Wow, it's been like 10 years since I updated this. Neat.
I've made a dreamwidth blog just in case tumblr dies. I think dreamwidth is neat.
My username on Discord is Liliet#1061 (and no I don't intend to update it, they're asking but they haven't tried to force me yet).
My username on reddit is LilietB.
Read PGTE. Homestuck is great. Peace and love on the planet Earth.
I'm Ukrainian. Wish us luck.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
I HAVE FINALLY POSTED THE THING TO AO3
(working title, might be changed later)
premise:
immediately post s2 finale, after my fic that is _immediately_ immediately after it. Lilith has not called Charlie yet.
slice of life soap opera: nobody permadies, but a few people might at some points wish they did
the most insane multiship i can cram into a single timeline, and trust me, I am _creative_ with that. Welcome to hell, Alastor!
doing my best to treat serious subjects with the gravity they deserve, but this is still ultimately a fic, so yknow. sensitivity readers feel free to volunteer?
this is _mostly_ not a pornfic, but uh. regenerating immortal demon kink will be had. mind the tags, and check them for updates when i post a new chapter, okay?
if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills
where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*
"everyone should get more aromantic" can appeal to tumblr's sensibilities but I genuinely think everyone should also get more asexual. I don't mean everyone stop having sex, what I mean is
Sex is not essential. You can live without it. Full stop.
Not having sex isn't shameful or a sign of failure. It also doesn't make anyone boring.
You are not entitled to having sex with anybody and nobody is entitled to having sex with you.
Sex is not what makes someone an adult.
Nobody's worth is defined by how much sex they have or don't have.
Sex is not equally important to everyone.
You can have fulfilling and happy relationships without sex.
You should only have sex on your own terms, not because you feel like you owe it to someone, or because you feel like you'd be incomplete without it.
Know your boundaries around sex and be firm about them. Know how to respect other people's boundaries.
The previous point also applies when it comes to discussing sex. If someone doesn't wanna talk about it or hear about it you have to back down.
Anything can be sexual but not everything has to be sexual.
i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.
as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”
small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.
i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.
i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.
I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀
if you say women are intentionally nerfed from birth in 2026 people look at you like you’re insane and start condescendingly telling you about how women are just better at different things (but not during their periods haha) but this was a completely basic feminist talking point I grew up with like “girls can do it too! [shot of little girls climbing and running with boys]” nickelodeon commercial tier base level I hate it how is everyone suddenly dumber than the average 7 year old
"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade
At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone benignly pro-queer from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever
I think people need to understand that everyone has to unlearn misogynistic behaviors and thinking patterns. Cis women and trans women and cis men and trans men and anyone who doesn’t fall under those categories are all completely capable of being misogynistic and actively hurtful to women. Trans men are included in this, obviously, but when you only call for trans men to unlearn this mindset, you are no longer being progressive and fair. You are singling out a minority.
it pisses me off to see cis women saying 'trans women are misogynistic because they were raised as men' and trans women replying 'no we aren't because no we weren't!' and i'm sitting there staring at the camera like it's the office. because like women are ALL raised to be just as misogynistic as men. it's a notable goddamn feature of the patriarchy.
like if you are marginalized it is in your own self-interest to interrogate and deconstruct the cultural narratives that position you as subnormal. this is what starts a lot of queer people on wanting to reform the world into something more compassionate and egalitarian.
but it's not the marginalization that makes you any more or less ethical than anyone else. it's the work. you gotta do the actual work.
I feel like part of the problem is a really popular misunderstanding of bigotry.
Misogyny is not just prejudice experienced by a woman. It is not simply something that happens TO a woman. It has nothing to do with the woman. It’s about the misogynist.
Bigotry is not determined or defined by the target of that bigotry. The bigotry is stored in the bigot.
Misogynists will be misogynistic towards any person they associate with femininity, including cisgender men.
When a misogynist cis man tears another man down for liking something he thinks is girly, he is still being misogynistic.
A cis male coach telling his cis male student he runs like a girl is being misogynistic.
A cis woman punishing her son for wanting a “girl” toy or policing her boyfriend’s hygiene habits and interests for anything she considers emasculating, is being misogynistic!
When a woman gets in a car accident and is injured more severely because the safety testing on that car was only done using crash test dummies and models based on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.
When the medication she takes for her injuries doesn’t work right or has unexpected side effects because it was only tested on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.
