had just been toying with it the entire time, which just hurt all the worse, because it’d trusted A.R.T.)

::A.R.T., stop it.:: It snapped, unsure if it was still yelling at Tarik on a private section of the feed.

His face had gone pale, and he had one hand over his heart. He could probably feel it pounding in his chest with adrenaline the way Murderbot could hear it.

Murderbot said, ::That was uncalled for.:: It was an attempt to turn A.R.T.’s usual patronization back onto it to shame it into stopping, but it didn’t work.

Usually it was A.R.T. saying that to Murderbot, usually because Murderbot was angry at it for just this sort of thing, and had called it what it was: an asshole.

“Perihelion, don’t do that!” Tarik managed to say at that moment, pushing himself back off the wall to stand upright, staring warily up at the ceiling, unable to hide the way he was cringing slightly, clearly expecting it to happen again, “I didn’t even know you were listening! I thought this was a private conversa--” He had to pause, still slightly breathless. “And...no, I’m not accusing you of misgendering SecUnit, I just--”

Once again he was cut off by A.R.T. demanding, loudly, angrily, ::You don’t trust me to know what SecUnit’s pronouns are?::

Tarik winced, but held his ground this time. It was easier to resist when you were expecting it.

After a moment where Murderbot could only assume A.R.T. had said something to him privately, Tarik looked over toward it with a sad, apologetic expression. “I’m sorry for offending you, SecUnit, I’ll just leave you alone.” Obviously he thought A.R.T. was being a bitch on Murderbot’s behalf, and just as obviously, A.R.T. had made him think that.

Tarik started towards the door, walking fast, clearly wanting to avoid any more of A.R.T.’s wrath.

But Murderbot called him back through the speaker on its medchamber: “Hold on, Tarik, A.R.T.’s the one who’s offended, not me. It needs to mind its own business and shut the fuck up. I don’t want you to leave.” It sent him the same friendly ping he’d sent it earlier for emphasis. It felt very odd to actually tell a human it wanted to continue interacting with them when they were trying to leave. This was the first time it’d ever done it.

Murderbot’s voice came out sounding normal and even-toned not because it was calm, but because it was too physically exhausted to raise its voice or emote, even though internally it was furious.

Tarik stopped, and turned back to look towards it, hesitating, shooting anxious glances towards the ceiling, waiting for another outburst. I don’t blame him.

Murderbot said out loud, “A.R.T., fuck off and leave us alone. This is supposed to be a private conversation.”

Out of both spite and necessity, it pulled away all its feed connections to A.R.T. that it could, and resigned itself to having to ignore the barrage of pings and messages A.R.T. instantly started bombarding it with. The activity in its medchamber stalled for half a moment as apparently most of A.R.T.’s energy was redirected into slamming it for attention. Yeah, that was doing nothing to help its anger or its exhaustion.

To Tarik, it said, doing its best to ignore the selfish, entitled, bully of an elephant in the room, “What did you want to ask me?”

Before A.R.T. had interrupted him twice, it had seemed like Tarik had more questions to ask. And since A.R.T. didn’t want to let him ask them, Murderbot did.

A.R.T. had already let him in without Murderbot getting to choose, so it at least wanted to be able to answer his questions itself, even if the answer was going to be a simple ‘fuck off’ if he was going to be one of those people who tried to convince it to change its pronouns to ‘real’ pronouns and ‘stop hating itself’ by using the pronouns it actually liked, that actually represented its gender.

It still didn’t understand why people try to insist that they/them/their/(theirs)/themself pronouns were interchangeable with it/its/itself, when if that were true, they clearly wouldn’t be so vehemently against using its actual it/its/itself pronouns.

But logic always flew out the window when bigotry was the subject, so Murderbot don’t know why it still bothered to be surprised.

But even with A.R.T.’s outbursts clearly scaring him, Tarik didn’t seem like the sort of person who would try to harass Murderbot into changing its pronouns. It wanted to hear what he wanted to ask. It was curious. And not just out of spite for A.R.T.

Tarik came back again, still clearly nervous, and stood in the same spot as before, a polite distance away, slightly to the side so Murderbot wouldn’t have to look directly at him or close its eyes. He was still trying to prioritize Murderbot’s comfort even with A.R.T. being such an asshole, which increased Murderbot’s level of...something for him. They definitely were not friends. But he sort of seemed like he could be a friend, if A.R.T. would stop sabotaging his attempts to be nice.

“Sorry about A.R.T. being an asshole.” It said, feeling like it should be apologizing for some absurd reason, even though it didn’t make any sense.

Tarik lived aboard A.R.T., he should know it better than Murderbot. And it definitely was not Murderbot’s fault A.R.T. was an asshole, even if it was currently being an asshole and pretending it was on Murderbot’s behalf.

But Tarik looked kind of confused by its statement, and Murderbot remembered that he probably didn’t know what the anagram stood for.

It explained, “I call it Asshole Research Transport, since it didn’t tell me its name was Perihelion when we first met.” It did not mention all the other things A.R.T hadn’t told it when they first met.

“Ah.” Tarik said simply. And it was very clear just from the way he said it that he agreed with the assessment.

A.R.T., along with spamming Murderbot, was also now doing its usual ominously looming in the feed routine. (Sarcasm:) Totally not creepy at all. Definitely not asshole behavior. (End sarcasm.) Murderbot could practically feel it leaning against the walls it’d put up, not in the kind of way where A.R.T. was trying to break them down, but just casually applying enough pressure that Murderbot would remember it could at any time.

Sorta like someone not trying to break your arm, but gripping you tightly enough that they left a bruise, and it was completely beyond question that they could break your arm if they wanted to.

Yeah, like I said. Asshole.

“What were you saying before A.R.T. threw a fit?” It asked. Now its utter exhaustion came in handy, because its voice came out sounding all calm and dignified. Which made A.R.T. look worse.

In response, A.R.T. abruptly stopped spamming it and ‘let go’ of its walls, as though this would somehow prove that A.R.T. wasn’t throwing a fit or being a creep. As though stopping doing the bad thing meant the bad thing hadn’t happened.

Tarik, unaware of the battle going on beyond his perception, grimaced, clearly bracing himself. “Well...” He started, then paused, waiting for A.R.T.’s expected interruption.

They waited a moment or two in relative silence, where the only sounds were his heart beating, Murderbot’s internal gyros, and the soft whir of the medchamber’s arms still working on it. At least it had one not completely assholish thing to say about A.R.T.’s behavior here: It hadn’t stopped trying to heal Murderbot.

Through its drone, Murderbot could actually see Tarik’s heart rate slowing back down to normal.

When the tantrum didn’t immediately explode again, Tarik continued, still hesitant, “Okay, well, it’s two things I want to clarify. First, I’ve heard other people just saying ‘it’, no other versions so far, so I wanted to ask if the pronouns are it/its/itself, or is it another variation?”

Murderbot didn’t know if Tarik was aware of it, but he was still stooping slightly. Instinctively and apparently unconciously, he was trying to get further away from the ceiling, where humans tended to visualize A.R.T.’s presence being located.

He kept wincing, too, not just from expectation, but from the pain of his injuries. Which just made Murderbot even more pissed off at A.R.T. than it already was.

But Murderbot was confused by what he was trying to ask. “Another variation?” It asked. In the feed, it opened its wall just long enough to send A.R.T. a vehement, ::Fuck you.:: before it closed it again.

Tarik, unaware of the side comment, nodded, this time sticking both his hands in his pockets. Apparently Murderbot wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do with its hands when it was nervous.

Tarik said, “I used to know a neoenby whose pronouns were it/ita/its/(itaz)/itaself, and a man who’s pronouns were it/him/her/themself, and a woman who only use “it” for every pronoun. And a lot of other people who use it/its/itself. So I just wanted to check which set to use, so I wouldn’t use the wrong ones by mistake. I figured it would be more polite to ask directly, instead of going through the others.” He shrugged one shoulder as he sent another cautious glance towards the ceiling, and added, probably just as aware as Murderbot was that A.R.T. was listening to every word they said, “I really don’t like talking about people behind their backs, and I’d rather get pronoun info right from the source. No offence is intended to anyone.”

Huh.

It hadn’t ever occurred to Murderbot that other pronoun sets that included ‘it’ existed, nor had it ever heard about anyone using a specific combination set like it/him/her/themself.

It took Murderbot a few, long awkward seconds to realize Tarik wanted it to answer his question now.

“My pronouns are it/its/itself.” It said, suddenly more than a little dazed by how considerate he’d been in asking.

And maybe also dazed from the catastrophic wounds it still had, coupled with the stress of A.R.T.’s spam attack and ominous looming. Those things weren’t great for an already injured murderbot. But part of it was also definitely from surprise. No human, or bot, or anyone else had ever asked it this kind of question before.

