Defying Labels

[strongermonster]

i'm helping out at a creative writing workshop for uhhh i think 10-12s? 10-14s? idk. but that age range. and anyways

a) i forgot how fun this is

b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!

c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"

d) little girls out here writing like "aunt melanie's skin was sloughing off the bones as her beloved dogs tore her apart, turning on her in blind animal instinct. the second she stopped providing food, she became food." and a lot of body horror and dark themes about group pacts and betrayals and ritualistic murder/sacrifices. like a lot

[strongermonster]

me, turning to the teacher who is also doing this: hey so, i'm personally really cool with the tone and direction these girls take, but is any of this? how you say... a red flag?

teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.

me, who was also a weird little girl who phased in and out of weirdness depending on social settings: nice.

[pasiphile]

Wip Wednesday

Reasonably productive writing today!

It's a bit frustrating because I'm still definitely in rough draft territory, rather than actual immersive writing. Still, I'm making progress. Apparently I have decided that I'm first going to put down the basic building blocks chapter by chapter rather than work them out all in detail. Which makes sense, and it is working. I'm at chapter 8 and 9 of 12 and while there still are a lot of blanks, there is also a basic structure starting to grow. And once I have that, it'll be much easier to hang scenes on there rather than just throw them at the wall randomly, which is what I've been doing now.

I've also made a major plot decision that I was—and still am!—doubtful about. But I've resigned myself to the fact that if I want to know if this works or not, just thinking about it isn't going to do it, and I'll have no choice but to write it all out. Even if that means the risk of writing several thousand words just to end up deleting them all if it doesn't work out.

(random tangent but we did a module on personality at work recently, and apart from curious and imaginative the thing that pops up for my personality is analytical. And I do recognise that! So it's funny that when it comes to writing, I just... can't manage that. I'm not an outliner. I find out what I'm writing by writing and that's the only way that's ever worked for me. Maybe it's because I'm entirely self taught and never took any kind of course? Either way, it's time intensive but it also delivers.)

Other things:

tfw you're so fond of a certain exchange/dialogue you accidentally write the exact same one in three different chapters. Had to make some hard decisions there.

Each chapter starting from 8 gets progressively worse relationship-wise. I've started using scene icons in scrivener to mark every scene where there's a fight (warning sign) and every sex scene (purple flag), so I can quickly compare and notice if something is inconsistent (have I mentioned I love scrivener). And erm. There is definitely a trend of the warning signs increasing while the purple flags decrease.

The fights are also getting uglier. The traumas are piling up!

There's a couple of scenes in these chapter that I wrote, like, a decade ago, and any doubts that I had about me not having evolved in style are very much unfounded, especially when it comes to Jim-pov. I don't believe in using cringe as a descriptor, but let's just say that while the essence of what's in there is definitely cool, the execution needs some adaption.

Without spoiling too much, but: love it when the medical shit lines up perfectly with the themes and motifs.

Finally, obligatory fragment:

A sudden weight lands on your lap. You startle—the cat, kneading its paws into your thigh, then settling down for what seems to be a nap. “Someone likes you,” Jim says, with a quick glance at you. “I’m good with small, cruel, and distrustful creatures, didn’t you know?” You offer the cat your fingers to sniff. “Painkillers?” Jim pauses his typing, and it takes a second or two before he gets up to the bag.

[ourlittlesister2015]

[astriiformes]

The other thing about meeting my wife on this website is I've seen multiple friends today reblog a post about how some mutuals you eventually transition to using their given name and some you never do, and the thing is. The woman I am legally married to is in the latter category.

[crazy-brazilian]

[sanrio-stud]

?

A

B

Remaining time: 5 days 16 hours

[ephronvestrit]

A seems more logical from a physics standpoint, but as we know from the game, portals conserve momentum, not energy. In GLaDOS' words: "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out". From the perspective of the trolley, the subjects have high momentum, so I would conclude B is the right answer here.

[pasiphile]

Sooo... I've been rereading TVD again the last few weeks. In a slower pace than usual, letting scenes sit for a while to process them (also taking breaks and areading other things in between).

And I have to say... the amount of anxiety I feel towards the End is worse after reading FiF, than it was before reading FiF.