When the tools she uses at work that are the wrong shape for her hands, and the jumpsuit that’s part of her uniform which she has to take off completely to use the bathroom, and all the spaces she moves through and everything within them are designed with the assumption that an average male body is the only body that matters— she is experiencing misogyny.
Misogyny is the belief that women are inherently inferior, and the systems and institutions built around that belief. It can be experienced by anyone, and anyone is capable of having misogynistic beliefs and doing misogynistic things.
Bigotry is not about the target. It’s about the bigot, and what the bigot believes, and the way those bigoted beliefs have shaped our world.
I don’t care what race gender or sexuality you are, you were raised with racist, sexist, homophobic beliefs. Because it’s literally impossible not to be.
And the harder you try to cling to the idea that misogyny is something that happens TO women, rather than something coming FROM misogynists, the more blind you’ll be to your own misogynistic beliefs, and all the ways everything in our society is a product of or directly reinforces those beliefs.
Is it just me or is BloodyMary the start of the healing of fandoms?? ‘Oh that ship isn’t canon so fuck you’ ‘oh that’s slightly out of character fuck you’ ‘Canon canon canon—‘ like NO. These two guys have NEVER met in canon and they’re still a good ship and that is OKAY and CAN BE ENJOYED.
Okay so now that Bambi has been canonized can we please have the conversation I've been putting off for like a year
Alastor would hate the movie Bambi with every fiber of his being and not just because it's a movie. That movie would trigger him so hard. First of all Alastor would be pissed at Bambi's absentee father and upset when his mother dies but what I'm talking about is the scene near the end where Bambi is on the run from hunting dogs and a hunter. That is quite literally how Alastor died. Bambi might have survived but Alastor didn't.
If you think about this the nickname Bambi is SO fucked up and I know nobody else is thinking about it as deep as me but if Alastor ever watched the movie Bambi he'd go on a killing spree of everyone who's ever called him that. The only way anyone is getting away with this is because Alastor hates television so he's never seen the movie and never will.
first off, excuse you, you canNOT hide this in the tags
Anyways, never fear for we seem to have the exact same brain bc he would HATE that movie so much, it would be a huge trigger for him. The gunfire, the dogs, the dead mom and shitty father (though I think he might be put a little more at ease about Bambi's dad if he saw the second movie, that healed my daddy issues fr it's so good). All of it combines to make a movie that is Very Bad for Alastor's Mental Wellbeing.
the panic attack from that scene is so bad that it instantly blacklists Bambi 2 bc there's like 2 major dog attack scenes in that one, so even if the dad content is good, someone would have to make him close his eyes and cup their hands over his ears for 2 very considerable parts of the movie (comfort? comfort.) and we all know he would never allow that unless they managed to catch him off guard and like.... this man is hypervigilant af NO ONE is catching him off guard enough to cradle his head to their chest like that. Also if someone held him like that he'd probably like..........start crying. But no one can know that, so he absolutely Can Not let that happen
and NO he did NOT cry when Bambi started calling for his mother SHUT UP (everyone teases him for it, but he was lowkey having trauma flashbacks to his mother's death. Made even worse if you hc that it happened when he was really young like I do)
Just wanna add to this, another film that would be really bad for Alastor's mental health is The Fox and The Hound which...
Likewise hunting dogs and rifles. And also a friendship that completely falls apart as we all suspect happened between him and Vox. Saying goodbye to a mother figure. Y'know.
I have a confession to make. It’s definitely an unpopular opinion, but I kind of wish we didn’t get this exchange in Network Effect:
I know, I know. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why Martha included it. It reveals the intimacy of the scene. We get an idea of what this relationship looks like from a human perspective. It gives us a heads up that Murderbot 2.0 is a person and not just a string of code. But when you take the ‘you’re making a baby together’ line so literally, you don’t get the chance to really compare and contrast this scenario with the one in Artificial Condition, the other time Murderbot has ART alter itself. (Buckle up for some literary analysis. It gets pretty long. I included quotes!)
That first time, Murderbot changes itself so that it can pursue answers to its murky past. It wasn’t a life or death situation, and Murderbot felt like it could say no and its decision would be respected. In fact, it did say no to some of the suggestions. The two situations are so different on the face of it but when you get down to their hearts both reveal the same emotional/self-improvement hurdle that Murderbot struggles to get past.
