Mostly a doll. More than a little bit Witch. Definitely plural.
TF29. She/Her, It/Its.
It would like to share some stories here.
Of dolls. Of the dead. Of lost things. Of war.
Please, sit with it and enjoy this hour.
"Mario Mario" is an anachronism. He and his brother were only ever referred to by mononyms in their lifetime, like most residents of the Mushroom Kingdom at the time - multi-part names were typically reserved for members of the Toadstool dynasty, and even these were more like titles or Roman cognomina than what we would call a surname today. His putative ennoblement as founder of the "House of Mario" came centuries later as the collapsing feudal order sought additional sources of legitimacy
#mushroom kingdom folklore says that he sleeps beneath a warp pipe to arise in the time of the kingdom's greatest need #he's definitely shown up a few times but it's hard to tell if he has risen from the dead or is just in the middle of some time travel shit #historians hate him.
While the historical evidence for Mario having a younger brother is quite concrete, the name of said brother is less certain. "Luigi" is generally held to originate with a separate figure from a series of chthonic myths, who originally served as a sort of psychopomp charged with capturing spirits that escaped the underworld. The strongest case for a contemporary figure named Luigi comes from the Waffle Kingdom sagas; however, this Luigi's brother is a gladiator named Gonzales.
now I know that there's no way for me to respond to this without a bunch of fans of the modern adaptations ruining my inbox for the next week, but there's no evidence of Waluigi - or indeed Luigi - in any of the contemporary versions of the Mario-Wario sagas. The name "Wario" itself is a later invention, held to be a pun on warui that likely emerged after the adoption of Japanese scripts in the Koopa States.
The conflict between Mario and his "boyhood rival" was one over political influence on his home island and Mario's long absences - in particular his trip to Sarasaland. While later Sarasan sources would heavily reference Mario's brother, he is absent from both the preceding narrative and the unrest in Mario's homeland. The historical consensus is that the Sarasaland journey was one of Mario's earliest wanderings, with his brother attempting to manage affairs in his absence and proving unfit. The invention of a separate "Wario" character and its development into an explicit coup d'etat were later poetic creations, as is distancing of the "Wario" figure from the later depictions of Mario's brother as the more cowardly and reserved "Luigi".
(As an aside: "Mario Land" is a mistranslation. The original Mushroomer and Sarasan chronicles are better translated as "the land of Mario", without connotations of ownership. The modern scholastic consensus is that it refers to Yoshi's Island, where Mario and his brother spent their youth and later established a small manor, not, as commonly depicted, a "Mario Castle". The emphasis on Mario as king of "Mario Land" was a mostly successful political maneuver by the Yoshis to retain coequal status with the Mushroom Kingdom heartlands in the face of 18th-century expansionist pan-Mushroomism.)
The later emergence of "Waluigi" is an ironic recombination of two figures from the same historical source, and may have originated as a farce parodying the Mario stories. (The name "Waluigi" is also conflated with the early Norman figure Varr Yngwi, who is generally credited with the invention of tennis.)
I know this is due to my particular constellation of interests, but for me the funniest thing about the "everything in a given century happened simultaneously" view of history being applied to the 1900s is bumping into increasing numbers of people who are genuinely unclear on whether Dungeons & Dragons pre-dates or post-dates The Lord of the Rings.
I always thought Reddit was a place where people could share things they created.A few days ago I posted one of my original paintings. People loved it. We had wonderful conversations about art, emotions, and how everyone saw something different in the same sunset.
About two hours later I was permanently banned from r/MadeMeSmile for âself-promotion.â
I accepted that different communities have different rules.But then something even stranger happened.Soon afterward, a moderator from r/pics started going through my account. Not just the new postâmany of my older painting posts disappeared as well. One after another. Then I was permanently banned there too.
Maybe it was the same moderator. Maybe it wasnât. I honestly donât know.
What surprised me wasnât even the ban itself. It was realizing how much power individual moderators have over what millions of people are allowed to see. One decision can erase years of posts from a community and instantly cut off your ability to participate, even if those posts had been happily sitting there for months or years.Iâm not saying moderators shouldnât have rules. Communities need moderation.But it does make you wonder where the line is between protecting a community and allowing a single interpretation of the rules to completely reshape what people can share.