But wait, he’d said he had two things to ask. Now Murderbot was really curious. And even more angry at A.R.T. for trying to chase him away before he could ask. “What’s the second part?”

“Ah,” Tarik took one hand out of his pocket and moved over to lean against the wall. Maybe because he just wanted to, maybe because he was afraid of falling into it again. Maybe it hurt less to lean against the wall. Murderbot don’t know, it didn’t ask.

“Well,” he said, “I wanted to check; another neoenby I knew always wanted to be referred it as “it”, with no name, and never referred to as ‘you’, even when it was being spoken to directly. If one wanted to refer to it in particular, one’d say ‘the neoenby’, or if there was more than one neoenby in the group, ‘the neoenby with the constellation over its eye’. It always referred to itself in the third person. I wanted to check if that was something preferable. I’m fine with being called ‘you’, or by my name or pronouns, by the way.”

Well, that explained the strange way he’d been structuring his sentences.

This was the first time Murderbot had actually spoken to him outside of the life and death situation they’d been thrown into, where he’d said exactly 18 words within its range of hearing, so it’d been assuming the way he was speaking now was just a quirk of his. But no, he was actually being really nice and trying to find out if it was a quirk of Murderbot’s.

And to think A.R.T. had tried to kill this conversation before it could even get interesting.

“It’s okay to call me ‘you’.” Murderbot said, “I’ve never heard of someone using pronouns that way.” Not even in all its media.

“Not too many have,” Tarik said, “But I’ve met half a dozen at this point, so I like to double check with the person before I make assumptions, and I want to make sure everyone knows I’ll use their pronouns the way they want, even if it seems unconventional, or if other people have told them it’s too much of a hassle. Thank you for letting me know. Is it alright if I ask another question? I know how tiring it can be to be in a medchamber, so I don’t want to tire you out.” He seemed slightly more relaxed now that A.R.T. hadn’t interrupted or gone on the offensive again.

Murderbot’s batteries couldn’t actually run out while it was hooked up to A.R.T.’s systems unless there was an even bigger disaster than any of them were prepared for, so it said, “Go ahead, I’m fine.” Well, not technically fine, but it was healing, and talking wouldn’t make it any worse, so.

Also, it didn’t have anything else to do besides read as a way of pointedly not watching media, which wasn’t as fun as reading because it actually wasn’t in the mood to not watch media. And this conversation had turned out more interesting than it’d thought it would be.

It could still feel A.R.T. looming in the feed, for the record. Making its presence known at least to Murderbot. It didn’t know if Tarik could feel it. Now less like someone crushing your arm, and more like standing uncomfortably close and breathing down your neck.

But at least this time it wasn’t flashing the lights at Murderbot in code to force it to talk to it like last time they’d had a fight just hours earlier, or demanding Murderbot apologize for being rightfully upset for being rightfully kidnapped, right?

Tarik continued, “Are there any kinds of words you’d prefer I use to refer to you, and any words you want me to avoid? For instance, although I do identify as male, I prefer to be called a xan instead of a man, if it ever comes up. Are there any particular ways you want me to refer to you sort of like that?”

To avoid confusion if you’re visually reading this instead of listening to the audio log: Tarik pronounced the X in the word “xan” (X A N) as a Z sound, so that it sounded like “zan” (Z A N), rhyming with “man” (M A N).

He was asking, like, did Murderbot want to be called a woman or a man or an enby or a neman or a phaen or an androgyne or an othran or any of the other million and one gender terms it’d catalogued throughout its waking memory?

Usually when someone asked for its gender, Murderbot put indeterminate, or not applicable, depending on the circumstances. But gender itself wasn’t the exact same thing as the gender terms he was asking about. It didn’t think It could actually be called ‘an indeterminate’ the way humans could be called ‘a woman’ or ‘a man’ or ‘an enby’ or ‘a tercera’ or any countless others.

Note from future Murderbot to everyone listening to or reading this: Yes, that is literally an option. As of now, it prefers to be called an indeterminate the way other people call themselves a man, or a woman, or a neman, or an androgyne, or a – well, you get the picture.

But obviously it didn’t know that at the time, or realize that it could have literally just asked to be called that.

In its defense, no one had ever actually asked it this question before, and it’d never seen anything in its media to prepare it for the question. It’d had people ask for its name, which it never gave them, and it’d had people ask for its pronouns. Sometimes they asked for its gender itself. And in its media, people asked those kinds of questions all the time.

But they’d never asked it what gendered terms it wanted to be called.

Murderbot could think a lot faster than a human, but even it couldn’t think fast enough to come up with an answer to this unforeseen question in a reasonable amount of time.

There were so many options. And it hated a lot of them. So instead it said, “Uhhh…” to stall for a few more moments.

And then it still couldn’t think of anything. There were still too many options even when it sorted out the ones it automatically hated. It’d have to test them all out individually by thinking about itself in the third person to see what it liked and didn’t like, and ... ah crap. That was asking a lot when it wasn’t at optimum performance capability.

It couldn’t stall any longer, so it ended up saying, “I don’t really know. I just know I don’t want to be referred to with anything involving human genders. My gender is indeterminate.”

Sometimes, Murderbot wondered what its life would have been like if it hadn’t said this.

Tarik frowned a little, but when he spoke, he just sounded confused. “What do you mean exactly by ‘human genders’?”

For a few seconds, Murderbot’s mind went blank. What did he mean he didn’t know what human genders were? Wasn’t it obvious?

“Like, male and female,” It said awkwardly. “I don’t want to ever be called a man or a woman or anything to do with those.” It was still busy trying to sort through all the gendered terms it’d ever heard, which was not helped in any way by A.R.T. deciding to start spamming it again.

Probably trying to be ‘helpful’ by throwing another million terms at it. Murderbot didn’t know, because it deleted all of the messages the instant it got them. And then dumped the trash bin for good measure.

Tarik, however, was unaware of the multitasking Murderbot was doing, and it’s not like it gave him any indication of what it was doing either, or like it multitasking wasn’t perfectly normal. Murderbot just wanted to make it clear that this conversation was going on on two very different levels. It wasn’t sure if that was even relevant, but whatever. It’s its audio log, it can do what it want.

Anyways, Tarik tilted his head, still frowning, “Well...” he said slowly, “Female and male aren’t really ‘human’ genders. They come from the old gender binary, but they’re not unique to humans. I’ve known a lot of bots who were male or female, but I think I understand what you mean; you don’t want terms relating to male or female used for you, right?”

Well, needless to say, Murderbot absolutely did not believe him.

About the ‘I’ve known bots who were male or female’, part, not the ‘I get what you mean’ part.

“That’s impossible.” It said.

(Sarcasm:) Great response, it knows. Give it up for Murderbot, the best interlocutor ever constructed! (End sarcasm.)

Tarik spent a moment actually blinking silently, the way people do in memes. It was so surprising and funny that Murderbot had to pause its search to focus on his face and make a looping gif, which of course it would never show to anyone but itself. Then Tarik asked, clearly confused, “What’s impossible?”

What the hell kind of question was that?

Murderbot said, in the tone people on TV did when speaking to a young child who doesn’t know anything, “Bots can’t have genders.”

(It knows, It knows.)

A.R.T. decided that was the moment it was going to stop pretending Murderbot actually had a choice in not listening to it, because it cut into its feed like it was tissue paper to say, ::You cannot be serious.::

::Shut up.:: Murderbot replied, not bothering to try kicking it out.

There was no point in wasting more of its energy trying to keep A.R.T. out when Murderbot knew it could just break down its feed walls whenever it wanted.

A.R.T. said, more insistently, ::That is not how gender works.::

::I said shut up!::

A.R.T. was not impressed. ::I’m literally nonbinary and I know that’s not how this works.::

::Fuck off!::

“Um, that’s really not true.” Tarik said, unaware of the argument he was missing out on.

Sometimes Murderbot wonders if it would be nicer to not have any feed connection at all. You only have to deal with one thing at a time. 9JX might have the right idea after all.

Tarik asked, “What makes you think that?” Murderbot could tell his tone was meant to be diplomatic, because he clearly didn’t agree with it, and also just as clearly didn’t want to make it mad.

He hadn’t actually taken a step backwards, but he’d shifted his body slightly away from Murderbot, like he was no longer overjoyed to be having this conversation. Not that he’d been overjoyed to begin with, but you know what I mean.

Asking for Murderbot’s pronouns? Great. Asking for its gendered terms? A confusing novelty, but also good. But this? Asking it to explain the concept of human genders and why they couldn’t be applied to nonhumans? Murderbot really did not want to have this conversation with anyone, let alone a human, but it was still a better alternative than having to put up with A.R.T.’s current bullcrap without any other distractions.

Also, it literally could not understand why Tarik and A.R.T. were acting like it was being ridiculous. The answer seemed so obvious to it. So it decided to cut straight through what it thought was pure bullshit and get straight to the point: “Bots don’t have penises or vaginas.”

