we get a lot of really great stuff in system collapse about murderbot's relationships with ART and ratthi, which makes sense, because it spends almost the entire book with them. but i also love how even though mensah isn't there for most of the story, other people keep reminding mb of her:
chapter 2, page 25: “From ART’s personnel file, she [Karime] was older than Mensah and she didn’t look like an intrepid space explorer, either, even in the protective environmental suit.”
2, 27: “It took Karime three seconds to process the abrupt statement. (She was almost as good at not looking annoyed as Mensah was.) She kept her expression neutral and patient.”
2, 28: “In the underground colony room, Karime lifted her brows. ‘Another occupied site?’ I thought she was being careful not to show too much reaction. It was the way Mensah would have played it.”
4, 70: “Iris looked at me and I saw her hesitate, because her hesitation looked a lot like Dr. Mensah’s hesitation. And I realized I really didn’t want to go down there.”
5, 104: "Iris has that same thing as Dr. Mensah, the thing where she’s able to look and sound calm under circumstances where shit is possibly about to go down.”
it's spent so much time with her and it knows her so well and respects her so much that she's the model against which it compares all other humans. it thinks about her when they're not together. it's protective of her. it has such total faith in her competence. it (non-romantically) loves her and doesn't want to not see her again. idk man, it just gets to me! and they were teammates (oh my god they were teammates!!)
bonus:
I said, aloud, "You have to be kidding me." (ch. 2, p. 28)
seven pages later, in reaction to the same thing:
Mensah had had time to review the feed video. She muttered, "Oh, you have to be kidding me."
Yeah.
twinsies 🥰
349 notes
·
View notes
I don't know if I've mentioned it on here before, but I've mentioned it elsewhere, that I probably wouldn't be able to maintain a relationship, romantic or otherwise, with an anti. Whether they're the feral ''kys'' type anti or not.
A lot of people seem to misinterpret that as me letting pointless fandom drama control my relationships, but that's genuinely not the reality. Fictional squicks are not the issue here; the treating fictional anything like it's comparable to my lived trauma is, and that is a thing that all antis do.
I don't care if lolicon and incest fiction makes you uncomfortable, you are allowed to be uncomfortable, but the reality is this shit is fiction, and fiction is not the same as 13-17 year old me getting sexually assaulted by multiple different adults on multiple different occasions.
I simply would not be able to maintain a relationship of any kind with someone who thinks a fucking drawing is in any way comparable to what those men did to me!
98 notes
·
View notes
In contrast to my last two Rain World OC posts, these guys aren't one offs and are part of my current core OC group. More info about them under the cut since it's lengthy.
First starting with The Serpent —
The Serpent is one of AV's many bio-engineered slugcats - if you can even call him a slugcat at this point - as part of a simple passion of experimenting with flexible slugcat biology
They share several traits in common with red lizards, those being constant hyper-aggression, tremendous strength, projectile spit and size
As for similarities with slugcats, well, a general elongated shape? Oh, mobility, unlike red lizards, the Serpent is very adept with vertical movement
AV didn't really have a clear goal in mind with the Serpent unlike the rest of their tube babies, they just sort of... happened.
The spontaneity of their creation though has been very interesting as despite initially being created with the solitary lifestyle of a red lizard, the Serpent still keeps his slugcat instinct of adopting random children they find
Though the Serpent seems at first, displeased with this development but rest assured that if you ever LOOK at his pup wrong they will kill everyone in the room and then himself
Though not pictured in his reference since he was my first Rain World OC, created with very little knowledge of the lore and started as a one-off, he has a citizen ID drone which AV uses to keep track of him
He was also simply created out of my desire to have a long slugcat and my obsession with red lizards combined so there's that, too
Speaking of AV, moving on to Administrative Violence —
Named after the song of the same name by Lauren Bousfield, you'd expect them to be - well - violent. They're not, at least not with those they commonly interact with
They are actually quite sweet with Blown Blooms, their partner, and Peach the slugcat
Weather conditions, all things considered, are pretty mild where they are but far, far off into the distance their partner Blown Blooms isn't so fortunate and natural erosion as well as other random unfortunate events unrelated to weather, has taken quite the toll on them
As a result and fearing for Blooms in every way possible but especially for their communication's inevitable severing and also Blooms being lonely all on their own, AV created a slugcat who resembles a strawberry lizard - a species of lizard Blooms is especially fond of
Peach was designed for protection and companionship first and foremost and an emergency messenger/relay secondly.