The funny part?
I wasnât advertising anything in those posts. I wasnât posting prices or asking anyone to buy anything. I was simply sharing my original paintings because I enjoy discussing art with strangers from around the world.
AnywayâŠ
Hereâs the painting that apparently caused all the trouble. đš
by the way. it never is too late to decide you want to be happy. the woman who helped me get hormones didnt start hers until she was 70, and i met her at 73, beautiful and smiling - and told me that the last three years of her life had been her favorite. your favorites might be ahead of you too. why not hang around and find out?
and if i said nolan's odyssey starring no greek actors and with no recognizable aspects of greek culture or involvement by greeks, is the direct legacy of white supremacist colonialism that treated ancient greece as not just the pinnacle of ancient culture, but of an artificially created "european" culture, which white western europeans and their settler descendants, as the new pinnacle of culture, were the sole spiritual inheritors of.
ohhh my god I just fact-checked, Nolan actually DID cut the "Nobody" scene from his Odyssey movie. Mfer that is like cutting the Father reveal from Star Wars. Let me speak in a language you understand this is like not dressing Batman up in his suit. "It was not possible to work it in" the TikTok musical with a budget of $4 and a scratched Hamilton CD managed to work it in in SONG form, step up your FUCKING GAME
Posting a fic idea I had for Murderbot & Mensah (3.8k)
Summary: Murderbot gets married not in a weird way in a very Murderbot wayâwhich means horrendously awkward conversations with the in-laws, no fewer than five panic attacks, and ABSOLUTELY! NO! KISSING!!
So Pin-Lee and her legal team finally manage to get the Preservation requirement for bots to have a âguardianâ overturned and YAY, MURDERBOT IS A FREE AND FULL CITIZEN NOW! đ„ł The team welcomes MB back to Preservation with a surprise party in celebration of that.
Meanwhile, much to its own surprise, MB has............... complicated (and some unexpectedly negative?) feelings about that. Namely:
Surprise -- that the humans actually delivered on the pie-in-the-sky promise they'd made (re: bots getting full rights). Like, MB knows these humans, knows theyâre not assholes, and had chalked up that promise to an excess of optimism rather than a deliberate lie, but still hadnât expected anything to come of it. So, wowâMB is stunned and humbled and grateful that they actually did the years of work it took to fulfill that promise.
Relief â because even though Mensah has no control over MBâs governor module anymore, she couldnât make it execute any orders it didnât want to, and she would never do that even if she could (it trusts her fully on that point), and the âguardianâ thing has been nothing but a flimsy on-paper cover, it is still an ungodly RELIEF to be truly, fully, legally free. MB has no masters and answers to no one (at least in Preservation space).
Uncertainty â a feeling of, Now what? This one is very stupid, MB feels, because nothing has materially changed at all. One line removed from its feed profile, thatâs it. So why the fuck does it feel like itâs been cut adrift?
DEEPLY NEGATIVE FEELINGS THAT IT CANNOT UNPACK AT ALL, except as a violent aversion to no longer having that connection to Mensah on paper. Which is STUPID. MB WANTED TO BE FREE. IT DIDNâT WANT A GUARDIAN, EVEN MENSAH. So why is it so upset at being free?
And given that MB is canonically really really bad at hiding its feelings, itâs going to be pretty obvious to the team that MB is inexplicably dismayed by this, rather than uncomplicatedly happy, the way theyâd been expecting it to be.
Itâs Bharadwaj who helps MB tease those feelings apart, since she seems to be the one playing therapist. Granted, these are feelings that are only going to be dug out of MB with an industrial-grade drill, but they chip away at it for a while and manage to identify that MB is insecure about no longer having an official, tangible connection with Mensah. Whatâs to keep them close now??
Bharadwaj asks if MB worries about that with any of its other friends on the team; MB does not, thatâs different. Of course it knows that people can be friends, even close friends, long-term friends, not because of any sort of formal connection, but because they choose to keep seeing each other. But itâs different with Mensah! No, MB doesnât have any immediate fear that Mensah will stop wanting to be friends, or start drifting away, but it does betray anxiety that it no longer has an excuse to allocate the majority of its time and attention to Mensah. Not in so many words, but MB is worried that without the guardianship justification, it wonât be allowed/able to hang out around Mensah as much as it has been.