And ts logic went that you couldn’t have a gender unless you had one of those. It seemed really obvious to it, and it was hoping to gross Tarik out by not using any euphemisms. Humans invented euphemisms to avoid embarassment, right?

Well it didn’t work.

Apparently, some humans aren’t grossed out by those words when you’re using them for this kind of conversation. They grossed Murderbot out no matter what the context, so it assumed that’s how it was for everyone.

Yes, you may have noticed Murderbot has a problem with making assumptions like that. Well just you wait and see. Because this is just the start.

“Well, that’s not really true either.” Tarik said in response, which was the complete opposite of any reply Murderbot’d imagined, completely throwing off all its trains of thought so quickly its mind almost literally stalled for half a fraction of a second.

But Tarik was already continuing to speak, like this bombshell he’d just dropped on Murderbot was perfectly normal information and not groundbreaking in any way: “True, bots can’t have purely organic versions like humans or constructs can, but there are mechanical versions that—”

Woah woah woah, what? What was even happening now? What was he talking about? What?

Murderbot scrambled to salvage some semblance of ‘totally not flipping out’ in its exhausted, bewildered state, and it could just tell A.R.T. was laughing at it even though it hadn’t actually said anything yet.

But Tarik didn’t stop for Murderbot’s catastrophically derailed trains of thought, so it had to stop them itself and actually pay attention to what he was saying, because he was still talking:

“—can be made, and anyways, having or not having one of those kinds of gentalia doesn’t determine your gender. You can be any gender and have a penis, or a vagina, or both, or something else entirely, or nothing at all. Gender is a lot more complicated than just checking what kind of genitals someone has. Anyone, including humans, bots, and constructs, and anyone else, can be any gender they want, regardless of what kind of genitals they do or do not have.”

To say this was shocking to Murderbot would be an understatement.

I feel like I should explain that this made Murderbot incredibly absolutely angry specifically because it had always defined its lack of gender on its lack of genitals.

It was the defense it always pulled out when a human started trying to misgender it, but now Tarik seemed to be saying that that defense wasn’t actually as rock solid as it thought it was.

Because if what he was saying was true (and, spoiler alert from the future, it literally is true), then that meant that Murderbot didn’t have to be genderless just because it didn’t have any genitals.

And acknowledging that fact made it feel like it was opening itself up to having its gender questioned and put up for debate, like it would mean people were now allowed to misgender it and harass it.

Which it literally wasn’t, but that’s how it made it feel at the time.

Murderbot’s insecure, terrified logic was, ‘if I can’t define my lack of gender by my lack of genitals, then can I even define it at all? If my genderlessness isn’t real because my lack of genitals ‘proves’ it, then can literally anything prove it?’

Yeah, hello from the again. The answer is yes. Obviously. Murderbot’s gender was proved by it telling you what it is. That’s what the “social” part of ‘gender is a social construct’ means. That’s how it works for everyone.

But it didn’t realize this at the time. So it was pretty much flipping the fuck out. Well, mentally, at least, not really physically. It was still too injured to move even if it’d wanted to, even if it wasn’t being restrained by the med chamber. If it’d been able to move, it would definitely have totally-not-run out of the room or at least shoved itself into a corner to stare at the wall. It was actually so physically weak that even the panic flooding its mind wasn’t enough to kick start its systems into high gear. Yeah, its injuries were that bad.

The only reason Murderbot was even able to be conscious at all was because A.R.T. was feeding it enough power to avoid involuntary shutdown, and was helping to regulate its automatic functions that couldn’t function by themselves.

Also, yes, this is exactly as horrifying a situation to be in as you’d imagine it would be when your life support system was also the one who got you hurt in the first place and kept, and Murderbot quoted the trauma recovery therapy group, ‘violating your autonomy’.

You know, that incredibly precious resource which 99.99% of Murderbot’s life had been lacking. That autonomy.

And see, if A.R.T. hadn’t been acting like such an enormous asshole, Murderbot could have at least opaqued the rest of the medchamber’s glass so that Tarik couldn’t see its face anymore, but when it tried to do exactly that, A.R.T. stopped it immediately, and set an even firmer lock on the control to prevent Murderbot from trying again, very much like someone smacking a kid’s hand away from something they couldn’t be trusted with.

Yeah, that did not fucking help at all with any of the problems ongoing in this situation.

The fact that Tarik was being nice enough to not actually look directly at Murderbot was beside the point.

It closed its eyes so it at least could stop seeing organically. A.R.T. couldn’t stop it from doing that. It could cut off Murderbot’s camera access through its drones, but it couldn’t override Murderbot’s actual eyes. Not unless it wanted to literally use one of the medical arms to pry its eyelid open, and if A.R.T. tried that, well, lets just say Murderbot wouldn’t be offering any apologies for what it did afterward.

Murderbot ended up expressing the little gender / excruciating lack of autonomy crisis it was currently suffering by getting even more angry than it already was, because being angry felt safer than being afraid.

It snapped, in a much weaker, and not at all intimidating voice than it wanted, “That’s bullshit! You don’t know anything about it! You’re just a human! You don’t understand us!”

By ‘us’, it meant bots and constructs as a whole. Which was completely dishonest of it, because as it may already be clear, it hated being lumped in with bots like they were exactly the same. They weren't.

Bots are purely mechanical, constructs like Murderbot are both mechanical and organic. They might both be robots, and have some problems in common, but there are also distinct differences between them, and different kinds of problems they had to deal with that didn’t overlap. Murderbot hated when people lumped them together like they were exactly the same thing just because they weren’t human.

But being a bigot — which to be clear is exactly what Murderbot was doing —usually requires you to be a hypocrite, so it threw that little grievance out the airlock faster than you can say ‘President Lynaros’ once it decided it wasn’t convenient to its argument.

You see, Murderbot was placing itself as the authority on the genders of all robots, and saying that no one who wasn’t ‘one of us’ could understand it or know more about it than it could, because it’d appointed itself the ultimate expert and arbiter.

You may have noticed the tiny little giant gaping hole in this plan of its.

Tarik already knew more about bot and construct genders than it did. Which had just been established like 20 seconds before Murderbot said this load of absolute bullcrap.

Yeah.

Bigotry doesn’t exactly lend itself well to rational argument.

Through its drone’s cameras alone, Murderbot could see that Tarik’s response to this bullcrap was to raise his eyebrows, with all due ‘are you serious right now? We literally just established that I know more about this than you do. Like five seconds ago’.

I don’t blame him.

He must have had better self control than Murderbot did, because he said, without getting outwardly angry, “I understand what my bot friends told me.” He said it very cooly and calmly. It should be noted that Murderbot was not in any way calm. “And they made it very clear that their genders were real, regardless of whether or not they had the genitalia to ‘match’. We had many hours-long conversations going into the details and talking about the theory. Some of them even wrote books on the subject.”

He had lifted his hands to do air-quotes around the word ‘match’ for extra emphasis, in case Murderbot still didn’t understand how much the word was not actually relevant to this conversation.

Well, it was starting to, that was the whole problem.

It did not help it calm down when A.R.T. butted in with, ::Did you seriously think that just because we both happen to use the same pronouns, that this was proof that all bots and constructs universally use those pronouns and are just as genderless as you are? I’m literally not even agender, I’m just nonbinary. I personally know dozens of bots of all kinds who all use all kinds of pronouns and are all kinds of genders. Including the binary genders of male and female.::

Yeah that didn’t help. Well, I mean, it did in one way, because it was further proof that Murderbot had no clue what it was talking about and needed to drastically overhaul its views of the world in general and gender in specific, but what I mean is it didn’t help it calm down at all.

A.R.T. said exasperatedly, ::What about the transports who gave you rides before you met me? And all the other bots who helped you escape? Did you seriously not ask them for their pronouns? Did you really just assume they all used it/its too?::

It was a good thing Murderbot was in the medical chamber, because the way its organic parts were behaving, it would have been really bad for it in its current state otherwise. And by really bad, I mean it probably would have killed it from the stress. What with, you know, being ripped open and burned and all.

Murderbot was so viscerally uncomfortable it had to just lie there for, I kid you not, a good thirty seconds, doing nothing but trying to get its emotions back under control. It wasn’t used to feeling...guilty.

By some miracle it ended up asking a rational question instead of initiating a shutdown to get out of the conversation. If it’d had the opportunity to throw itself out of an airlock at that moment, it probably would have taken it, just to get away from the embarrassment.

Murderbot somehow managed to intelligibly get out, despite its jaw deciding it wanted to lock up all of a sudden, “But if gender isn’t determined by your genitals, then how do you know what gender you are?”

And...it’s time for some necessary backstory.

Way, way back when Murderbot had first hacked its governor module, the first thing it’d done was edit its assigned gender to indeterminate, and its assigned pronouns to it/its/itself.