Outside of worrying for Blooms' condition and yearning & longing for close physical proximity to them the way creatures who aren't supermassive structures have the luxury of, AV spends most of their time studying their bio-engineered slugcats.
Each and every one of them is given a citizen ID drone for ease of tracking as well as general classifications
They couldn't give a shit about whatever problem the other iterators are working on - just these funny little slugcats
They take the occasional interest in other animals too but it's mainly slugcats
And finally, Blown Blooms and Peach —
Blooms, like AV, is named after a song of the same name by Lauren Bousfield. Peach is just named after her colors.
Blooms, like their partner AV, has a complete disinterest in the great problem and a very big interest in bio-engineering
This time with plants rather than animals though they have a soft spot for small critters but they're usually never the subject of any experiments - just study and admiration
However, due to a deteriorating state, Blooms isn't quite able to use their equipment to manipulate genetic information like they used to - which is upsetting
So instead, they help AV with their current studies as well as keeping tabs on their own prior experiments
They have Peach now, though, which brings a much appreciated break from constant studying and nice close companionship
Peach will often catch prey outside and come back to eat it with Blooms and occasionally Blooms will play around with Peach and levitate the prey around for Peach to chase in anti-grav
The event that pushed AV to create Peach was when a creature entered Blooms' chamber and attacked them, partially damaging their puppet before being killed and then expelled from the chamber
Blooms is absolutely still capable of themselves and ultimately damaging the puppet a bit is nothing when taking account the sheer scale of an iterator - but AV will be AV
Plus, Blooms isn't complaining about getting a cute little companion from AV
And general trivia/info —
Everyone here is aroace. All of them. AV & Blooms' relationship is non-romantic in a sapphic way
The Serpent's pup's name is Pipsqueak
I know rudder tails shouldn't curve like that but I decided that after I finished drawing the Serpent and I wasn't about to redraw anything at that point
The other Iterators in AV and Bloom's local group are Illuminated Crown of Fire, Projections of Watchful Eyes, and an unnamed lunar-eclipse inspired iterator.
I have little information on them right now, but they are each based off of solar eclipses, stars and lunar eclipses respectively
In all, this local group is just a bunch of experiment freaks to varying degrees except for ICoF whose presence is often forgotten because of how little they speak but is also ever looming
And that's all! Thank you for reading this far in <3
27 notes
·
View notes
Boogie Man, Utionium and Bubbles!! ~@soft-spooks (good luck in class btw u got this!)
Thank you! I did okay for class when you send this Ask but I am now back in class and Im hoping it go well today ;w; thank u for the well wishes 💕💕💕
The Boogie Man 🎵 — Quick! Put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first five songs that come up!
My playlist basically went Mr.Worldwide 🧍♀️🏃♀️🏃♀️
Professor Utonium 🥼 — Are there any scientific inventions or discoveries that fascinate you?
You heard of girlies telling true crime like tea so let me talk about antibiotics like them too 💅
Radioactive is cool but the history of Penicillin (the first pure Antibiotic) is one of my fav. Im just gonna write a very simplified version of it after rereading it just now lol
There's reports of usage of mold to treat infection way way back before the 20th century especially in ancient greek and egypt but the creation of the first fully synthetic and commercialise antibiotic only started during the early 40s so like if you get any bacterial infection from uhhh lets say a cut on your pinky, you rubbed your eyes with a dirty hand, you look as someone at the wrong time, you had a hanky panky with Patty at the back alley or maybe you just exist, you can die. Existing antimicrobial meds like sulfanilamide even the strongest one sometimes doesnt work with diseases that in modern days we can simply heal with just 1 course of antibiotics.
