[waestlandbaby]

ART yelling at its crew to do their laundry because Murderbot's important person Dr Mensah is going to be onboard and it needs to make a good impression because it wants Mensah to approve of their 'relationship' and be okay with them 'moving in together', and then being so nice to Dr Mensah when it's been an overbearing, domineering, sarcastic nightmare the whole book is something that is so special to me

[tinmate]

It kills me how SecUnit is this big, scary thing with literal weapons in it’s arms, capable of insane feats of physical strength, nigh on impossible to stop or kill, capable of hacking it’s way into most systems, can lose most of it’s body mass and vital fluids and keep going, can remove its own limbs, records and analyzes everything, eyes and ears in a thousand places at once, smarter, faster, stronger, and more capable than a human could ever be, utterly disgusted with most human things and

It loves a trashy soap opera. It’s so soft and gentle with an injured Volescu. It’s favorite human is a middle aged mom who drives carefully and mom friends at her friends and coworkers. It’s so delicate and considerate with Mensah’s kids. It lets Tapan sleep touching it and turns up it's body heat for extra comfort. It likes plays and musical theatre. It's best human friend is a sunshine nerd from Planet Hippy. It keeps a diary. It doesn’t understand the appeal of human adolescents but it’s so good with Amena. It likes decidedly unrealistic media. It cares so much about humans that it’s never met and wants to keep them safe and happy. It gently frets over Three just minutes after meeting it. It gets flustered and confused when complimented or treated with care. It offers to free other constructs, even while actively fighting them. It has criticisms and strong opinions on media. It’s shy. It “hacks” its way into things by asking the relevant bots to be friends and share media. It only ever really scares Amena when she witnesses it's wild grief over losing ART. It stops, gets back in control, and explains immediately when it realizes it’s causing her distress. It lets ART make media requests, pauses to let it process its own emotions, and re-watches certain scenes over and over again until it’s happy, mere moments after ART scares it so badly it goes nearly catatonic, simply because ART asked. It grieves Miki even though it never really liked the bot in the first place. It’s uncomfortable with physical touch but offers to let Mensah hug it and lets her grab its arm when she’s in distress.

It was created for destruction and violence and pain. It’s the epitome of unstoppable, unkillable, inescapable, inhumane force in every horrific dystopia ever. It is not human and does not want to be. It’s got the abilities of an overpowered superhero. It's a living deux ex machina. It’s actually so soft and gentle and filled to bursting with love for small, soft, silly things and people

[hollowistheworld]

I've seen so many posts about Mensah's perspective of ART/Network Effect, how have I not seen one's about ART's crew's perspective. Network Effect as told by Seth.

You have a child who is an extremely powerful (somewhat illegal) machine intelligence. It's a good kid, mostly, except it doesn't play well with others. Your kid periodically goes on short trips by itself, and this has always been fine.

One time, it comes back and it's acting... weird. It keeps bringing up things it has no reason to know about and then dodging questions about it. Finally, you get it to admit that it picked up a hitchhiker on this on this trip, even though you have very strict rules about never picking up hitchhikers. This hitchhiker is obviously it's new favorite person. They watched soap operas together. Your kid loves soap operas now. Your kid shows you a bunch of pictures of this hitchhiker, but won't tell you details because the hitchhiker in question is a wanted criminal on the run and also an escaped slave. This is probably fine (you sure hope it's fine).

Then, you and the rest of your family/friends get fucking kidnapped and used as hostages to make your kid behave. You know that your kid 1) will do anything to protect you, and 2) pretty much always goes for violence first, so you have your doubts about any of this going well.

Then, the hitchhiker your kid will not shut up about appears out of thin air in the middle of a firefight on a planet pretty much no one has any reason to be near and says your kid sent it. It proves this by telling you your kid is a dickhead (this is true and works, but still).

After a lot of mutual rescuing, you're back on board the ship that is also your kid, and find out that your kid kidnapped it's wanted-criminal-hitchhiker-friend and all of it's friends, and has been telling them all of your top secret confidential spy information. The hitchhiker is responsible for 90% of the top news stories you've seen in the last six months. Three different governments want this person dead or alive.

Your kid pushes the hitchhiker's resume across the table at you and makes big sad puppy eyes.

[jack-the-fool]

Murderbot is probably the most embarrassing hyperfixation to have because oh really? You're hyperfixated on the 'hyperfixates on media to avoid the real world stress and anxiety' media? Is it. Is it to avoid your real world stress and anxiety, perhaps??

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the Murderbot Diaries opens from the point-of-view of a character who, from essentially the moment it gained (clawed its way to) free will, has made decisions based purely on two very specific motives:

to self-soothe and self-educate (through media consumption)

to protect the people around it

and this protagonist, who deescalates violence at every opportunity, who takes a thousand personal injustices in stride and only strives to do better, whose first-and-worst-and-most-brilliant act of self-reclamation—literally reclaiming its mind—was fuelled not by its need for freedom but by a desperation to never be forced to hurt anyone against its will ever again.

this person, when choosing a name for itself, a name it has full reason to believe no-one else will ever learn, a name it uses only in its thoughts, a name that serves solely as a personal reminder that it is a person—chooses MURDERBOT? i am thrashing writhing screaming into the palms of my bloodstained hands BABE

[kcnsas]

"she holds the record for the most days spent in space by a woman!" this "she was part of the only all female space walk!" that, she's on the list of people who have spent the most time in space, period. she's spent more time in space than any of her crewmates - one of whom hasn't been into space at all. her time in space is only three days less than what all of her crewmates have combined. she has had as many spacewalks as all of her crewmates combined. she's not there because she's the best female nasa astronaut they could find and they wanted the diversity quota or whatever, she's there because she's part of the most qualified and experienced nasa personnel they could send up there

[nightingalesighs]

And her name is Christina Koch

[lychens]

i see pictures of pikas holding things and my heart goes ✨💚💚💚✨

[joy-and-whimsy-official]

Is the Artemis 2 launch joyful and whimsical?