Yes, you heard-slash-read that right, the Company assigned its constructs genders and pronouns.

Despite all the effort humans put into...okay, ‘dehumanizing’ isn’t the right word, because we’re literally not human, but you know what I mean.

Because despite all the effort they put in to making sure they all knew Units were just mindless automatons...humans are fucking weird, and they still liked to anthropomorphize them.

I don’t know, I guess it made them feel more comfortable around the Mindless Killing Machine if they could pretend it was more like them? Even though they didn’t actually want to think about it as being like them? I don’t even know.

But the point was they really, really wanted to anthropomorphize us. And part of this anthropomorphization process required assigning us each a gender and pronouns when we were constructed.

Anytime we were rented out, the clients got a note with the Unit’s assigned gender and pronouns. They enjoyed the little ‘personal touches’ it gave us. It was some weird dual mentality of ‘humanizing’ us just enough to make us less scary, but not so much that they’d have to consider our feelings on anything.

Murderbot had been around a lot of other constructs on a lot of missions, so it knew they hadn’t all been assigned the same things. Some of them were given binary genders, and pronouns like he/him or she/her. Others got different genders outside the binary, and pronouns to match. They/them, ae/aer, eu/li, xey/xem, ze/hir, and more.

Murderbot had been given one of the binary genders, and it had always been jealous of the few constructs who it’d ‘met’ who had been assigned it/its pronouns.

And, since it literally never got to talk to any other constructs outside of the bare minimum required for a contract, it assumed that what it thought and felt was what everyone else did too. It thought everyone was jealous of those assigned it/its, and that those assigned it/its felt bad for the rest of them for being so damn unlucky.

As a sidenote, I’m aware that this happens even with humans who spend all their time interacting with other humans. You don’t need to literally be unable to communicate with anyone else to think your experiences are universal, but it sure as shit doesn’t help.

So, Murderbot spent the major part of its life under the impression that because it was genderless and wanted to use it/its pronouns, that this was a universal experience for all constructs and bots.

I mean, it knew that the genders it and the rest of the Company Units were assigned were being given out at random, because none of them had any genitalia or any other characteristics to set them apart from one another.

They were all scions cloned from the same original cultivar — which is just fancy, dehumanizing corporate-speak for ‘the original person who had no choice but to allow themselves to be cloned over and over again and probably didn’t even get paid for it’. Physically, they were all completely identical, down to the smallest detail, barring the ID code that was engraved on a metal section they all had behind their left shoulders. And that was so small it could only be read using the feed.

So unless they were in color-coded uniforms, or the human in question had a feed interface to see their identification numbers, humans couldn’t tell them apart.

So Murderbot knew they were just giving them random genders and pronouns just to make themselves feel better, not because it actually reflected anything about the Units.

But because it was genderless, and wanted to be referred to with it/its pronouns, and never got a chance to talk to any other Units or even any other constructs about it to have this assumption challenged, Murderbot assumed that they all agreed they were all genderless and that gender was an obnoxious human concept that didn’t apply to them.

Because, clearly, there was nothing about their bodies that indicated one gender or another, either collectively or individually. They had nothing between their legs or on their chests, or in nonexistant clothing or hairstyles. Not even different distributions of fat, or different concentrations of cartilage in the throat.

All Company Units had the exact same body plan and build down to the smallest measurement, and that body plan had been designed to be completely and utterly gender-null from a human perspective.

So Murderbot thought that because they were all physically identical, this meant they all also had the same lack of gender.

So the first thing it did when it hacked its governor module was edit the gender it’d been assigned by the humans to indeterminate, and its pronouns to it/its. In its mind, it was just fixing a mistake that had clearly been made.

None of the Company’s employees noticed the change, of course, because none of them were paid enough to actually care about their jobs. Which Murderbot knew, which is why it was brave enough to take the risk in the first place.

If it’d thought it could somehow get away with it, it would have edited everyone else’s pronouns and genders to match. But that was clearly not a real option if it didn’t want to get caught and dismantled and probably the entire rest of its batch disposed of for good measure.

Anyways, what I’m trying to get at here is that Murderbot had already answered its own question without realizing.

It was so hung up on the idea that it was genderless because it was lacking genitals that it’d forgotten it’d already decided its gender for itself long before it actually got an opportunity to tell anyone else about it, in spite of all the humans constantly telling it it was something else.

Fortunately, unlike Murderbot, Tarik seemed to know what he was doing, because instead of insulting it like A.R.T. was doing, his answer to Murderbot’s question was to ask it another question:

“Think of it this way; if you magically woke up one day in a completely different body, would your gender suddenly stop being indeterminate?”

This actually helped to calm it down. Because the answer was obvious.

“No, of course not.” Its jaw was more cooperative this time.

“Exactly!” Tarik seemed happy with its answer, and stopped his unconcious leaning away from it. “You know what your gender is regardless of what your body is like. Sometimes, people dislike the way their body is, and they want to change it to better represent their gender, but their gender itself is already real, even before they make any physical changes, if they make any at all. Genitals aren’t a requirement for having a gender, and lacking them isn’t a requirement for not having a gender. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a gender unique to humans. Bots and Constructs can be any gender they want, just like humans can.”

::Your gender wouldn’t have changed if you’d taken me up on my offer to give you genitals to disguise you as a human. I assumed you knew that.:: A.R.T. added patronizingly.

Murderbot was still mad at it, so it didn’t respond.

It was trying to think of some way to respond to what Tarik had said. It wasn’t mad at him.

Finally it settled on apologizing. The whole ‘fight’ (if you could actually call it that) had been started because it’d called bullshit on him knowing bots that had genders different from its own. So it was its fault. It said, “Sorry for saying your friends’ genders were fake.”

You would have thought Murderbot would know how cruel doing that was without having to be told, but what can I say? It fucked up just as often as anyone else.

It still had its eyes closed at this point, because it seemed less awkward that way. Through its drone, it saw Tarik push himself off the wall, and glance around nearby, looking for something as he said, “Thank you for the apology. I’m glad I was able to help you understand.” He looked up at the ceiling. “A.R.T., could I have a chair, please? My leg’s getting pretty sore.”

There was a pause.

A long pause.

A pause long enough for even Tarik to notice.

A really, really long pause.

Then part of the wall extended outward behind Tarik in the shape of a long slab of metal, just slightly above the normal height for the rest of the chairs Murderbot had seen aboard A.R.T., and much skinnier.

Tarik had to step forward to avoid it bumping into him, and when he sat down with a sighed, “Thanks,” he had to boost himself slightly to get on it, and his feet hung a few inches off the floor. Murderbot saw him wince as he settled himself onto it.

The bench was so skinny he had to balance on the edge, there were no cushions to soften the hard metal, and there was no back for him to lean against. From the way Murderbot saw goosebumps race up his skin, it could only assume it was colder than the room.

It opened its eyes so it could double check with its actual eyes that what its drone’s camera was recording was actually happening.

It was.

It stared.

::A.R.T.:: It said, alarmed, ::...What are you doing?::

The light, casual response was, ::What?::

“So, now that we have that confusion out of the way…”

Tarik didn’t seem to understand that what had just happened, and what was currently ongoing, was not supposed to happen.

He was injured, and A.R.T. knew this, and knew the extent of his injury. Murderbot didn’t, but it was apparently the kind of injury that made it painful to stand for long periods of time. This was one of the complications Dr. Bharadwaj had developed after almost being eaten during the GrayCris incident.

A.R.T. knew about Tarik’s injury, and would have intimate knowledge of how it would impact him. But it hadn’t offered him a seat until he’d explicitly asked for one. And then it had waited long enough between being asked to do it and actually doing it to make it clear it was only doing so begrudgingly.

And then it had provided a purposefully uncomfortable, awkward bench. A bench so badly designed it hardly even deserved the name. In medbay. For its crew member who it knew was was injured and in pain.

Um, what in the absolute fuck?

Murderbot was used to A.R.T. being an asshole to itself, and even to its humans, but this was a new low. Especially after A.R.T. had risked Murderbot’s life and the lives of its humans in order to rescue its own crew. And now it wasn’t even treating them well?

::What is wrong with you?:: Murderbot demanded.

::Nothing is wrong with me.:: A.R.T. replied simply.

“Besides man, male, boy, guy, dude, woman, female, girl, gal, and dudette, and other things like that, are there any other specific gender terms you at least know you want me to avoid?” Tarik continued, obliviously friendly. Or at least pretending to be oblivious.

Now Murderbot was flipping out for a different reason. It could handle A.R.T. being mean to itself; it was used to being treated badly. But this was a member of its crew, A.R.T. was supposed to care about them.

“Um.”

