I think what I love about the Murderbot Diaries

(aside from, you know Murderbot who I love and cherish)

It that it’s a very grim-dark distopian corporate hellscape setting, told through the perspective of someone who has seen some of the worst that world has to offer, who’s existence is part of the worst that world has to offer, and yet-

And yet it’s so full of hope.

Everywhere you look, there’s underground shipping routes to get refugees out from contract labour, there’s universities forging documents to get abandoned colonies out from corporate ownership, there’s people buying a secunit so the company don’t realise it’s hacked itself and has free will. A Tlacy employee smuggles out copies of the files to give them back to their owners, a human officer on HaveRatton station opens the security barrier to let Ayda Mensah escape. There’s a planet that took the promise of somewhere safe to live, of food and medical care, and kept that promise for generations.

And for all it can’t even see the hope yet, can’t even really believe it might be there yet (because trauma will fuck you up), Secunit keeps being that hope for other people.

Not just the lives it saves, not just all the times it shows up out of nowhere like a social anxious guardian angel with energy weapons in it’s arms and several lifetimes worth of soap operas in it’s storage.

When it talks to Dr Volescu all the way up the side of the crater, to keep him moving. When it sticks with the scientists on RaviHyral. When Tapan sneaks onto it’s sleeping mat, because she’s scared, and it ups it’s body temperature to keep her warm. When it keeps Amena safe from a predatory partner, when it tells her to go rest. When it hacks the Comfort Unit’s governor module. When it-version-2.0 gives Three the codes to hack itself.

Imagine being on RaviHyral. Imagine meeting a security consultant who you shouldn’t be able to afford, who goes above and beyond and doesn’t even check the payment card at the end, who tells you that sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about, that all you can do is learn to live with them, who’s clearly been through some shit but came out of it with so much compassion. Imagine the hope in that.

do you ever just think about [draws a deep breath]

textiles

[id: gifs of someone showing different angles of a small ceramic cat glazed in shiny blue and gold, with highlights of a lighter matte blue, forming patterns of clouds, stars, and the sun.]/end id.

💙 Dragonstarart on IG

[id: pencil sketch of Cor Leonis sitting cross-legged with Nyx in the form of a massive coeurl draped over his lap, and Cor giving him skritches on his upturned chin.]end id.

Little sketch inspired by @caparrucia's puppyverse. This verse's Cor and Nyx are amazing!

Nice whumpy thing: when people are intensely pragmatic about their injuries illnesses.

“Listen, if I pass out…”

“If you let up pressure, I’ll bleed out. So just, don’t move.”

“I know it ill hurt, just do what you need to.”

[id: digital illustration of Zoro, Nami, and Luffy dressed in school uniforms (more or less) and riding together on a moped. Zoro has swords in a bag on his back (complete with Marimo charm) and is covered in bandaids, Nami is driving with here eyes on the road, and Luffy is bent low over the handlebars, a lunch on his lap, his hat in the bike’s basket, and a grin on his face.

There are reference images in the corner: a photo of three schoolgirls on a moped, and Nami steering a waver.]/end id.

ROMANCE DAWN TRIO

[id: still of Pikachu lying flat on his back head titled so his eyes aren’t seen.]/end id.

vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

[id: photo of a pair of light switches. One is hand-labelled “top”, the other “bottom”.]/end id.

Um no I'm pretty sure those are both switches

A great thing about the tone-switching in Lord of the Rings is how it demonstrates how cultural standards of normal behavior are internalized and how people adjust to them. There’s no one way humans (or elves or dwarves or hobbits) are! We are shaped by our language and traditions and the patterns of behavior in our time. I think a flaw of the modern tendency to… translate, for lack of a better word, in media is that people end up assuming that their ancestors talked like them with a few more thous. We internalize a Monty Python concept of history where sense of humor and politeness are unchanged. But old-time nobles really did get into lengthy genealogical debates, 18th century lads loved run on sentences (as any speech will demonstrate), and vocabulary and cadence have changed a lot even over the past century. The conversational elements that do remain unchanged, turn taking, filled pauses, specific brands of humor, are also shifted, recolored, updated. 