When I first read Artificial Condition, it seemed pretty obvious that Murderbot doesn’t want to change itself because it doesn’t want to look human, and it doesn’t want to look human because it doesn’t have any desire to become more human in any way. But a few rereads later this line caught me by surprise:
So yes, a part of it is that it rejects humanity outright. but another part of the reason it doesn’t want to look like a human is because it thinks of humans as being people, and it still struggles to think of itself as person and not a thing. And looking more like a human makes it feel more like a person. There are a lot of things it allows itself to do/a lot of things it allows itself to be subject to expressly because it doesn’t think of itself as a person. Because to treat a person like that would be unacceptable.
And then we jump forward to Network Effect. Murderbot makes a copy of its kernel. Just as a reminder, earlier in this book, ART gets deleted, and then restored from a copy of its kernel. So we have textual evidence that a kernel is essentially the digital blueprint of machine intelligence. The original and the copied kernel are functionally the same being. Murderbot then starts to construct killware code so that the kernel can carry out the functions necessary for the mission. Since this is a pretty big task being done in a time crunch where lives are at stake, it asks ART to help construct this code.
So 2.0 is not a completely new being that they created together (which is the kind of thing I would consider to be their baby). They didn’t mix their kernels together to make a new person (another thing I would consider their baby). Murderbot never says that it thinks of 2.0 as its kid. Amena is the one who makes that claim.
This is how Murderbot describes their relationship right before killing it:
Two different iterations, with different capabilities. Same person, two versions. A few paragraphs previous to this, Murderbot uses that same word, iteration, to describe the different copies of TargetControlSystem:
It’s the same word it uses in System Collapse to describe the different copies of ART:
This was something that ART tried convincing Murderbot in that first conversation they have about constructing killware:
Murderbot tries telling ART ‘It wouldn’t even be me’, and ART is stunned speechless, and then says that Murderbot doesn’t understand how its own identity works. This is something ART has plenty of experience with, splitting its consciousness into different iterations. It knows that they would be the same person. It says ‘I didn’t mean you’, not ‘I didn’t mean our baby/kid/offspring’. ART considers killware with Murderbot’s kernel installed to be Murderbot.
This is how 2.0 identifies itself to Three:
A rogue secunit, working with an armed transport, currently present as killware. Not killware made by a secunit and armed transport. It tells us it’s unequivocally telling the truth here, not lying to make the situation easier to digest. So I think it’s fair to say that 2.0 does not think of itself as their offspring.
It seems to me that Amena is the only one to really consider 2.0 to be their ‘baby’ in the text of the book. Murderbot acquiesces to Amena that what they’re doing is kind of like making a baby. Because 2.0 is a newly conscious separate being from the original Murderbot, but it’s still Murderbot. It calls itself Murderbot. It distinguishes itself from the original copy by tacking on 2.0 at the end of its name. It refers to Murderbot’s memories as its own. And then at the end of Network Effect, Murderbot straight up says that the analogy that it was like their baby was wrong, but ART and Amena were right about it being a person:
I went through every moment that included or was regarding 2.0, to get a better understanding of how each of the machine intelligences involved classify its identity, and how it identifies itself, but that needs to be its own separate post or this will balloon to over 5000 words.
So Murderbot is being forced to change itself by the circumstance it finds itself in. At first glance it might seem as though this is an example of Murderbot exerting its autonomy, since this time it is the one to suggest altering itself. Except there’s no longer a choice that it can say no to, and they have no alternative ideas (can you call it a choice if you can’t say no? If you have no other options?). They don’t have the time to come up with any other solutions. Creating a person whose only function is to die should be unacceptable. But Murderbot allows itself to be changed in this way because when it’s put under pressure it still doesn’t think of itself as a person.
Murderbot doesn’t feel the same revulsion to altering its kernel as it did with its physical body, which should also feel like a point of progress, to be more open to changing itself. But unlike in Artificial Condition, these are not physical changes that end up causing it to appear/feel more like a person. It isn’t getting the same kind of reminder and reinforcement of its personhood as it did in Artificial Condition. Which leads to the conclusion of the book, when the dust settles and Murderbot has had time to think about what has happened and it admits, yeah, 2.0 was a person. Because IT is a person. Which is a lesson it already knew in theory, but is having trouble with in practice. Not only was 2.0 a person, but it was a part of itself. A part of itself died at its own hand (are these pronouns getting confusing for anyone else? No? 😂).