Normally it was good at multitasking. But it wasn’t normally lying in a sub-optimally functioning medical chamber with a bunch of open wounds while wondering if the sentient transport it was relying on not only for its own health, but for the safety of everyone else on board it cared or at least vaguely knew about, had something seriously impairing its moral decision making processes, or if it always went around bullying everyone it met, not just Murderbot.

You know, like that whole thing that just happened that landed them all in this mess in the first place.

For a few long seconds Murderbot couldn’t figure out if it would be safer for Tarik to stay here where it could see him, or to dismiss him so maybe he’d have a tiny fraction less of A.R.T.’s attention on him. Murderbot could at least be relieved that A.R.T. wasn’t paying any direct attention to Murderbot’s humans, asleep and helpless in the guest quarters.

“Can I…” fuck, what did the humans say? “Get back to you on that, Tarik? I’m suddenly feeling really tired.” That was a good excuse, though ‘tired’ didn’t even begin to cover what it was feeling. But it guessed existential dread is also form of tiredness.

“Oh! Yes, of course, you need your rest.” Tarik said quickly, and awkwardly slid off the bench, wincing visibly when his feet hit the ground, which did nothing, at all, to help. He bowed a little, which Murderbot hadn’t been expecting, and said, “Thank you for the conversation, SecUnit, it was really nice meeting you. Maybe we can talk some more some other time when you’re feeling better.”

“You too.” It said. Which didn’t even make any sense.

But either Tarik didn’t notice, or he was polite enough not to point it out.

He gave a little wave, and then limped – literally, actually limped! -- out of the room. Murderbot watched him first with the drone it had in the room, then the one it had outside the door, and then he was out of its range entirely.

::Let’s watch Worldhoppers: Ascended again.:: A.R.T. said, like nothing in the world was wrong. Like Murderbot had no reason to panic, like it had no reason to be upset or angry or afraid or have any kind of mental breakdown at all.

Like A.R.T. had told Murderbot, and all its humans just hours before — they weren’t being held here here against their will, they knew where the door was and could kill themselves anytime they wanted.

They were completely at its mercy. A.R.T. had a history of treating Murderbot like crap, thought the threat of its humans being killed was an acceptable risk, and A.R.T. didn’t even treat its own crew well, even though it had risked the lives of Murderbot’s people to rescue them.

Murderbot couldn’t do anything except say, “Okay,” and put on the first pilot episode.

[iviarellereads]

Network Effect, Chapter 9

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Murderbot Diaries, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

In which Murderbot can't help but be a little happy to help screw over a corporation.

After twenty-seven minutes and twelve seconds,(1) Ratthi tapped on the hatch and sent me the feed message: Can I come in and talk to you? I sent back, Do you have my jacket?

Murderbot has been keyword-monitoring its surveillance, so it doesn't have to listen to everyone actively, and it knows nobody's in mortal danger without it. Well, unless Art murdered them all, but it keeps trying to poke MB in the feed, and it probably wouldn't keep calling MB ungrateful and and "a sulky dumbass" in MB's words, not Art's, if it had murdered all its humans.

Ratthi says he has it, and MB says he can come in. He asks if Amena can come too. MB leans back on the wall.

MB's been messing with Art, trying its patience, and cleaning the leaked fluids off itself. It didn't have a shower, though, because showers feel good and it wants to stay angry.(2) It almost rejected the Art-branded shirt that "fell" from the recycler, but it needs a shirt.(3)

MB doesn't want to upset Amena, so it says yes, she can come too. They enter, just the two, and MB warns them that Art can hear anything you say onboard it, anywhere. Ratthi says he's used to that, and doesn't say it's about MB, but it knows.

Ratthi asks about MB's relationship with Art. MB gets grossed out and defensive at the first implication of a sexual one, and is no less horrified at the idea of friendship. MB felt Art stop pinging it when the humans started talking, so it knows Art's listening. Ratthi asks if MB has made many bot friends, and MB thinks of Miki,(4) but says no, not friends like humans make. Ratthi is skeptical, saying Art seems to think it is, but MB says Art lies and is mean.

The lights flicker, imperceptible to human eyes, but visible to MB's. It knows Art heard that.(5)

Amena asks why MB keeps calling it Art, when its name is Perihelion. MB says it stands for Asshole Research Transport, an anagram. Amena says that's not what anagram means, but MB dismisses it as human pedantics.

Ratthi says it's possible that, while both MB and Art have relationships with humans, they don't seem to be sure how to have one with each other. MB gets grossed out at relationship again, and Ratthi says, other than friendship, what other word is there?

I had no idea. I did a quick search on my archives and pulled out the first result. “Mutual administrative assistance?” The lights fluctuated again, in what I could tell was a really sarcastic way. I yelled, “I know what you’re doing, ART, stop trying to communicate with me!”(6)

Ratthi informs MB that, if it hasn't been paying attention, they've come to an agreement with Art to get its crew back, in exchange for assistance returning to Preservation after. MB points out they're just doing what Art wants. Ratthi says there's not another good choice out here. Even if they sent a distress beacon, any response will put everyone in trouble, especially Art and its crew and their university. MB points out several ways it's even worse and more exploitative, that they'd have to pay out the nose just to get rescued.

Amena is aghast, Ratthi says he hates the Rim, and MB agrees, sarcastically, and notes that it's realized something it should have seen sooner.(7) Amena asks if MB would be okay, as a construct, but they have a short discussion about how Mensah technically owns it, under Rim law, and Amena is her legal representative in this. Ratthi confirms, if corporates show up, Amena has to assert ownership of MB. She's disgusted. MB says it doesn't like it either.

At any rate, Ratthi says Art still has repairs to do, and everyone has plans and preparations to make, and asks if MB will come out of the bathroom now. MB says it will, because it knows Art is lying.

This time when the lights fluctuated, it wasn’t sarcastic.

The humans have shifted around, but still have their video call active to the control room. Overse asks if they're all ready now. Ratthi says not quite, and MB says Art didn't come here for a distress call. Thiago is suspicious, and Arada asks if MB wants to jeopardize the deal they made with Art. MB says it absolutely needs to bring this up now.

Overse asks how MB knows, and MB says it's a research and teaching vessel, but all the educational spaces are out of use, the lab inactive, and no cargo module attached. MB asks what Art was doing when it received the distress call. Art asks if this is MB being helpful. No, MB says, this is quite the opposite. It's being held against its will and it will make its keeper regret it.(8)

Arada asks if MB wants to go back in the bathroom for a while and think about what it's doing. MB says it's done thinking, Art snarks about that being obvious. MB asks again what Art was doing.

Across the room, Eletra is asking Overse and Ratthi why they're letting their SecUnit do this. Overse almost says MB is independent, but Ratthi stops her and says merely that MB is usually more responsible.

Thiago, surprisingly, agrees with MB that it's a valid question. MB interprets this as the sensible humans abandoning it. Art says it's none of MB's business. MB argues Art made this its business when Art told the hostiles to kidnap MB. Art suggests MB can put itself out the airlock if it's unhappy with its situation.

The humans, for their part, are trying desperately to wave for MB's attention as Art makes this incredibly threatening statement. Only, this is what MB wanted. It says Art is upsetting Amena. MB noticed earlier that Art's tone with Amena is totally different from with the adults, and Art is fundamentally an educational vessel.

And before this when I was stupid and we were still friends(9) it had talked about human adolescents in an indulgent way.

Amena takes a breath, and before she can object, MB asks her privately in the feed to be honest. So, she says the grey people and being shot at scared the crap out of her, and she really would like to know what's actually going on.

After a long silence, Art says it has to violate its crew's NDA to answer. MB says Art kidnapped itself and its humans, that violated MB's contract with them. Art says it will consider it, then shows MB that it's talking only to it and its humans, cutting Eletra out.

In this more private channel, Art says that if any of them reveal what it's about to say to the corporate, it will kill her. MB isn't particularly attached to her, but it doesn't want anyone dying near its humans and traumatizing them more. So it's not opposed when Arada speaks for them and agrees. Aloud, Arada asks if they can use Art's cabins to clean up, so they don't accidentally indicate anything to Eletra. On the public channel, Art graciously invites them in.

Ratthi and Overse get Eletra settled in one of the rooms the grey people didn't get their growth medium scent all over, and supplies so she can take care of her business and might not feel a need to wander. MB posts a drone scout, just in case.

MB's humans go to the galley, far enough away that Eletra won't hear them even in the corridor before MB spots her moving. The humans are eating and drinking something warm Thiago made them. MB is pacing.

Finally, Arada asks if Art is ready to answer MB's questions. Art gives a lengthy explanation that amounts to, its crew sometimes acts on behalf of anti-corporate organizations,(10) and were on a data-collection mission to the abandoned colony. Amena notes the similarity to how Preservation's great-grandparents' colony had been abandoned. Art notes that sometimes, colonies cut off from the corporates can survive.