Bharadwaj points out that people donât need a reason to spend extra time with their favorite people (lol with a gentle dig at Mensah being MBâs âfavorite humanâ), theyâre allowed to just choose to.
(MB is slightly chagrined that everyone on the team has read the letter and thus knows that it thinks of Mensah as its favorite humanâMB didnât really mean to show overt favoritism, or give that much of its emotions away, but the team thinks itâs pretty adorable that MB imprinted on Mensah like that, and adorable how embarrassed MB gets when being reminded of that. It has spawned a lot of team in-jokesâfierce (friendly) competition for the coveted spot of second-favorite human; MB saying in its flat buffering voice that all humans are its favorite, but some humans are more favorite than others; Mensah playfully responding by saying that MB is her favorite SecUnitâwhich makes MB feel all melty even though thatâs stupid because Mensah doesnât even know any other SecUnits.)
MB does find it a little reassuring to hear that it doesnât have to come up with excuses to keep hanging out with Mensah, that she wonât think its weird if they just continues as theyâve been doingâbut itâs also anxious that other people will demand a justification for its continued presence in her life. Like Mensahâs partners & familyâsurely MB wonât be invited to family events anymore, now that itâs no longer Mensahâs ward? Intruding on those would be weird, right? And now that MB isnât Mensahâs SecUnit, it doesnât have the authority to demand control of her security arrangements when she goes off-planet? Is MB still allowed to just walk into her office at any time without getting stopped by security? What if something HAPPENS to her, and people donât understand that MB needs to be there with her??
And it liked that people were able to look at MBâs social profile and see Mensah there. That was nice. And the opposite tooâthat people would know Mensah had a SecUnit, so maybe theyâd think twice before trying any shit, with MB there to go absolutely fucking nuclear if anyone harmed her.
âAnd... you donât feel the need for this kind of public affiliation with anyone else?â Bharadwaj presses. âNone of your other friends?â
No, just Mensah. Because sheâs its favorite. Obviously.
And so Bharadwaj carefully reads the bullet points sheâs collected back to MB: that what it wants is public recognition of the association between them, one that will allow MB to play an important part in Mensahâs life and not have that questioned socially or legally, at a level higher than its other friendships, on account of Mensah being MBâs favorite humanâis that accurate?
YES, thank you, you get it! MB says.
âWell, different polities handle these things differently,â Bharadwaj begins delicately, âAnd there are a variety of options available. But there is a way for people to get legal recognition of a bond with their favorite human(s), and thatâs generally called.......... marriage.â
MB: ......wot. àČ _àČ
Which kills that conversation stone dead, and I assume MB bolts immediatelyâalthough of course itâs incapable of processing anything else for the next five hours.
MB is somewhere between incredulous (has Bharadwaj lost her literal mind? Is this a sign of an incipient stroke?? Should MB be calling for a MedSystem???) and offended (MARRIAGE?!?! EW EW EW GROSS GET IT OFF đ€ź).
Marriage is a human thing. Marriage is a human ROMANCE THING, which is frequently just a SEX THING, which is absolutely the least interesting part of its shows. Ew. Just, ew ew ew EW. Why would Bharadwaj suggest that to MURDERBOT, of all people??? She should know better than that????
(Bharadwaj forwards MB a wikipedia article on marriage, with the section on sexless/celibate marriages flagged, discussing the many social and emotional reasons why people would desire marriage even if they donât have any desire to engage in sexual activity with their partner(s).
MB reads it but is still firmly in NOPE NOPE NOPE THIS IS NOT FOR MURDERBOTS mode. Marriage is for humans, and MB has zip zilch zero interest in being a human.)
But once the idea is planted, of course, MB canât stop circling back to poke at it, even if it runs into new obstacles every time.
The first and most obvious one, once MB stops flailing over its emotional aversion to the concept, is whether bots/constructs are even allowed to get marriedâthis is the first thing it brings up to Bharadwaj when it finally regains enough control to talk to her.
