and i think about you all the time

Jamie (they/them)

[empressofkashyr]

Was walking through the streets of York today and heard a familiar melody. It was the opening Melody of One Day More, and there was a busker getting ready to sing. Those of you who have a mastery of the english language know that 'a busker' means there was a single person, and those of you who know One Day More know it has a dozen vocal parts. He was doing a really good job until it came to Éponine's lines when he slips into the most ridiculous falsetto I've ever heard

[lookninjas]

A couple of days ago, I got a notification on a post of mine that sometimes goes around, the one about how Gurathin and Pin-Lee had a joint freakout over SecUnit saying "I don't want to be a pet robot" that culminated in the two of them spending the last pages of Exit Strategy making sure it has enough fake IDs and hard currency cards to go to the end of the universe and back. And I reread the post, because I like to revolve my blorbos from time to time, and a sentence from one of the screencaps caught my attention. Arada is talking to SecUnit about potentially serving as security for their next survey trip. She tells it "In a few months, we're going on a small assessment survey."

And for some reason, it just really hit me:

Ratthi does not get a single goddamn break from All Systems Red to System Collapse.

In All Systems Red, Ratthi is mostly in the thick of the action. He isn't there when Bharadwaj and Volescu are attacked, obviously, but he's part of the rescue party. He goes out to the unmapped area (where, due to the maps being corrupted by alien remnants, he winds up waist-deep in hot acidic mud). He's one of the people who heads out to the DeltFall habitat, although he's forced to stay on the shuttle due to a lack of weapons training. He heads back to their original habitat to find the drones and the message from GrayCris. He does, at least, get to skip the bit where everyone's too close to the emergency beacon and gets blown up, but is presumably there for the aftermath and probably helps Overse stabilize SecUnit until the company comes for them. And of course, he and Pin-Lee act as SecUnit's bodyguards until it leave them at the end.

At which point, Mensah is kidnapped, and Pin-Lee, Gurathin, and Ratthi have to go to TranRollinHyfa, where they spend approximately twenty days (which we know because SecUnit says that the company gunship has been waiting at TranRollinHyfa for approximately twenty days) watching their odds of successfully rescuing Mensah dwindle to damn near nothing. (For the record, I think about what this twenty day period might have been like for the three of them a very normal amount.) Fortunately, SecUnit arrives in the nick of time, and Mensah is rescued, and apart from the bit with the killware that infects the company ship and almost kills everyone and Ratthi finds himself performing rescue breathing on an augmented human stranger because it's the only way to keep them alive long enough for SecUnit to save everyone, it goes...

It goes the same way the last one did. People almost get killed, but they don't. SecUnit should die, but it manages to piece itself together and survive. They finally make it back to Preservation and everything is great.

Except for the murder. Which Ratthi isn't too involved in. Apart from when SecUnit asks him and Gurathin for help breaking into that shuttle, which turns out to be the place where poor Lutran was murdered, and it was not cleaned after. Also then they have to stay and protect SecUnit from Station Security. And then it randomly asks them for help finding a lifetender. But other than that, it's a nice vacation.

And then he goes on survey again. And there's pirates. And Thiago almost dies. But compared to the last survey, it goes pretty --

Just kidding. Then Perihelion shows up with a last-ditch plan to save itself and its crew by convincing the remnant contaminated Adamantine colonists that it knew where they could find a really cool weapon, and Ratthi, Thiago, Overse, and Arada find themselves on an safepod with rapidly failing life support, attached to Perihelion's hull as it abducts SecUnit and Amena. The good news is that he makes it out with nothing worse than a damaged knee and some symptoms from toxic air inhalation, and everyone else is doing better.

The bad news is... well. Plague Hell Planet.

Ratthi does manage to stay on Perihelion for the entirety of the rescue mission, which is relatively safe (and also allows him to befriend another rogue SecUnit). He's not so lucky when they find out about the second group of colonists in the hidden location by the terraforming engines and he, SecUnit, Iris, Tarik, and SecUnit's remaining drones have to put on the best damn talent show documentary film the colonists have ever seen. Then Barish-Estranza attacks (again), and Ratthi gets to go on ART-drone's Wild Ride while fleeing the armed Barish-Estranza shuttle, almost runs into the unarmed Barish-Estranza shuttle, can't quite save his friends on the first attempt, manages it on the second try, oh deities there's another fucking Barish-Estranza ship --

There's a reason he kind of just slumps back into his seat when Holism shows up, is my point.