It was always bad, never looking forward to the inevitable heartbreak (I always empathize a tad too much with Seb. He also keeps spooking around in my head way after the fact), but now I'm genuinely dreading it.

Currently at the beginning of chapter 12, and I'm genuinely feeling nauseous and jittery.

1.000/10★

No other series has ever been able to do this to me. ヽ(´o｀;

Thank you, I love hearing how I cause my readers pain <3

It's an interesting experience to hear, though! I'm also going to have to do the Full Readthrough at one point in the future and I'm very curious how it's gonna hit with me, since I also know what comes even after that...

Either way, it makes sense that it hits different now. Before, the ending was very much a standalone thing, a sort of classic open ending, but now Fif exists the ending suddenly becomes the start of a very different story. And just like tvd took you along every step of the way through the evolution and growth of their relationship (which made the decline all the more painful), Fif leads you along every step of the way through the whole ugly grief and self-destruction of it all. So where before tvd's ending was just the end of the nice things (bad enough in itself), now it's not just that but also the start of all the bad things.

Although this is just me spitballing here. Like I said, I've known how it all goes after and ends for a long time, so I can't imagine the experience of reading it not knowing that.

Incidentally, I skipped ahead a bit the last few days to the last three chapters of TToD and I'm happy sad to report the downwards spiral thing from tvd and fif is once again present.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

happy pride month to the fuck tree I guess

[pasiphile]

I finished reading TSTC this morning. Pasi, I can only say that your writing has been in my life for years at this point, and every time I am so happy to return to it.

This fic was not only impressively written, but it kept me up at night wanting to read more. It reminds me why I loved it ten years ago and still love it now.

Thank you, good job, never stop writing.

<3

eta: i had this in my drafts since... 7th of May basically, while I was trying to think how to reply, and meanwhile OP has deactivated.

I suppose I should draw lessons from this.

[elephantlovemedleys]

jane eyre and mr rochester + textposts (pt.1)

[securityunit-ese]

Some things we know about Season 2

As of 30 May 2026:

From: AwardsBuzz interview about Murderbot 12 May 2026

episodes will be a little longer

boiling down the 3 remaining novellas into a single season

is ambitious for visual effects and action

the core is a character commenting on its life

they are not trying to replicate what they did in the first season

season 2 is totally new stuff

season 2 will be around 350 minutes / 5 hours long (so about 35 mins per episode)

intending to deliver within about a year (before June 2027)

he's looking forward to the visual effects and sound so he can see his mind on the screen

bunch of new characters being introduced

showing the new characters s1 to see how the show feels like

getting a lot of the original cast but not ALL of the cast

he's hoping it will have something for everyone

both repeatedly called it ambitious and super ambitious

From Martha Wells Q&As on Platform Decay 10 May 2026:

they’re filming in Madrid right now, and Martha is going to go see it in June.

for the next season they’re doing Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy, with some changes.

it's just Chris and Paul, brothers, who are the writers, directors, and producers.

they’re trying to figure out ways to show the interactions between ART and Murderbot, or Murderbot and the ComfortUnit.

changing things from a first person internal narration to third person in three dimensions.

In the second season they’re going to continue with showing Sanctuary Moon and some other shows.

I don’t think anyone gets much choice on what they look like. There’s something I want to tell but I can’t tell… It’s kind of fun. (regarding a discussion about muttonchops = secunit with a beard?)

From Martha Wells Q&A on Platform Decay 8 May 2026:

they are filming now

Martha doesn’t think they have cast ART yet (there's a stand-in reading lines)

said that next season will be all the way through Exit Strategy

She was very happy with the changes to the tv series for logistical reasons and considers it a parallel universe to the books

(She specifically mentioned she wished she had thought of LeeBeeBee for the book)

Also from 8 May 2026:

Martha is consulting on the show

likes their approach to portraying how ART and SecUnit communicate.

From 6 May 2026 Q&A (private discord attendees):

The TV show struggled (is struggling?) with portraying ART's presence.

They want to do something unique that also gets across the way that MB and ART communicate in a way entirely inhuman (ie, theyre not planning on doing scrolling text)

Martha hasn't seen final design for ART, has seen the initial ART design.

Has seen Tapan, Rami, and Maro design/costumes.

She is going out to the set to consult in June.