Bharadwaj acknowledges that there is no precedent yet, but now that bots have full citizenship, Pin-Lee and her lawyers have been looking down the line toward future legal issues liable to arise from that decision, and the question of bot-human (or bot-bot) marriages is one theyâve been anticipating. Bharadwaj mildly points out that sooner or later someoneâs going to be the first test case, and Pin-Lee & co have been preparing the legal arguments for it.
MB slinks off to go brood some more.
MB is also pathologically averse to letting people know what it likes/wantsâand so the idea of letting the world know that it wants to marry Mensah (yâknow, hypothetically, if it wanted that) makes it want to S C R E A M and die and run away forever, with how horrifically exposed and vulnerable that makes it feel. Justâgaaahhh, even if it did want to marry Mensah, even if it could, thereâs no way it could bring itself to go through the process of making that happen. Nope, nope, nope. The end.
(MB doesnât want to get married to Mensah, it wants to be married to Mensah, and for no one else to ever ask any questions or bring up the subject ever again.)
And what would Mensahâs other partners think? Theyâd probably have to agree to it before a marriage could happen, yeah? And surely they wouldnât want that. Nor can MB imagine moving in with them, and becoming the same kind of member of the marriage that they are, co-partners & co-parents. The very idea makes it shudder.
MB pokes Bharadwaj about thatâshe replies that there are many different configurations for group marriages, they donât all have to entail fully joining the group. Plenty of people are monogamous in their attachments, and only interested in forming a relationship with one member of a group marriage.
MB slinks off to brood over this some more.
Oh NO, what would the public say if it came out that ex-planetary-head Mensah married her SecUnit? MB does its best to ignore public opinion and not think about it, but itâs aware that thereâs already scurrilous tabloid speculation about Is Dr. Mensah Secretly Dating Her SecUnit?! Ugh, does this mean they would be RIGHT? Disgusting. Horrible. So many gross humans thinking about MB having sex.
And MB is also aware that in the Corporation Rim, Preservation extending legal rights to bots has been met with derision, the subject of much jeering condescension, and this would only set Mensah up for so much more scorn and mockery. MB doesnât really care (that much) (no really it doesnât care) (honest) what those assholes say about constructs, but the thought of MB being used to humiliate Mensah is intolerable.
So nope, not happening, no matter how MB might feel (and itâs still not examining those feelings) because itâs not going to put Mensah in that position.
By this point MB has started slinking back into Bharadwajâs office from time to time to obliquely broach the subject & its related concerns, then slinking out again with everything still up in the air.
And of course, through all this, the one obstacle that MB hadnât considered until last was: what does Mensah want? If, if this were possible, would she even want such a thing? Come to think of it, why on earth would she? Marriage? With a fucked-up, emotionally-stunted, anxious-&-depressed secondhand murder robot?
Mensah has been so very, very good to MB, but what if she doesnât feel the same way, doesnât feel as deeply, doesnât desire the same close connection that MB does?
And Bharadwaj is like, âI think thatâs something that anyone whoâs been in love has been afraid of, at some point.â
---
Of course MB bluescreens at âloveâ and probably bolts, but unlike the other times people have imposed that word on MBâs feelingsâthe tabloids, Amena saying that Thiago thinks MB is in love with Mensah and MB saying ânot the way heâs thinkingââthis time it clicks that itâs true, thatâs accurate.
This unidentifiable ball of feelings wrapped around Mensahâthe desperate need for her to be safe and happy; the sense of contentedness and comfort MB feels in her presence; the longing to be close to her, even if means having to endure a lot of intensely uncomfortable scrutiny; the fluttery nervousness it feels at being reunited with her, the desire to spend the rest of its life coming back to Mensah at the end of every job with ARTâthatâs love. And itâs not, actually, fundamentally different from how humans experience love.
Ugh, that means Thiago was right. Awful.
---
MB spends a few cycles avoiding everyone while coming to terms with this new understanding that it is in love, that it is a creature that is capable of being in love.
And then probably impulsively sends Mensah a message over the feed like, I love you. Not in a weird way.