But yeah. I hesitate to say he has it worse than all of the other Preservation characters, if only because of Mensah (who, on the one hand, is on the rescue team for Network Effect onward, but on the other hand, it's her fucking family that needs rescuing so you know she's not okay). But I do really hope he's spending Platform Decay on a beach. Or in trauma therapy.

Or at a beach resort with a trauma therapy clinic attached, maybe. Preservation might have one of those. Hopefully they do.

[argentavis]

hey do you mind grabbing joseph's coat for him? yeah its the red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve and cream and crimson and silver and rose and azure and lemon and russet and gray and purple and white and pink and orange and blue one

[the-murderbot-chatlogs]

very fun to picture from the outside how secunit often just freezes in place mid-rescue, staring into space, not responding to questions, and then twenty seconds later something distant blows up, the lights turn orange, and all the doors open. secunit looks proud of itself and moves on with zero explanation

[ispyspookymansion]

you should rewatch supernatural

^ when you send hateful messages like this you have to ask yourself “how would i feel if i was responsible for that actually happening? could i live with that on my conscience?” And if you stop before sending things like this and actually think about the consequences, the answer will probably be no.

[jakemorph]

youre an olympic level hater. i respect it.

they asked me to represent my country in the sport of hating i said no. i hate my country

[cloudabserk]

before i watched project hail mary i knew exactly 2 things about ryan gosling:

[alda-rana]

Witches Abroad!

[sanealex]

When I find myself in times of trouble Granny Weatherwax comes to me Speaking words of wisdom I can't be having with this

[quietwingsinthesky]

do you think bowser ever gets anxious after kidnapping peach again that he went too far this time and he calls mario up in the middle of the night to make sure they’re still on for tennis and gokarting next weekend

[quietwingsinthesky]

painstakingly dialing mario’s landline on a comically small telephone only for luigi to pick up instead and he has to ask him to put his brother on the phone. not that luigi isn’t part of weekend plans, but like this is really more of a mario & bowser situation and it’d be rude to drag his brother into it if there’s a problem. so anyway then luigi puts the receiver down to go get his brother and bowser sits there tapping his claws on his table and this is agony, actually, he shouldn’t have called at all, it’s late enough at his castle so it has to be even later over in the mushroom kingdom. but just as he’s about to put the phone down, mario answers all chipper—mario mario speaking, who’s-a calling? which is a ridiculous question because there’s no way luigi didn’t already tell him.—and bowser has to ask him. look, mario, i know i dangled peach in a bird cage over a pit of lava the other day, and when you showed up, i let my son throw giant flaming hammers at you, and there’s no hard feelings about that, right? and there’s a few seconds of silence before mario laughs and reassures him it’s all in the day’s work of a plumber, an explanation bowser has never thought to really question since he only knows two plumbers and it does all seem pretty in their wheelhouse. and then he’s embarrassed for worrying so much so he tries to end the call quickly, but mario just ribs him about how badly he’s going to lose the next race, and then he starts asking bowser how junior is, and does bowser want any of the leftovers since he and luigi really do cook way too much for two, be a shame to let it go to waste. and by the time bowser manages to hang up, this has gone from leftovers into him and junior and the koopalings all being invited over to the mario household for dinner, so long as they don’t park their airship on the front lawn and leave the cannons at home.

[quietwingsinthesky]

op approved tags. you’re the only person here who sees my vision

[layaart]

emotion check: platform decay was good

here's a couple of the frames:

and:

[cephalopodie]

www.wikihow.com/cut-your-own-hair-in-a-way-that-screams-mental-stability

[oqmemphis]

tier list of international radiotelephony spelling alphabet letters by how well they work as personal names

S - hell yeah

Echo - shades of Greek mythology, interesting and distinct while also being an actual name that some people have

November - @postoctobrist is the reason why I am making this list

Sierra - from the Spanish for "mountain range", falls under the same distinct-but-reasonable category as Echo

A - perfectly reasonable names

Charlie

India

Juliet*

Oscar

Romeo*

Victor

*these names are cool but be warned that if you choose one you will get the same three Shakespeare jokes for the rest of time

B - sure I guess

Delta - I have never heard of anyone with this name but I think it could work?