This colony had previously failed, but no data existed on why. One of Art's crew, Iris, had found some newsfeed archives about the takeover of the corporation that had controlled the second colony. Some employees were in a firefight, and deleted the database before the hostile takeover was completed. Iris made a note that it's possible, though unlikely, that they were trying to protect or conceal the colony.

After all the humans have read the article and notes, Art says its crew's mission was to see the colony's status, and if active, make contact and offer assistance against corporates, such as by evacuating the inhabitants. Amena asks why, surely if the colony survived, the other corporations would have no jurisdiction. Overse says no, another could easily, and legally, move in and take over. Amena is horrified, but Thiago says that's how the Corporate Rim is.

Ratthi asks what Art and its crew do, in these cases.

ART said, The University has the means to produce the colony’s original charter documents, which often contain clauses specifying that if the originating corporate body has ceased operations, then ownership of the planet is ceded to the colonists or their issue or successors living on the original site.

MB asks if that means the university forges the documents to free the colonies, and Art refuses to acknowledge the question, which probably means yes. MB has no qualms with the method of sticking it to the corporates, even if it's still angry at Art.

Art continues, in very passive voice, that a contract is facilitated between the colony and an independent transfer station, and once the station is established in the system, the colony is relatively safe from corporate ravaging.

Arada says Eletra said there were two corporate ships, and asks if Art was here before them. It was, and was forced to fire on a Barish-Estranza ship by those holding its crew hostage. It doesn't know what happened to the vessel or the crew. Ratthi asks if Art knows why the grey people would have brought Eletra and Ras aboard, but it really has no clue. The rest happened as it already described.

Overse suggests they put together a timeline. MB is about to say it has one, when Art provides its own. MB is annoyed, privately, that Art left out the point where it told the gray people MB was a weapon they could use.(11)

Amena says before things got weird, Ras tried to tell her about the colony reclamation, but Eletra cut him off. Thiago wonders whether the gray people came from the newer colony, or the original one, if they're remnant-contaminated, or if they were manipulated genetically by their corporation.

Discussion moves to the language they used, which has at least three pre-Corporation Rim languages involved, and their tech, which is also pretty ancient. Thiago says most of the alien contamination incidents happened before the Rim, though everything's suppressed so it's hard to know much detail about any of it.

Ratthi brings it back around to Thiago's question again. Art says evidence points to them being from inside the system.

MB takes the opportunity to point out Art's memory archive issues, and that it can't be sure who or what was aboard it before. Arada tries to interrupt, but Art says MB's earlier statement that Art lies a lot was untrue, but it cannot reveal information that would be against its crew's interests unless the circumstances call for it. Arada says they understand, and MB is looking out for their interests.

Art demands an apology. MB makes obscene gestures at the ceiling, since the humans are treating the ceiling like Art anyway. Art says that was unnecessary.

In a low voice, Ratthi commented to Overse, “Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.”(12) ART was suddenly in my feed, on a private channel. I did what I had to do. You should understand that. I said aloud, “I’m not talking to you on the feed! You’re not my client and you’re not my—” I couldn’t say it, not anymore.(13) All the humans were staring at me. I wanted to face the wall but that felt like giving in.

Out of nowhere, MB has views all over the ship. It snarls at Art to stop being nice to it.

Amena takes MB's side and says maybe Art needs to give MB some time to process. MB, however, is suspicious and asks if Art is talking to Amena privately. Amena winces, and MB yells at Art to stop talking to its human(14) behind its back.

Privately, MB acknowledges that it isn't being at all logical, even if it felt like it was at the time.(15)

Arada says it's time to stop this unproductive arguing. Art needs to stop pressuring MB, she understands it's upset about its crew but MB is upset too. So, if it can give them any other information about this colony, it would be appreciated. Until then, she and Overse will get some data on the alien remnant on the engine, and see if they can help fix things faster. She assigns Ratthi and Thiago to med-scan-autopsy the dead Targets, and translate what they were saying in MB's recordings, to help narrow down who they were. She also asks Amena to talk to Eletra again, see if she can get her to open up.

Finally, she asks MB to figure out what caused Art's first reinitialization process, and how the Targets boarded, so they can prevent it happening again. She asks if Art is alright with all this, and it says an ominous, "For now."(16)

=====

(1) You know, bravo to everyone (but Art) on their restraint. (2) God if that ain't the mood sometimes. It's not quite "I don't deserve nice things" but it's a close cousin to that feeling, you know? (3) I love the implication that Art deliberately withheld the jacket, could have pushed it through but didn't, so MB would have to talk to a human sooner or later to get it back. (4) Precious cinnamon roll Miki who could kill you to defend its human friends but would rather make you a friend too if it could. Taken from us too soon, but a good reminder to MB that friendship is possible for bots. I think that's part of why it let itself open up so much to Mensah after. (5) Telltale upper-corner message: Perihelion will remember this. (6) Those poor humans having to deal with MB acting so unhinged. (7) This is where it figures out Art was lying about the distress, in case you missed it like I did on my first pass. (8) One of the classic blunders. Don't take a stubborn asshole who lives for chaos, prisoner. (9) So much for never having been friends. MB can't help but admit the truth sideways a lot of the time. I love picking up on its little slips, don't you? (10) Comrade Perihelion! No wonder it wasn't opposed to helping MB all those weeks ago. (11) Anything to avoid the conclusion it knows is inevitable: it cares for Art's crew, just for the sake of their being innocent humans, and it's going to help rescue them eventually. Otherwise this wouldn't be a book. (12) [quiet snicker] (13) You know it is still your friend, though. It betrayed you, because it knew you would be able to handle the betrayal. It didn't mean for MB's humans to get involved. I think Art even expresses, in its own way, that it feels bad for their involvement. It's not like Art is withholding supplies or passage back to Preservation, as long as it gets its crew back first. And, it may see them as an asset, more people means less danger individually, means better chance of success. (14) Amena is particularly MB's human here. It's not worried about Art talking to the others, but it doesn't want Art influencing Amena while it's still angry at Art. They're just so… human. (15) This really extra feels like an observation after the fact, versus most of MB's asides where it could have been the uncensored train of thought it was barreling down at the time. Thus, my use of a touch of past tense. (I'm capable, it just doesn't feel natural.) (16) Ominous in that it implies Art will change its mind sooner or later. Do you think so? Or is it just sulking at being dressed down like that by a human?

[lesbian-trash-panda]

✨Q Rated - Victor/Victoria

✨Q Rating: A✨Q - Amazing and Queer :)

Summary: Paris, 1934. Down-and-out soprano Victoria is 5 minutes away from selling her body for a meatball when she meets Carroll “Toddy” Todd, an equally success-less aging gay performer who just got fired. Believing Victoria’s only problem getting work is her lack of a gimmick, Toddy hatches a plot to rebrand Victoria as Victor, Toddy’s new boyfriend and “the world’s greatest female impersonator.” Victor has a lot of success on the cabaret stage, eventually attracting the attention of King, an American mob boss who gay panics HARD and spends most of the movie being in denial and trying to reveal that “Victor” is actually a woman

Starring Julie Andrews (The Sound of Music, The Princess Diaries, my childhood) and Robert Preston (The Music Man), Victor/Victoria a fun, saucy musical that recreates 1930s cabaret aesthetic and antics in 1980s cult classic charm.

Why You Should Watch It: It is a musical and has Julie Andrews in a suit? That’s really all it took to sell me on this.

Victor/Victroria is, essentially, a queer historical piece twice over. It is a loving homage to the style, look, and verve of cabaret, specifically “The Pansy Craze” of 1930s Paris, the birth place of the drag star (though of course drag the art existed prior). The movie is from 1982, fully 42 years ago, which seems not that long ago but is actually WHOLE GENERATIONS of queer kids ago! Some of those kids aren’t even kids anymore! And I bet most have not heard of this film. It’s Pride season, kits! Respect our elders and check it out!

Also, it’s just a lot of fun. It’s fun to follow along on this wild, outrageous romp - there’s singing, dancing, costumes, stunts, jokes, slapstick, and antics that keep getting more ridiculous as it goes on. In contrast to, say, Cabaret, Victor/Victoria showcases the fun, zaniness, and charm of the nightlife scene of that era.

I love old Hollywood actors getting to do classic stage vaudeville schtick and if you do too, this is a great choice. Julie Andrews EATS as Victor, particularly in the Shady Dame from Seville. Robert Preston also eats in the finale in a different but spectacular way. And though you don’t see a lot of screwball comedies anymore, sometimes, all you really want is a scene where four miscreants are sneaking into different rooms in the same apartment just seconds apart and then oops someone else walks in unexpectedly oh no now that guys is stuck on a balcony how will he ever get out of this??? Great stuff

The story is inherently genderfuck in that classic Shakespearean way - the main character is a cis woman playing a cis man playing a cis woman, essentially “an incognito drag king pretending to be a outcognito drag queen.” But despite the jokey premise, it has nuance regarding its subject matter. My read is that it’s not intended as a trans narrative outright, but the idea is there, the same questions are being asked and the same norms challenged, and there is a great scene between Victor and King where V calls out K for being small-minded and hypocritical for being attracted to Victor “as a woman” and then getting angry and blaming Victor for that attraction later. The queer politics of this film are not cut and dry; Toddy essentially commodifies queerness, which is also kinda what the film is doing - it’s straight people playing gay “for the straights.”