MB agonizes through the entire however-many minutes it takes to get a response, feeling so nervous and so stupid and really wishing its dumb organic parts didnât do these things, UGH, EMOTIONS ARE THE WORST WHEN THEYâRE ABOUT REAL PEOPLE NOT FICTIONAL PEOPLEâ
Mensah: It makes me happy to hear you say that. I love you too, SecUnit. đ
Which is an entirely satisfactory response, neither too little emotion nor too much, and MB is relieved that it wasnât a terrible mistake to tell her that.
So maybe MB ventures to keep doing that? Easing into this as something they say to each other? MB will of course NOT say that out loud or on a public feed or anywhere else that other people can hear it, but Mensah might slip and do an âI love you tooâ in front of the team or something, because she doesnât feel as guarded in front of them. (Or maybe she is too scrupulous about MBâs privacy to slip up like that, idk.)
---
In any case, I think Mensah is rather more ahead of the situation than MB is. She has not realized that MB would actually be receptive to the idea of marriage (she'd assumed it would recoil from the idea, and she wasnât wrong), but she has been proactively taking steps to integrate MB with her family, and ensure that it has a permanent place with them either way.
Sheâs been having conversations with her partners and kids and various other family members to ease them into the idea of MB being a lasting part of her lifeâthat this is something she wants, to whatever extent MB is comfortable being part of her life and their family, and she cares about MB deeply. So to the rest of the family, MB is functionally already âMomâs weird awkward genderneutralfriend who tags along to family eventsâ and has been for a while.
---
It comes to a head when MB just blurts out one day, âDr. Bharadwaj thinks I want to marry you.â
(Theyâre in Mensahâs office or something, MB has just been chilling on her couch, monitoring security and watching media and thinking. And itâs not looking at her for this, so they have this conversation while Mensah is at her desk and MB has turned away to look at the couch cushions.)
Mensah takes a moment to digest that, because she knows MB, knows what it means when it brings up a fraught and personal subject so abruptly, and is reassessing her previous assumptions about what MB wants.
Mensah: Do you think sheâs right?
MB: [shrugs, because thatâs its go-to reaction]
MB lays out all the obstacles itâs thought of alreadyâthe dubious legality, the backlash from the media (especially in the Corporation Rim), what Mensahâs family might think, etc.
And one by one, Mensah addresses each of its concerns.
No, thereâs currently no legal precedent for such a marriage, but Preservation has already made great strides in civil rights for bots and constructs, and it does seem likely that marriage is going to be the next logical step in that.
Yes, the Corporation Rim will be horrible about it, but theyâre horrible about everything, so what else is new.
And actually, Mensahâs family already knows how much she cares about MBâit would not come as a surprise to them to learn that she and MB wanted to solemnify their relationship.
(MBâs stress hormones spike at the word ârelationship,â like they always do, but it makes itself tamp them back downâitâs beginning to get used to the idea that ârelationshipâ doesnât have a fixed meaning (one associated with things MB doesnât want), it only means what the people involved want it to mean.)
So the real question, she concludes, is whether Murderbot wants that?
And thereâs been an implicit âyesâ in all her answersâthat none of the hurdles MB brought up canât be overcomeâbut it is still massively difficult for MB to talk about its emotions.
So MB reiterates some of the admissions it made beforeâabout not wanting to never see Mensah again (lol), then says it doesnât want anyone else to be its favorite human... and doesnât want anyone else to be Mensahâs favorite SecUnit. It just wants them to stay how they are, like this. Maybe forever. >_> Forever would be good.
So yeah it would probably have to be Mensah doing the asking, as a two-part question:
In a hypothetical perfect world where those obstacles didnât exist, would MB want legal and social recognition for their relationship? MB tries to run that hypothetical (itâs hard to imagine such a world) and admits yes.
Given that they donât live in that hypothetical perfect world, does MB want this enough to be willing to fight those obstacles for it?
Mensah stresses that thereâs no shame or censure if it doesnâtâsheâll be the first to admit that this would be a LOT of attention, the exact kind of attention that MB abhors, and itâs wholly understandable if MB doesnât want to deal with that. They donât need to get married -- they don't need legal recognition to be important to each other, for MB to be part of the family and part of her life.