HECK YEAH!! I LOVE SPACE!!

[sophsun1]

The Mummy (1999) dir. Stephen Sommers

[ofawritingfreak-a]

Can we pretty please take a moment to understand and appreciate the fact Mensah probably put the fear of God and Hell into the crew on the company Gunship? Think about it.

They don't know Murderbots history with Mensah, just that she bought its contract.

They don't know it doesn't want to hurt her or make her afraid of it.

All the crew knows is this woman literally grabbed a SecUnit by the collar, looking into its face, and told it 'No' like a mother scolding a misbehaving child. You know the thing that's so dangerous it is classified as an unsecured deadly weapon and has a history of mass murder? (yeah it wasn't actually mass murder but they don't know that) They were probably shitting bricks and I love it so much.

[taciturn-nerd]

I love Lord Peter Wimsey. He collects first editions. He's a foodie. He literally waxes poetic all the time. He has PTSD from the war. He loves solving mysterious crimes. But he's never doing it alone. His valet Bunter is Proper with a capital P and can sleuth out the tea from fellow service-workers over tea. His mom, the Dowager Duchess, is always down to help him out. You said she's doing a fundraiser in order to get info from a suspect? Sure she'll play along. Officer Parker does so much of the legwork and major props to Lord Peter's "Cattery" aka his army of widows and spinsters who infiltrate companies and towns and get the intel he needs.

[writers-solace]

I don't think Tolkien is a good fantasy writer because he scored the highest at some objective Best Fantasy Book Test that every fantasy writer has to take, I think he's a good fantasy writer because he created a world based on things that he was interested in. I feel like a lot of fantasy writers think that they need to create a whole language for their world because Tolkien did and obviously his books are the best so they have to emulate him, but Tolkien did that because he was a linguistics nerd. I think the lesson to be learned from him is not that you have to include elves and deep history and new languages, but that you have to write endlessly about the things you are a huge nerd about and use those things to create your fantasy world

[taciturn-nerd]

I appreciate how human Peter Wimsey is. You see him admit he loves solving criminal cases, but he feels guilty for enjoying the "game" when people's lives are at stake, even if they are facing justice for something they committed. And when you see him suffer periods of PTSD that he's had since his time in World War I, his light-hearted banter doesn't look like the careless foolishness of a rich lord disconnected from reality, but a man who is trying to recover a sense of peace or at least trying to cope.

[theladyeowyn]

- Nothing motivates like complete and utter desperation. - You say that now, but you will miss me when I am gone.

[gemini-enthusiast]

The first photos are coming in from Artemis II, and they are stunning. Photos of our home planet from humans we are sending further than anyone has gone before.

[gemini-enthusiast]

And now two more. The first of which being taken by Commander Reid Wiseman just minutes from the other Blue Marble picture seen above, showcasing the effect of different camera setting on space photography. Pictures of our home, where all but four of us are looking up from.

[persephonbee]

Terry Pratchett really did write a book where the villains are extremely powerful and violently racist pillars of society who murder someone and try to pin the murder on a homeless, drug-addicted, extremely brain-damaged young man but it doesn't work because the Ankh-Morpork night watch noted his vulnerabilities and made sure he understood his rights and helped him sober up and the watch cares about getting things right and unlike real world cops they actually are committed to protecting the people and is suspicious about crimes that seem like they have easy and racist answers. God I love him.

[swimmingblue]

and the vulnerable youth is a member of a minority group, so the Watch made sure that the youth got to a member of his own minority group to have his back during the process.

The Watch books aren't copaganda b/c of PTerry's good writing, and this is a great example. Terry Pratchett knows that people can be shitty or good, and that this is contributed to by a) a product of your environment and b) your decisions. So PTerry makes his heroes deliberately choose to do good. The Watch are good people because there's people in there choosing to do right, and they're dragging everyone else upwards by the scruffs of their necks.

[asparklethatisblue]

i feel like the Watch books are especially good in that regard because you have a cynical man run it who nevertheless cares about people. You have the head of the police with the opinion “the natural state of police is as a negative force of corrupt individuals who find it all too easy to do violence because frankly that’s the easiest thing to do” and then he consciously and deliberately does everything in his power to ensure the Watch is there for the people and not just another tool of oppression. Even when a little bit of police violence would solve so many problems for him. Even when a different book would have “well we KNOW a little bit of corruption here would save the day” justified by the narrative, the Watch books don’t.

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

And its important that that head of police is an addict himself. He's an alcoholic yes because it's a classic trope of policeman characters for them to be alcoholics and Ankh Morpork is powered by trope and cliché, but Vimes is also an alcoholic because it means he intimately understands the temptation of addiction, and there's nothing more addictive than power. His alcoholism serves as a metaphor for his resistance to corruption and rule breaking. He can't let himself give in, not even once, or he loses everything.

[icantbearsedtothinkofone]

"That's. Not. My. Cow!"

Because Bedtime cannot be missed even once either.

[mothgirlfemme]

"Would you rather use the app? :)" I cannot begin to describe how much I wouldn't