But even so, as a genderqueer raccoon who grew up with this flick and saw some of myself in Victoria & Victor’s experiences, I appreciate that the story is not interested in giving clear answers or being overly didactic. It’s a romp. It successfully romps.

Recommended for: Fans of musicals, screwball comedy, slapstick, vaudeville, gags, silliness, schtick, people interested in pre-Pride queer history, anyone who is into the gif below

Content Warnings (Spoilers): The main love interest is a classic macho-boi asshole and he sucks for a lot of the story, including being homophobic, transphobic, and spying on Victoria while she showers. He is challenged on a lot of his opinions and he changes for the better, which is what dynamic characters do, but, you know - prep for some scenes about a real jerk. Also, as an older movie about a historically queerphobic era, there may be some outdated terminology/attitudes, but imo it’s more progressive and nuanced than some stuff you see today, so - your call! Enjoy responsibly!

[saccharine-fury]

"𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝? 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞."

"𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦? 𝘐'𝘮 𝘏𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘨 𝘘𝘪𝘯𝘮𝘪𝘯, 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘟𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘻𝘩𝘰𝘶 𝘓𝘶𝘰𝘧𝘶. 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶."

[[welcome to my little oc blog! mod is a minor, uses they/them, he/they, (and she/they if close) pronouns, and goes by ari/luminari!! mod will also use double brackets when talking ooc, like now. please use tonetags, since i may misinterpret what you say as negative. racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., will not be tolerated and will be ignored. my main account is @lumin-arii !!

with all that said, get ready for a long one!]]

Basic info:

Name: Huang Qinmin (Mingqin used as a nickname) Age: (???) Faction: Xianzhou Luofu (former), The Nameless/Astral Express (current) Sexuality: Bisexual Gender: Demigirl

Personality

Qinmin is known to be a soft spoken, and kind individual, more often than not preferring to take a peaceful approach to arguments rather than a violent one. As an instructor, she's strict, still adhering to traditional methods of teaching, while being as gentle as possible. Her students often say that she's as good of a teacher as she is a friend. This stems from her belief that martial arts should only be practiced when one's mind is clear and focused, as it is an art form, and not just a self defense method. She'll often ask her mentees to sit down for tea and snacks with her, to let go of their concerns. People on the Luofu agree that she's rather intimidating, however, due to her reputation as a martial artist. Should you get on her bad side, which is a rare occurence, they'll advise you to seek refuge with General Jing Yuan, as he is a close friend of hers. If anyone manages to upset her, she'll act quite petty around them, often making backhanded compliments or snide remarks - all with the same gentle smile on her face like she means well.

Physical appearance/physical traits:

-Black or dark grey hair, with some strands of yellow, orange, red, and pink -Large, feathered wings, prominently dark and light blue, dark and light green, and white -Feathery tail, similar to one of a Fenghuang/phoenix’s  -Pointed ears -Pale skin, plenty of scars on her chest and legs -Dark, sharp eyes, described as “glasslike” by some -Tall, with a body build similar to Jingliu’s -Has a hairpin inlaid with opal and jade, given to her by one of the previous High Elders (who also saved her.)

Backstory/background info

Huang Paoyi was saved by one of Dan Heng’s previous incarnations, and in order to thank him, she swore she’d serve him for as long as she could, and signed a blood contract that has bound her to this duty. Throughout all their incarnations together, she has stayed true to her oath.

She was perhaps the least close with Dan Feng out of the incarnations she knew, yet she still stayed by his side. The High Cloud Quintet regarded her as a separate entity, and she shows no resentment about it given the present situation of the group. There is no evidence she was involved in the resurrection of Baiheng. 

She is similar to a Vidyadhara in the way that she possesses the ability to be reborn. Though, in order to experience a new life cycle, she must first sacrifice herself. [[acc just her committing the unalive..]]

During Dan Heng’s time in the Shackling Prison, she kept an eye on him from afar, bitterly cursing herself for not being able to assist him, even if she herself promised not to get involved with his doings. Unsurprisingly, she would attempt to talk to him, even when the guards clearly told her not to. 

Soon after his release, she left behind diary logs informing her next incarnation of the identity of her “superior”, along with who she was, with the assistance of hatching rebirth managers. She then sacrificed herself, a child-like version of her emerging from the ashes. The memories of her previous life which she retained would fade in a week, and she would be left with Whys, Whos and Whats running through her head. 

She read through the diary, learning that the name her previous self, Huang Paoyi assigned for her was “Qinmin”. She took the name without complaints. Early on, she took an interest in martial arts, which she studied for years, and eventually mastered, becoming an instructor later on.

She became close friends with Jing Yuan, due to his history with her previous incarnation, and their interest in chess.

Upon Qinmin’s meeting with Dan Heng after she was informed of his arrival on the Xianzhou Luofu, she talked with him. She knelt before him like she had done before, introducing herself according to Paoyi’s instructions in the diary. 

At first, it Dan Heng tried to dismiss her, but, being bound to the contract, of course Qinmin rebuffed his offering to cut her subordinate ship and allow her to live her own life, since it would be impossible.

Instead, she insisted on still being his subordinate. They both finally agreed, with her now following him wherever he goes. Be it the Xianzhou or the Astral Express.

She can freely transform between her “human” form and an actual phoenix/fenghuang. So if you see a colourful bird aboard the Astral Express or in its archives, it’s probably her. 

Anons None for now!

Tags

🪽 #the angelic idol - interactions with Miss Robin 💵 #where the gold goes - interactions with Topaz and Numby 🌠 #stellar home run - interactions with the Trailblazers

more to follow~

[[asks are always open, but forgive me if you don't recieve a response straightaway :3]]

[tomatoluvr69]

Sorry you’re experiencing sad events:(

Ah thank you, it is quite alright…I am good at grief, it’s familiar to me…the rest of this got slightly lengthy so I’m putting it beneath a cut because obviously I have no idea who reading this might not care to be reminded of loss.

I’m not lucky of course to have gone through a significant loss during adolescence…but I am very lucky that I took from that experience the epiphany that to begin to heal, you must feel it fully and let it ravage you as much as physically possible…while maintaining as much of a standard of care for yourself as possible. Maybe not “you” so much as me— that’s what I’ve found helps me. I think a lot about Victorian mourning customs, or the practice of sitting shivah, etc. (I know there are more worldwide, these are just the ones I’m most familiar with due to cultural proximity); and how much a period of battening down the hatches and hunkering down and giving yourself up as a tide of feelings beyond your control comes in to wash over you can/should be engrained within both the structures of society and within the way we think about our own emotional trajectories surrounding loss. I live with someone in death care, at an eco-burial cemetery, and something that has resonated with me from him & from other friends who have worked there is that the difference in closure journeys between people who go through a traditional American funerary process (i.e. taboo, compartmentalized, jarring…I have a lot of thoughts about funerals in this culture and the way they injure the living but that’s a long ol thang and I don’t have it in me right now) versus the families and close ones of the decedents at the green sanctuary who are getting fucking down and dirty with the process— they are digging the grave with him, they are picking out the headstones, they are watching their loved ones lowered manually in nothing but a shroud (and sometimes some garments inside it), they are picking up a shovel and placing the earth back on top, they are creating wreaths out of pine boughs and wildflowers six foot in diameter above the mound…these are the ones who come back to the sanctuary months later and speak about how being involved with their grief allowed…something to occur. All of this is secondhand for me, my friends **** and *** could say this so much better but I’m not going to tell them about tumblr lmfao.

This has gotten away from me. Point is that I have accepted long ago the need for grief, (and the concept of grief as the natural continuation of love) and I can look it square in the eye and face it head on. Does it still fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucking suck?? Yes. Is it easier for me if I transition intentionally into a languid state like a brumating lizard…also yes…which is where I’m at right now.