From 5 May 2026 Q&A (private discord attendees):

There will be 10 episodes and they will be longer (S1 Eps were supposed to be longer but the voiceover changed the calculations so they were shorter than intended.

Get to see Sanctuary Moon and Worldhoppers plus a few other new shows.

From Toa instagram story 13 March 2026:

Directors on site in Madrid scoping out potential filming sites

From The Coode Street Podcast Episode 692 December 2025 podcast interview with Martha on Murderbot release date:

No, it'll be 2027.

They're working on it now.

They're kind of in the pre-production writing the script and you know, doing the production design and all that kind of stuff and then they'll film it next year.

And then they'll be out in 2027.

Same podcast, consultation with Martha on the TV show:

No, I talked to them a lot.

They call me all the time when they're working on it and they need questions and answered fast.

Because sometimes and stuff like that, I know you don't know what you don't know until you get ready to do something that you need something answered really quickly.

Yeah, so we talk about it a lot.

From instagram stories and posts:

the directors have been in madrid since March 2026

skarsgaard is in madrid from early April 2026

(potential 2cm hair growth from tourist photo in Madrid)

Concept artist and set designer discussion: season 2 will be more visceral and more gorey

[mai-col]

Of course I was going to like the snarky dude who leans weirdly against walls and furniture

[villainwithacrush]

[n3cropants]

this bit in guards! guards!:

Lady Ramkin made herself a cup of cocoa and listened to the rain gurgling in the pipes outside. She slipped off the hated dancing shoes, which even she was prepared to concede were like a pair of pink canoes. But nobbyless obligay, as the funny little sergeant would say, and as the last representative of one of Ankh-Morpork’s oldest families she’d had to go to the victory ball to show willing. Lord Vetinari seldom had balls. There was a popular song about it, in fact. But now it was going to be balls all the way.

lol.

also, i have a headcanon that at some point, vetinari is compelled to organize some kind of ball, but it turns out the facilities at the palace just aren't up to snuff at all. perhaps he's left them in disrepair ever since the Dragon Incident -- really! that long! or just uses it as extra storage space. there's some bits & pieces about him maintaining the Bloody Stupid Johnson garden, and the zoo, and the racehorse stable, just because he's reluctant to change things; & that he keeps leonard around just because he likes hanging onto anything that might be useful later. so i think the palace unfortunately has a bit of an Old Furniture Problem bc vetinari is not in favor of throwing things out. thus -- it ends up in the ballroom. thus -- there is no ballroom, so much as there's a very big, fancy storage room

so, anyway, upon being compelled to arrange a ball for visiting dignitaries, he's got no place to put it. luckily, it turns out sybil, although about as much of a packrat, has managed to maintain a fairly decent ballroom at ramkin manor, it'll be lovely with a bit of fresh paint & some airing out (to get rid of the dragon smell). it's a great idea. the big fancy ball goes great. vimes shows up for about half the night before slinking off, sybil charms everyone to bits, vimes & sybil & vetinari are all sort of in the capacity of being each other's plus-ones...

the only drawback is that, from then on, the popular song aforementioned (upon the topic of vetinari "seldom had balls") has its lyrics updated to state that in fact, the duke & duchess of ankh hold lord vetinari's balls

[grimbeak]

9th doctor era was simply The Best One im sorry. shaved head leather jacket doc martins telling people to kill themselves. sweetie pea retail worker universal union organizer who became god for him. their stray cat horny little boytoy bottom who becomes an unkillable eldritch horror because of their love. did i mention the first guys a dilf and the other two have daddy issues.

[moonknightc]

Wilson Bethel as Shane Maguire in Untamed (2025)

[druidshollow]

HAVE THAT CHARACTER GAIN WEIGHT AS A SIGN OF HEALING: NOW

[pasiphile]

You reblogged that thing by a massage person once about how there’s different body types, and at the time I figured I was a lean people but it turned out that was just being a teenager and in fact I am actually a pert round people 😪 Anyway, I remain convinced that Jim is also a pert round people, so thank you for writing scary doms of that body type! I would also like to be a scary dom but people keep calling me cute.

I fully agree! Which is funny because these days when I see pics of the actual Andrew Scott on my dash he looks buff as fuck. meanwhile I'm like no! jim soft! lil tummy!

Anyway, in the end it's always the attitude that counts.