Mike - deeply boring name, try and be more imaginative. (the only reason Charlie isn't down here is that I know a couple of Charlies and they're lovely)

Zulu - probably don't name yourself this if you're white

C - I am really curious how you're gonna make these work

Bravo - I feel like this has the cadence and feel of a name, but it's definitely out there

Lima - people named after cities are not that common, but I guess if Paris can be a name then so can this

Papa - not sure this works as a legal name but it's definitely plausible as a nickname within a very specific in-group

Quebec - see Lima

D - maybe salvageable somehow?

Foxtrot - pretty odd, but you could shorten it to Fox and it's kinda reasonable

Tango - another dance, but even harder to make work than Foxtrot

Whisky - occupies a similar nickname space as Papa, with the extra downside that it makes you sound like an alcoholic

X-Ray - "Ray" on its own is fine but randomly shoving Xs at the start of things is something that basically only Elon Musk does

Yankee - it's not completely insane as a name but it has enough unpleasant connotations that I wouldn't recommend it

F - do not under any circumstances use these

Alpha - if someone introduces themself to me as "Alpha" I will immediately cover my drink

Golf - all issues with the sport aside, I just think this is a really ugly sequence of phonemes

Hotel - you are not a Monopoly token

Kilo - usually units of measurement are named after people, not the other way round

Uniform - too on-the-nose even for a badly written dystopia novel

[alliluyevas]

read a couple cozy mysteries the last couple weeks which is a genre i haven't really touched despite reading a lot of mysteries. learned that i don't like cozy mysteries lollllllll.

[alliluyevas]

friend of mine and coworker at the library is a big fan of cozy mystery (also cozy romance, cozy fantasy, etc.) and it's very interesting to talk about genre tendencies and tropes with her as an avid reader of pretentious grimdark tomes #mytomes. anyway she says that a very common trope in cozy mystery is to have the murder victim be unsympathetic so you don't feel too sad about them dying which is somehow more unsettling to me than reading about fictional people getting murdered period. and cozies also usually avoid Gritty Real World Issues like sexual violence or domestic violence so by "unsympathetic murder victim" I mean like...a grumpy old codger. Something about like...welcome to our town full of nice sweet people who bake muffins and knit and then someone gets murdered but oh welp! it's a mean old dude with no friends so it's not THAT sad. This somehow feels dystopian to me.

[alliluyevas]

on the subject I obviously don't think writing about murder in fiction is necessarily exploitative or bad and I do read murder mysteries but I do think it's very sociologically interesting how differently sexual violence is treated in fiction/by readers than other types of violence. like the entire existence of a genre of cozy mystery that centers on homicide (even if it typically avoids graphic descriptions of violence) while completely eschewing depictions of sexual or gendered motivations for homicide. I think also of the way that ASOIAF fandom tends to be much more critical of depictions of sexual violence than murder and war crimes both in terms of criticizing its inclusion in the series in the first place and in terms of whether characters who perpetrate violence are seen as redeemable or sympathetic. I think this largely stems from the fact that sexual violence feels real and immediate to readers esp female readers and war and murder feels much more remote. But I think there's this false understanding of separateness there and also a belief that no one in the prospective audience could have also been affected by other types of violence. Like obviously it is less common by several orders of magnitude but I personally know several people who have parents or siblings that were murdered. I'm probably not articulating this well but there's something very othering about this seeming perspective that murder is a fictional dramatic plot point while sexual assault is a real world trigger.

[do-not-u-dare]

“On social media you only see people’s highs and not their lows so you get the impression that everybody else only experiences highs which can lower your self esteem” idk what social media you’re on but it isn’t like that for me

[notaplaceofhonour]

Ryan Gosling’s career has just been one long quest to climb the Warner Bros water tower

[notaplaceofhonour]

that man has been trying to climb this tower since he was 16. he has asked multiple times, and every time they said no, but now he’s famous enough & variety was able to convince them to do a shoot on the tower. it all led here. it was all for this.

[redstonedust]

i like when you can tell a screenwriter thinks that being good at computers is all about how fast you type. you need to out-computer your enemies with your superior wpm. whoever types the fastest is the most elite hacker in the cyberspace. its all up to you, johnny quickfingers. we're counting on you.