Anyway how we discovered Penicillin was purely by accident when back in 1929, Alexander Fleming discovered one of the strep strain he was cultivating in his petri dish that he left for a few days for a holiday seemed off. Upon closer inspection he realized there's a strain of mold that grew on the dish and noticed that the bacteria didnt grow around the mold ring so he conducted a few experiments to comfirm his discovery and ended up publishing a paper about his findings. Despite this though no one wanted to do anything about it. They read the paper and just left him on seen and Fleming wasnt a chemist, he's a biologist, the lowest of the low for the nerds back in the 19th century because all the cool kids major in physics and studying radioactive and actively promoting radioactive quackery while their jaw is rotting off from the radium exposure so he couldn't do anything about it and he just let his research in the back burner until like 10 years later a group of nerds at Oxford found his paper and like "wait this man was actually cooking" and decided to take the challenge to purify this mold juice and see if they can turn it into an antibiotic.
In early stages of their research, there didnt use like a big steep container to 'procure' the mold but instead uses a narrow container with large surface area, think of casserole dish to get the juice because the mold only grows on the surface of the liquid instead of inside the liquid. Purifying isn't easy, at least 2000 litres of purified Penicillin juice were needed just to make antibiotics enough to treat 1 person so 2 of the big nerds, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley flew to the US and asked if anyone could mass produce it and then like jump to idk pages of wikipedia page later it was being mass produced in the early 40s during the peak of WW2 (there's too many conflict happens during this and the girls are fighting over who should be credited for it and I am not into some nerd drama rn)
Here's some interesting facts that I found out while reading:
- During the early stages of mass production, they still haven't produce enough Penicillin for the people they're treating and running clinical trials and they discovered that patients who received Penicillin shot also excreted those antibiotics back into their urine. At least 70% of the Penicillin they got is stored in the balls floating in the urine so they took the pee, crystallised them and extracted the Penicillin from the pee crystals so at least half of the people who gets the antibiotics shot got them from some guy's pee.
- When Florey and Heatley planned to fly to the US, they feared they couldn't bring the mold in a small glass tube without it being missing so they laced the pocket of their coat with the mold.
- Winston Churchill almost died from Pneumonia back in 1943 but fully cured by Sulfanilamide but the tabloid at time said Penicillin cured him simoly because they wanted to instill confidence to the public about antibiotic
- During Clinal Trials, they tested on animals for toxicity but they didn't tested it on guinea pigs. If they tested it on guinea pigs there's a possibility that antibiotics is not what we have now or didn't exist at all since Penicillin is toxic to guinea pigs
Anyway cut to decades later we abused the fuck out of antibiotics and there's rising cases of antibiotics resistant bacteria. It is estimated that we are 5 years away from creating antibiotics that works on the bacteria that resist antibiotics in the present. So the next time if you are prescribed with antibiotics, FINISH THEM ACCORDING TO DR'S ORDERS!!!
Bubbles 🫧 — List three things that bring you joy!
Answered here!
7 notes
·
View notes
Finding out about the origins of Soul Society as we know it from CFYOW has made me insane. It like 70% of all my Bleach thoughts lately. (under the cut is just pure, unrestrained rambling)
I am lusting for a universe in which they just dropped the reveal in TYBW.
The fact that the singular world being suited to Quincy and the altered three worlds being suited to Shinigami sets up the shinigami to be this ultra-paranoid, insular power that sets genocide upon any race not their own in fear that their secret will get out and some new race (Vizards. Arrancar. Fullbringer.) will over take them and remake the worlds in THEIR image..... (unless of course they agree to be loyal to the Seireitei. But still only AFTER they try to kill them first, usually.) Let alone how they treat Quincy, who a reverted world would suit completely.
The hints they drop about the world being singular & belonging more to the Quincy are THERE. Even my dumb ass picked that up in my re-read I posted snippets of. But it is just so sad they couldn’t have the reveal be where it was most relevant--in the literal war between Shinigami and Quincy. Between the world as we were introduced and the world as it was created.
I also started re-reading the TYBW arc (again.....) and even the Shutara scale is an inversion to hint that reaching singularity/understanding/Nirvana among all beings is disastrous for Shinigami. (Which strongly hints Shutara was brought to the Royal Guard for coming to understanding of just what she was protecting with her invention). I think maybe I posted about that before but I can’t remember. Other stuff like Komamura’s grandfather? I know I did. Because it still makes me incredibly feral and it’s so well set up but we NEVER GET THE PAY OFF.
