He did a little too much yapping

my experiences being queer in mostly cishet physically disabled spaces: everyone minds their own business, totally accepts my masculine name, welcoming to my trans girlfriend, cool with me bringing a horde of 5+ visibly queer friends to the rugby tournament, some of the older men call me 'they/them' out of a misguided attempt to be accepting which is not my pronouns but I don't mind because they're trying, I play a mixed-gender sport so nobody really cares about my gender anyway

my experiences being disabled in able-bodied queer spaces: bullied, villified for trying to arrange events mostly in wheelchair accessible spaces, constantly disregarded, complete lack of access at Pride, pushed around physically, I've never been to a queer bar with wheelchair access, constantly fighting to have my gender accepted because I don't have the physical attributes people demand from butches, lonely

One of the earliest examples of Leo’s “I’ll do my own thing to accomplish our goal without discussing it with my team first” is in episode one. It’s super, super quick, and ultimately inconsequential, but it subtly sets up a great precedent that I think is very interesting.

When the boys need to grab the medallion from Splinter without Splinter noticing, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie huddle together with Raph taking the lead in trying to devise a plan to get the mystic device. Meanwhile, Leo slinks away and grabs the device by clocking the situation (by knowing his father well enough to predict his actions - something he does with each family member multiple times in the series) and making a move on his own.

It works out perfectly fine, and is ultimately the best move, and it’s honestly okay that he didn’t consult everyone for something so small when it’s such a non issue to get it, but it nicely sets up how this tends to go in the series, including how it goes in the movie.

To be honest episode one is actually really good at setting up a lot of things for each character in the long run, this is just one example that caught my attention, as small and unassuming as it is.

look at this pic i found on twitter

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

Earthspirit and Platinum bonding at Rhodes over having employers who didn't respect their work life balance, and then Earthspirit learns what Platinum's job was

hot man hot birdman im so sorry hot fire bird man?!?!

aka glorious gijinka!Tengu Jin design by @hirumi25 has made me 👀💦?!?! because wowie thats some hecking fire design!

and of course i couldnt just not draw Hirumi's Nomi-kun with him too

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

more phoenix wright situations

Anyone else ever thinking about the constant nightmares Dick was having at the beginning of his solo in the nineties(in which he was Robin again and trying to catch a little boy who’s face he could never make out and was always too late) that culminated in the fear gas induced hallucination issue wherein there’s another faceless young boy who eventually introduces himself as Jason

And the dreams were subsequently never brought up again

The closest we got was the hallucination he had in his secret files where he spent the whole time talking to Robin

Because I am. I am thinking about it a lot

One of the funniest disconnects with actual play to me is how much the viewers/fandoms have a much broader awareness of everyone’s mechanics than the players themselves - and often assume for some reason that all the players have that same total awareness.

Funniest examples I can think of off the top of my head are when Laura was convinced Caleb (AC 11 wizard) had a higher AC than Yasha (AC 15 Barbarian) - likely influenced by fear for Yasha in Ashley’s absence and Yasha’s position in melee meaning she was hit more by default. Another was when the entire CR crew aside from Laura revealed in the campaign wrap-up that they seem to have spent the entirety of C2 under the impression Jester had a very high Charisma score (her CHA was 12).

Recently found out that Chandelure and Eelektross are part of the same egg group. SSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOO if Ingo wants to know who "busted his ghost", well... maybe one of the Litwiks knows a Tynamo-exclusive only move.

Emmet and Ingo don't speak to each other for like. a week and Elesa thinks they had a really big fight or smthn. Finds out Ingo's just mad at his brother's pet for egging his chandelure and Elesa thinks it's the funniest thing ever

It really does make me wonder what else has been shot down by Fox. Because buddie is obviously the thing that we’re more able to clearly connect dots on even before Oliver started saying anything about any of it, but you know it’s not the only thing, we just don’t have the threads to pull on for anything else

Here is the book I said I would post, my first attempt at a dos a dos binding. Considering I was mostly winging this, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. One side is lined notebook paper and the other is sketchbook paper.

I also got a hot foiling pen for Christmas and thought I'd see how it works on bookcloth for this bind and it worked pretty well, just have to see how it holds up over time.

i'm really curious about what marcille's mother's deal is. seems like she's not too big on the rest of elven society. here's what we know about her so far:

mage at a human royal court (adventurer's bible)

courtship with marcille's father donato lasted 17 years (adventurer's bible)

specialty is roast pork, which was also donato's favorite (chapter 81)

had a cheerful personality up until the point donato got too sick to eat his favorite food. her extreme emotional reaction to this left a lasting impression on marcille (chapter 81)

remarried to a gnome and moved away from the city at some point after donato died (adventurer's bible)

several portraits of her appear in marcille's nightmare (chapter 42); this is the second time we see marcille dream of her (chapter 3)

preferred non-elven food and didn't introduce marcille to any traditional elven dishes (chapter 74)

from the canaries' reactions in chapter 74, it appears elven society looks down on elves who go to live among and work for short-lived races. they seemed especially put off that she would have a mixed-blood child. when they're talking about the lyrikmumare to get marcille to trip up, marcille envisions her mother saying that the food "here" (i.e., the northern continent) tastes so much better. so the picture we're getting here is of an elf who has removed herself from elven culture, but the question is, did she do it willingly or was she forced to?

keeping her other actions in mind, i'm leaning more towards the former. the most intriguing thing for me is that she eventually married a gnome, despite elves and gnomes having infamously waged war against each other over differences in the practice of magic and presently tending to discriminate against the other on sight. (one thing's for sure — marcille's mother is winning the idgaf war!)

marcille never talks about her gnome stepfather though, and it's unclear what she thinks of her mother's remarriage. the timing of the remarriage is also a mystery. donato married marcille's mother when he was 32 (after having courted her for 17 years) and died at 82, meaning they were married for 50 years. marcille is also currently 50 years old, but we know she wasn't born immediately after the marriage: in chapter 81, donato's doppelganger says marcille was born when he'd started "getting on in years." based on marcille's memories of him and the established fact that the average tall-man lifespan is 60 years, i'd hazard that he was in his 50s then. this gives him 30 years or less with marcille — definitely less than 35, which we know is the age at which she left for the magic academy.

we don't know if marcille's mother remarries before or after marcille leaves (if before, than that's definitely a shockingly short time), but it's interesting that she chose to marry someone from a long-lived race this time. maybe this is her way of ensuring she spares herself another heartbreak? or maybe she *is* still heartbroken and is trying to cover it up.

but. i can't help but kind of agree with chilchuck in chapter 81, that marcille's parents are not blameless for marcille becoming the dungeon lord. since it's apparently well-documented, they surely must have known — as well-educated people — that mixed-blood children face not just discrimination but also mental anguish that comes with their unstable aging (not to mention the sterility). so the way they raised marcille feels frankly irresponsible 😭

anyway. i'd love to get spin-off content where post-adventure marcille and her mother meet again. i feel like there's a lot of unresolved issues there (that can of course be hashed out over a good meal).