A big element of the following book is Murderbot having a negative reaction to what is essentially a waking nightmare about the trauma of losing a part of itself. System Collapse is a direct response to what happens in Network Effect, and I kind of wish that Network Effect and System Collapse were smushed together to make one larger book. I know that Martha Wells had a hard time writing TMBD after Network Effect, and I can see why. Network Effect ends with the highest stakes resolved, but none of the emotional fallout gets any resolution.
I mean, putting aside the whole suicide thing, it got left behind on a planet with no feed access! The only bot it ever called a friend was forced to act against it, and put the people it loves in danger! Its friend died! It’s worst nightmares came true. Even if it all turned out all right in the end, going through that kind of thing’s gotta leave some emotional scars. It’s come to the realization that there’s stuff that it doesn’t want to do (sacrifice itself to save others), but we have yet to see it actually lay down any boundaries with the people it intends to work with for the foreseeable future. Which is a shame, because I loved reading about grumpy Murderbot laying down boundaries with its PresAux people. That gave them room to show Murderbot that they were willing to make space for it. We didn’t get any of that with ART’s crew. No, actually I’m wrong. Murderbot does give them one boundary, and it’s a boundary that’s broken before the book begins: don’t send it back down to the planet.
The whole first arc of Secunit’s story has to do with it learning to set boundaries with the people it cares about. Murderbot is struggling in ways it never has before in NE/SC, and I think that goes back to the lack of boundaries it has created with ART’s crew. Which makes sense. It doesn’t know them very well and it wants to make sure they want to work with it, so that it can stay with ART. And they’re taking the lead from ART, who famously has no boundaries with Murderbot. But that works with them because ART’s not a human. Murderbot’s got baggage when it comes to humans. The flashback its traumatized brain came up with was not an Ag-bot, not some kind of representation of TargetControlSystem. It wasn’t some vague, monstrous fauna from one of its shows. It was of a human attacking it and taking away a part of itself. Consuming it.
i'm so glad i finally found time to sit down and read this whole post!!! great meta!! 😭😭😭
i'm of the perspective that 2.0 simultaneously both IS and ISN'T murderbot. as you mention, it IS murderbot in the sense of its own identity/concept of self.
it ISN'T in the sense that it doesn't have the FULL extent of murderbot's trauma bc some of that is ingrained in MB's neural tissue in ways that cannot be copy/pasted. "the body keeps the score" type of thing. 2.0 carries seemingly little of MB's fears or self-hatred and on the whole has a very liberated personality, aside from its anxiety about losing access to Sanctuary Moon files. it has contextual memories, but it isn't emotionally affected by them the same way.
also, very curiously, 2.0 is completely disinterested in MB's physical SecUnit body (controlling it or otherwise backseat driving) beyond the disk space it occupies. once settled in, it just goes off into a partition and watches media when reunited with what could technically be called its "own" body. that stands starkly against murderbot who is rather attached to its body, what it can do, and being able to control it to achieve its goals. i even get the impression that it's proud of its body, and we see it be genuinely happy when it is preserved or protected (see: "i love you, armor.") i don't have the book on me to reread that part, but i also get the impression that MB does not enjoy existing on external hardware — obviously when it jumps onto the Gunship's drive, which almost destroys it — but also when ART has it sequestered on Perihelion disk space during decontamination at the end of NE. it's traumatized, yeah, but it's also not designed to operate without a connection its SecUnit body and that affects it in a way it doesn't affect 2.0. 2.0 wants security; finding and securing storage for its data is a priority, but it's not very bothered about having limbs or physical weapons.
but yes! 2.0 also IS murderbot, even if in some ways it's not!!!!
whatever it is, it's certainly not their baby. (and if it is a baby, it's murderbot's baby. ART just uh... delivered it, if we absolutely HAVE to put it in terms Amena could agree to.)
Amena called it a baby bc that's what makes sense to her young human mind. i suspect the whole baby conversation actually delayed MB from accepting their killware would be a person bc the human terminology was what disturbed it (and by extension, the very human way of perceiving its ongoing personal history of interfacing with ART), not 2.0's actual personhood.
in contrast, if Ratthi, Mensah, or any other of murderbot's initial clients had been privy to these discussions, they might have also thought the word "baby," but they'd likely have at least kept the concept to themselves, knowing murderbot would get squicked out by the human terminology. they're simply older, more familiar with MB's boundaries, and to varying degrees a little more tactful than Amena
yayyyyyy you writing this meta, i didn't know i needed this affirmed by someone else so badly!