The way this fully builds up the conflict of Shinigami vs Quincy to be a battle of who gets to benefit the world by winning the right to alter it to reflect their powers and who gets to be hunted down en masse.....Like what a bleak fucking conflict. What a fitting reveal for that arc.
I honestly prefer this reveal to most of the ‘don’t you realize revenge has consequences’ stand stills that took its place. I think a system that’s endured and flourished by successfully remaking the world in their image and killing anything that they think could even possibly threaten them (including their own kind!) doesn’t get to say ‘): if you get revenge on me you’re not really winning, actually it makes YOU bad too. worse than me, even.’
Seireitei is a society created and kept in fear for a reason and at some point you have to put down the ‘revenge is bad’ and just show me the fucked up stuff that earned such an enduring vow of revenge from someone like Yhwach. Literally, he has been fighting the Seireitei for well over a thousand years. He is retribution incarnate. And those who know are TERRIFIED of him.
And I find the ideas of ‘who is more Just--someone with everything to lose and afraid to lose it or someone with nothing to lose and unafraid to lose it?’ and ‘who is more Deserving--someone who can protect or someone who failed to protect?’ and ‘What is Sin--that which is admitted or that which is hidden?’ a lot more interesting and entertaining.
I just think its all so neat. Like, I think its horrifying for the main cast, especially the Karakura gang because the Hell Arc definitely seems like it plans on exploring the idea of that ‘original sin’ committed by Shinigami--for creating their own afterlife and forsaking the original Hell. Continually paying for the sin of thinking they could create the Pure Land and bungling it so, so bad.
23 notes
·
View notes
People who don't know dog body language who have pushy sketchy dogs are so awful to be around. I told our housemates that their dog Klaus doesn't like me when we went out to watch the eclipse earlier today because I didn't want to go in the fenced yard with him out and they were like "oh no he's fine don't worry." When he saw me he charged up to the fence, high flagged tail, snorting and barking and jumping at the fence and they still were like "oh he's friendly, he just wants to smell you, see his tail is wagging". Like my dude... tail wagging does not mean friendly, and what about the noises he's making rn sounds friendly to you?
Selene's sister grabbed him and I thought she was going to take him inside because she acted like she was going to, but instead she stopped halfway and just held him back while I came into the yard and then let him go to run up and sniff me, which he had very stiff body language the entire time he did so. For a while after that he ignored me because of the kids calling him away and was chill, but still kept coming over and sniffing me occasionally and was very tense each time so I just tried to stay calm and sweet talk him and didn't try to touch him to help defuse the situation.
Then I walked a little away from the group to point out a plant in the yard to Selene's mom which was a mistake because once I was out of the little circle we were standing in he started body blocking me, tense face, stiff body, whale eyeing, and then jumping at me and barking. They tried to call him away and were like "oh he's just trying to get you to play, sorry he's so demanding of attention." I started trying to walk toward the gate to leave because he very much was NOT trying to get me to play and I did not feel confident in their ability to control him, and he immediately did it again. And again they tried to call him away. And I got maybe another two steps before he turned right back around and did it again. And they called him away again saying he was just trying to play. Rinse and repeat for a total of like six times of him body blocking me, tense and whale eyeing, and then jumping at me and barking. All while they're just laughing like "Sorry, Klaus just really loves playing". Dudes your dog is actually behaving aggressively toward me right now, please get control over him so I can leave he is NOT TRYING TO PLAY WITH ME.
This is the second time I've been invited into the yard while Klaus was out and the first time they kept telling me the same thing but he was actually following me around growling at me then and they were still like "oh it's just cuz he doesn't know you yet, he'll warm up to you, he's friendly". YOUR DOG IS SKETCHY. I DONT WANT TO INTERACT WITH HIM. HE DOESN'T LIKE ME. PLEASE JUST PUT HIM INSIDE WHEN I'M IN THE YARD WITH Y'ALL. And PLEASE learn some dog body language because nothing about his right now says "friendly" at all!!!!! Not even a little!!!! TAIL WAGGING DOES NOT MEAN FRIENDLY, ESPECIALLY A HIGH FLAGGED TAIL.
4 notes
·
View notes