By having different language styles (most notably, Hobbiton mid-century countryman vs. everywhere else’s high chivalric but also the upbeat improv poetry style of anyone elf related opposed to the terser linguistic mode of mortals) Lord of the Rings shows how people adapt to having to change those norms. Pippin and Merry have a round of banter while their solemn knightly friends stand awkwardly, unsure why this is taking so long. Those same solemn, knightly friends crack incredibly funny jokes so quickly Pippin and Merry nearly miss them. Gandalf, who only sometimes bothers to change his manner from location to location, throws off people in the Shire with his deep and ominous declarations, and people in Gondor with his easy-breezy attitude. And they all change! Pippin comes out of his adventure with a penchant for Old English drama and a knighthood. Gimli gets big poetic about caves and Galadriel after spending extended periods of time around elves (known to not shut up and to talk to everyone including trees). Sam and Gollum do some especially weird and fun mirroring around each other. It’s just… a really good representation of how people’s speech patterns bounce off each other.

[id: gifs of Steve Rogers jumping out of the elevator in The Winter Soldier, starting from the agents telling him, “Give up, Rogers! You have nowhere to go!” as he contemplates the drop to Sitwell watching him limp away from the landing and demanding “Are you kidding me?”]/end id.

[id: gif of Rogers slowly and gingerly uncurling after hitting the ground, even as glass still falls around him.]/end id.

RB if you think CD drives in computers are not obsolete, but in fact still necessary, despite being artificially phased out

[id: “This post has been removed for violating community guidelines.”]/end id.

[id: colored illustrations of the characters: a green goblin with stringy hair dressed in rags and with blood dripping from an arrow in her thigh and from her shoulder, captioned “she’s got mange”; Blinko, a respectably round hobbit with a large hat and smoking a pipe; Honey looking slightly uncomfortable but cleaned up in a purple dress and with shoulder-length black hair, labelled “the mange got treated”; and Honey in the same dress but looking very excited (an arrow shows how even her long ears have perked up) and thinking “! I smell meat pie!!!”

Digital painting of the couple looking happy together on their wedding day. Both are dressed in green, red, and white, with Blinko in a dark blue coat and hat, and Honey adorned with roses all over — in her bouquet, around her neck, and in a huge headdress.]/end id.

Half Goblin, half Hobbit.

Goblit.

[id: screenshot of a Reddit post titled “A British Jew is to be knighted by the King.”:

“He is to knee in front of the King and recite a sentence in Latin when His Majesty taps him on the shoulders with his sword. However, when his turn comes, he panics in the excitement of the moment and forgets the Latin. Then, thinking fast, he recites the only other sentence he knows in a foreign language, which he remembers from the Passover seder: ““Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol haleilot.” “Puzzled, His Majesty turns to his advisor and whispers, “Why is this knight different from all other knights?”

User Berkamin replied: “This is fantastic. “But I’m afraid this joke will pass over most people’s heads.”]/end id.

FJSJFJAJFJAHFOSJHDJAJDHAHDJAJDHA

Kingsglaive Lore: Day 1

Today's prompt is Punishment.

Silly or serious, tag us with your posts using #KGLore24 and we will reblog them. You can also post them to the Ao3 Collection here. We'd love to hear more about your Kingsglaive OCs or thoughts on how the organization runs.

Don't forget you can use today as your free day if this prompt isn't speaking to you, or just skip it all together. Just have fun!

[id: digital painting of Commander Cody from Star Wars in his orange/gold and white phase II clone armor, splattered with mud and possibly blood on a grassy planet. He has his helmeted head and gloves hands turned up toward the falling rain and lit from behind by an orange sunset.]/end id.

“Don’t they have rain on Kamino, Cody?”

“Don’t they have sunsets at your Jetii palace, sir?”

The General snorted gracelessly. “No one would ever believe the cheek on you. You’ve hoodwinked every ally I have.”

Cody grinned behind his helmet, all sharp teeth and satisfaction. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, sir.”