And for all that it feels like an impossibly difficult choiceâthe only real question is whether MB is going to be brave or not, and the answer to that has never been in doubt.
---
Final scene is the wedding. đ„ł
Not sure how theyâd do the wedding to make MB more comfortable, re: everyone looking at it, but they would work something out. Make up some nice Preservation wedding traditions, especially re: someone marrying into an established marriage group, some sort of ritual with Farai and Tano welcoming MB into the polycule. Bring in the PresAux team to say nice things and have emotions, great time to wax nostalgic and trot out embarrassing anecdotes. The ceremony itself is private, no media and politicking, just friends and family, but it is being recorded (lol, recorded in large part by MB) and a cut will be put together for releasing on the public feed later.
Mensah had offered to let MB get away with none or minimal talking, but it is reluctantly conscious that this marriage is a symbol thatâs bigger than either one of them, and it canât get away with being silent the whole time throughâthe people who know them would understand, but the wider galaxy would not. People need to understand that this is real, that MB means thisâthough it did have to ask ART for help in writing its speeches/vows/etc.
(ART was thrilled to help, and is probably already busy planning its own commitment ceremony with MB. MB does not know about this yet. XD)
So when itâs MBâs turn to talk, it tells the story of when Mensah came back to the DeltFall habitat and killed a SecUnit with nothing but an industrial drill to save its life. How, after so many years of risking its life to save humans, that was the first time a human had ever risked their life to save it. The first time that anyone had treated MB like a person, like someone who mattered. âSheâll tell you I saved her, but she was the first person who believed that I was worth saving too.â
(Mensah has gathered, by now, that that moment was a landmark in MBâs interactions with humans, but sheâs never heard it laid out with such unadorned honesty before, and sheâs getting emotional about that.)
âAnd also,â MB adds, deadpan, âshe was totally badass. Like an intrepid galactic explorer. And that,â MB concludes, âis when Dr. Mensah became my favorite human.â
Which lets the mood lighten back up again, and MB finishes its vows without being a downer. (When itâs Mensahâs turn, she also concludes by saying that MB is her favorite SecUnit.)
They donât kiss to seal the deal; Iâm sure Preservation has other traditions for non-sexual marriages. MB doesnât seem to mind hugging Mensah, so they probably do that, and then MB is overcome with self-consciousness (because they are entirely the center of attention here) and presses its face to the top of her head to hide its expression.
(That becomes the iconic image from their wedding when it hits the feed, because a lot of people got very photogenic shots of that momentâthe tenderness in that embrace, and MB seeking shelter in her too.)
now, as much as this still falls into the category of horror
this was oddly comforting. It's kinda like how people say death could be someone who meets you and walks you off into the afterlife, giving you a shoulder to cry on. Or in this case, a series of erotic or cosmic experiences before you die.
It's like a menu of cosmic bliss. A kind of true acceptance with a tinge of horror and loss that I can only really compare to achieving Golconda in Vampire the Masquerade (which I have done, the GM did it masterfully and I got a similar feeling when we got to my redemption scene)
So, an interesting thing Devotion does is that it defines each gender.
Not in terms of who gets to belong to the gender, but in terms of once you belong to this gender what rules are you bound by. How does society position this gender. What is considered good performance of the gender and what is considered traitorous.
This is already rad as hell, but it kicks the doors off a more world-buildy fantasy design space as well, because if you use these same design principles but you create new genders...
Well, you can build your world on a very bone-deep level by figuring out the ways in which it categorizes people.
Look. Let's say you define "charcoal burner" as a new gender. It is assigned to those who are born in or that have associated with charcoal burner communities. Charcoal burners are rugged, unrefined, not to be permitted in polite areas. They are allowed to do drudgerous work and wear thick clothing and considered traitorous if they try to rise in station and---
The actual most implausible thing about video game writing is that they'll show us a people-pleasing sad sack of a protagonist where everyone around them treats them as a disgusting pervert for no obvious reason, takes everything they say in the worst possible light, and ascribes vile motives to their most innocuous actions, then turn around and insist that this character is a cisgender, heterosexual man.
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