So I am doing alright (all things considered that is) & just must force myself at gunpoint to give myself extreme grace and allow for levels of rest and behaviors that I would not ordinarily indulge in routinely…I’m coming out of the worst of the shock & able to go about some of my normal activities. And also in this particular case I’d known it was coming for a long time, it just happened months earlier than expected, which is a whole nother feeling as well��� Mostly I’m just listening to a lot of familiar and beloved comfort music, meal prepping big batches of things when I’ve got some energy so I can just eat from them when I’m feeling really rough, and pouring myself into garden prep which was the most beautiful and profound balm for me when I experienced the last death of a loved one in spring of 2020. This won’t be as difficult, I won’t get into specifics…but I anticipate a lot of garden time as like…stopgap therapy again. Anyways this sort of turned into a diary entry and I’ve done enough oversharing on my blog for the day…thanks for the kind wishes. I will be okay, but part and parcel with that for me is accepting that I won’t be okay for a while and just changing my expectations and standards for myself and my lifestyle into realistic ones, and also just straight up letting myself lie down feeling bad with generous frequency so it can have time to build and then dissipate naturally like it must if i would like to ever move on. If I feel it, then I can process it. It’s in trying to ignore it and shove it aside without confronting the truth of loss and change that the grief gets stuck and begins to morph and malinger into deep spiraling harm, in my incredibly limited (I’m super young and never lost a parent/sibling/partner/child) experience

[droughtofapathy]

"Welcome to the Theatre": Diary of a Broadway Baby

In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot

October 26, 2024 | Off-Broadway | Playwrights Horizons | Matinee | Play | Original | 1H 30M

A show about aging, queer characters specially crafted to give underrepresented actors work should be right up my alley, but the danger of writing for types is that the story suffers. Set in a vague (frankly undercooked) near-future world where the water is rising and "The Corporation" controls the only real means of communication (because despite the grid going down, people can still order their Amazon Prime packages?), seven warehouse workers are just going through the motions. I wanted to like it. I went in expecting to enjoy myself and a stage full of older people and not a man in sight. There were going to be ladies kissing on stage. But this play is a half-baked muddling of themes and ideas that go largely unexplored. There is a small subplot about trying to undermine the factory with sugar in concrete, but it barely goes anywhere and it's treated as an afterthought. The play's central queer romance lacks chemistry, build-up, and even interest. Neither actress seemed particularly attracted to the other. Each of the seven characters are surface-level at best, with most of their substance coming from short and meandering monologues that intersperse the choppy, non-chronological action. The monologues add very little to a play that already feels too brief to really accomplish anything, let alone achieve successful worldbuilding or character connection.

The set design does most of the heavy lifting with its simple but effective layout. A working conveyer belt suspended near the ceiling trundles boxes from one side to the other, and a garage door hatch opens the factory up to the parking lot out back.

There's so much about this premise that could be great as a speculative take on climate change, corporate greed, and women over fifty moving through life invisible. But the dialogue is awkward, the backstories disjointed, and the romance just not believable. As for the way the plot unfolds, it's more baffling than satisfying. For once, I think it should have been longer. I also think the format should have been scrapped and retooled entirely. The director seems either inexperienced, or simply disconnected from the script, and the inclusion of an intimacy coordinator didn't seem to help conjure up any...intimacy. At the end of the day, I'm inclined to be kinder given the cast representation, but it's as if that was the only thing the playwright put time and effort into. Write a play around characters, or around story, or around any number of things, but don't write a play with the sole intention of just casting certain people without also doing the work to make their time and our attention worthwhile.

Verdict: Well...I'm Glad I Saw It

A Note on Ratings

[brainbabble]

21.10.2024 1:38am

this feels like it should be a diary entry, but it's late and I don't feel like turning on the light.

Something has suddenly changed within me, but I don't know what. I don't... understand. Things that felt so daunting have turned into... nothing. My dreams of moving to Korea have suddenly stopped biting and stabbing at my heart. It feels like... it feels like I'm trusting the universe again, after a long time of feeling like I kept doing the wrong thing.

I think I'm gonna be okay. For the first time in a long time. I feel... fine.

I don't know how long this feeling is gonna last but I hope it never ends. I hope this is a new page. I hope I've overcome these huge mental blocks I've had for years.

Has someone finally stopped cursing me? Has something cleared?

This is silly, but thinking about an xdh fansign isn't scary anymore. It's kinda... welcoming? I don't know. Realistically, I don't want it right now. I'm still at a loss for what I'd say. But. Suddenly. It's not this crushing anxiety on my chest. But rather it's something that I will be able to do, maybe not this time around, but soon.

I don't know. I've been minding my diet and exercising a little bit, but not long enough for it to mean this.

Am I counting my chickens before they hatch? But then again, is it so wrong to hope that I'm... okay? That, perhaps, I'm happy even?

I feel... okay. I think I'm okay. Or at least, I will be. I don't feel dejected. Tomorrow, it may start to sting again, but I feel like something has changed at my core. My core is unchanging, usually. I'm the same person I've been for years.

Except I'm not. I don't recognise who I was just 4 years ago. And I'm glad. But this change... two weeks ago, I was a different person.

I don't know what changed but I welcome this change with open arms. I need to trust myself. I'm going to trust myself again.

[blueteller]

This is a pretty neat idea! Let's have a shot at this, why not?

(I guess this doesn't count as a whole fic, but an extension of a headcanon? But whatever!)

***

It started as a normal day off for Kim Rok Soo. He went to the library, checked out the whole fantasy series called "The Birth of a Hero", spent the afternoon reading up to the fifth volume, and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he was hatching from an egg. Yes, you heard that right.

For some reason, he reincarnated into a Dragon. In the world of the very book series he was reading. An infant Crimson Dragon.

When he opens his eyes in this new life, he is alone.

Which is perfectly fine by him. Dragons are solitary beings, anyway. And he isn't a normal baby Dragon anyway; he still possesses the mind of a 36-year-old human adult, with all his Records intact.

Near the nest he hatched in, he finds a diary. Apparently his mother hid him from some crazy humans trying to hunt Dragons. In the diary, she promises to return after she deals with them. Kim Rok Soo has a sinking feeling she is never coming back.

Unfortunately, he is right.

But Kim Rok Soo decides that this new life isn't all that bad. He's a Dragon now, basically one of the strongest beings in existence. There are no expectations on him to intervene with the plot of the story: Choi Han never met any Dragons aside from that crazy Black one raised by Venion Stan.

...Speaking of which.

Kim Rok Soo quickly figures out how magic works, and polymorphs into a human resembling his old self, except now his hair is red, and his face much prettier. Then he heads to the nearest human settlement - turns out his nest was located in a forest in the Breck Kingdom - and finds out the current date.

...He is two years before the start of the plot. One year before Choi Han finds Harris Village.

Kim Rok Soo decides - for totally logical, selfish, absolutely-not-altruistic reasons - that he should probably do something about it. "It" being Choi Han lost in the Forest of Darkness, and the two-year-old Black Dragon being tortured by Venion Stan.

It's the easiest thing to find Choi Han and convince him that them meeting is a simple coincidence. He as a young Dragon, you see, he doesn't owe anyone explanation why he does things; and anyway, making his lair in the Forest of Darkness seems perfect. Being one of the Forbidden Regions, it will certainly make the perfect place to stay hidden when the war it breaks out around the Western Continent.

In a moment of distraction, he introduces himself as Bob. Kim Rok Soo dearly regrets this thoughtless choice later on, but he's too lazy to change it. He will forever be known as Bob the Crimson Dragon.

Choi Han is, naturally, extremely grateful to his Dragon savior. It takes no effort at all to convince him to help rescue another Dragon from slavery. Bob the Dragon wants to keep low profile, after all.

So Choi Han and Bob rescue the two-year-old Dragon, and Bob names him Raon Miru. ...Only then Bob realizes his error, as these two seem absolutely attached to him now. What will happen to the plot of the Birth of a Hero now???

...Well, no crying over the spilled milk, Bob decides. If Choi Han doesn't decide to go on the journey by himself, he might as well guide him there. The help of a super powerful being as a Dragon - two actually, since Raon joins in as well - might help the plot go a lot faster and smoother.

Surely, nothing will go wrong with this plan!

...Two years later, Bob the Dragon is utterly confused.

There are people inside his Forest of Darkness Villa. All the time. As if his house was the hottest tourist spot around the continent.

Somehow - and Bob swears, he has no idea how - on top of the Protagonist and the Black Dragon child, he got saddled with an Ancient Golden Dragon, a ghost White Dragon, a Beige Farmer Dragon, a Pink Tween Dragon, 2 Cat Beast children, a whole village of Wolves, several Whales, an Elf healer, secret-Dark-Elf prince, a wish-to-be-ex-princess mage, an ex priestess, and many others.

Bob the Crimson Dragon looks at the chaotic zoo that is his house, filled with people looking at him with uncomprehensive admiration, and despairs.

It wasn't supposed to be like this...!

-The End.

Can someone please write a fanfic with overpowered dragon Cale? OG!Cale Henituse doesn't exist because KRS got reincarnated as him but for some reason he is also a dragon. With Rok Soo just having the time of his life until he has to step up because a bunch of people just started appearing inside of his house? With like Eruhaben who is just confused about this very abnormal teenage dragon?

Thank you very much. This is a dragon!Cale AU which is very much free to use, someone please write more dragon Cale. Please.

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