Unpopular Opinion time:

There's something weird going on there

satoru physically withers and crumbles every time you return his belongings. he doesn’t know how to tell you that he can only accidentally on purpose leave his glasses on your nightstand, or his jacket on your couch, or his shirt in your laundry so many times before he loses his mind. every time you don’t take he bait, he folds into himself and wonders why you don’t love him anymore and it costs him $22.50 to hear ieiri tell him to suck it up and use his words because he literally has to buy her company (and drinks).

but when you do take the bait, when you do wear his things, satoru thinks it’s all worth it. he can’t explain why it does what it does to him. it’s a sinister kind of possession he wants to have over you, knowing you’re your own person, free to do as you please, but also knowing you’re caged in him. it’s a lovesick kind of gooeyness that melts his heart seeing you fumble with the sleeves of a sweater that’s too long for you. it’s the vision of you seeing you drowning in him—in his clothes, in his things, in him, in him, in him. he’s selfish, he wants to consume you in as many ways as possible, wants you to drown in him, would die happily knowing you were one tenth as enraptured by him as he is with you. he doesn’t know how or why or when you gained so much power over him, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t want you to ever stop, so if he has to keep pretending to leave his clothes and bags and glasses around then so be it.

Prompt 261

“So is no one going to talk about the eldritch space child or…” 

“I mean, do you want to get between a child and Batman? I think the only one who could even get close right now is Superman…” 

“No you’re right, I think- oh my god the eldritch space child is playing with batman’s bat-ears and he’s not doing anything about it what the fuck I thought only Robins could get away with that-” 

Saw a post about working class butches in physical labour jobs and wanted to make my own, so: I love you butches who do childcare or early education. I love you butch nurses. I love you butch house cleaners and janitorial staff. I love you service industry butches. I love you butches who do sex work. I love you working class butches who do “feminine” jobs you are cool as hell

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

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i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

directionless anger

(or, something like: the robin mantle is a curse, but that isn't inherently anyone's fault and someone has to wear it)

i adapted the two pages below the cut bc they were haunting me—tim having a nightmare the day of his mother's funeral, from Batman (1940) #455: “Identity Crisis, Part 1”, from this post

so the good place is widely lauded on this site for its takes on morality and capitalism, which i totally agree with

but i think it should get more recognition for the line "all humans are aware of death. so we're all a little bit sad all the time. that's just the deal. we don't get offered any better ones. and if you try and ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. i've been there, and everybody's been there. so don't fight it. in the words of a very wise bed bath and beyond employee i once knew - go ahead and cry all you want. but you're gonna have to pay for that toilet plunger."

artemis is one of the best characters ever created i think. she likes to feel like a cobb salad when shes having sex. she serves cunt at all hours of the day. shes bisexual. shes jewish. she's always serving a look. she is constantly on psychedelic drugs. she fucks nasty in the dumpster behind wendy's. shes perfect

jason todd is much like a typical dad in the sense he will share something extremely outrageous that had happened to him/he did out of nowhere and will never speak of it ever again no matter how many times he’s asked to elaborate.

say it with me everybody: personal health is completely immaterial to morality, including mental health. leading a mentally unhealthy lifestyle (or what you perceive as a mentally unhealthy lifestyle) does not a bad person make. no one has to socialize, exercise, have healthy coping mechanisms, or lead (what you perceive as) a fulfilling life with fulfilling hobbies in the same way that no one has to go to the doctor to get a broken bone reset. both of those types of management of personal health are likely to be beneficial to the individual, but they are in no way moral requirements or debts owed to society. they do not actually say anything about a person's principles, personality, or actions towards others. additionally, people know themselves and their own situations better than you do. maybe a person judges that the physical and financial toll of going to the doctor outweigh the benefit of getting their bone reset, maybe a person just does not have the capacity to develop healthy coping mechanisms at this point in their life, and yes, maybe a person feels like they are totally fulfilled by "media based" hobbies alone and would feel no difference in their life if they picked up a loom. just like. let people be sick without accusing them of being representative of the lazy, degenerated state of modern society.

Qui-Gon: *on his first night with Padawan Kenobi after his older padawans convinced him he needed a new baby so he’d bother someone else* Alright, now I think it’s bedtime. I know it’s a bit earlier than usual but you have a whole new set of classes to switch to tomorrow so we have to get up early.

Obi-Wan: *is only 11, is fine with more sleep* Okay, Master! *wanders off to get in his pajamas*

Qui-Gon: *making a pot of sleepy tea*

Obi-Wan: *comes back in jammies looking confused*

Qui-Gon: What’s wrong, Padawan?

Obi-Wan: I can’t find my sleepy cocoon.

Qui-Gon: …your sleeping bag? Oh, I assumed you used that for camping in the room of a thousand fountains, do you usually sleep in that at night?

Obi-Wan: ??? No? No I use it sometimes but you’re right, that’s for camping nights. I mean my sleepy cocoon?

Qui-Gon: …what is a sleep cocoon?

Obi-Wan: It’s… it’s a stretchy fabric that goes over you?

Qui-Gon: …gimme a second, I don’t think I saw anything like that in your bags.

One call to the creche later

Creche Master: Is something wrong with Padawan Kenobi settling in?

Qui-Gon: Um, he’s missing something that I don’t think I’ve seen. He called it his sleepy cocoon?

Creche Master: Oh! That went into the laundry this morning, it probably got delivered back to us, I’ll have it sent right away.

Qui-Gon: Um, I need to ask… what is a sleepy cocoon?

Creche Master: *snort* It’s an anti-grav sleeping tube. It’s a compression material so he doesn’t feel it when he starts to float in his sleep. He’s too close to the cosmic force to control it, so they give him the compression tube.

Qui-Gon: …you’re saying he disobeys gravity in his sleep, so the tube makes him stop realizing it?

Creche Master: Yeah, it’s pretty important, actually. It keeps his joints in place. No cricks in his neck or dead arms if they start to fall.

Qui-Gon: Amazing. A straight jacket for his cosmic force abilities. I adore it. Please send it here. He can get out of it on his own, right?

Creche Master: Oh course, it’s just pressure, not actually being tied up.

Qui-Gon: Delightful. I’ll get him extras for off planet missions.

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.

August and Peter figuring out the whole ~siblings~ thing. From the October Daye series, specifically the Patreon story, "In Safety Rest".

Do you like sci-fi and indie animation? Check out Monkey Wrench!

Those five or so seconds where young Ahsoka is watching Anakin walk through the smoke and her expression becomes horrified as he transforms into Darth Vader for just a moment as he and the rest of her Squad leave her behind, alive but alone-