[sincethefloods]

quick and dirty intro post:

Im river/crawfish. this is my sideblog for my writing and whatever Im into atm. this blog is 18+ and Im in my 20s. main is svnmouth.

my ao3 account can be found here.

writing: #my writing

talkin posts: #flood watch

my cyberpunk photos: #my elaborate multi gigabyte dress up game

[sincethefloods]

ok actually my preservering agenda in anything ever regarding characters is that some of them shouldnt be able to raise one eyebrow. its all or nothing babey.

[robertfagden]

lets all horrifically torture our favorite characters together Forever

[cepheusgalaxy]

[ID. A doodle of four people dancing in a circle while giving hands and smiling a lot. End ID.]

[harleyglenn]

I’m thinking of Beginning it all

[sincethefloods]

being eaten alive by writing in a bad way.

[mushyburger]

amena and mumu sillyness (audio on)

[sincethefloods]

7k words and more to go.

[sincethefloods]

heres a 300 word cut of the murderbot wip for anyone who sees this

I started with, “Some of Mensah’s children gave me a bracelet before I left.” Okay, that’s not at all what I meant to say, actually. Then I kept saying it anyway with my normal voice instead of ART’s. “They keep doing stuff like that. They know what a SecUnit is, they know I don’t need jewelry.”

ART, in turn, bled out of the code cloistering my motor function and gave me back full control.

(At the tail end of my last visit to the Mensah family farm, I was put to work helping the younger kids film a movie. They had asked for my drones to film close ups of sword fights, conversations with spinning views, experimental shots with a lot of purpose that I didn't understand when it was explained to me. It was fun. Then they ambushed me with the bracelet.)

ART said, I wasn’t aware genuine extensions of positive esteem disquieted you so deeply. ART paused sarcastically for .4 seconds, then continued talking in an imitation of its smarmy bot pilot voice, Truly, I came unprepared with a lack of supporting evidence. My shame humbles me, and so I have created a catalogue of your reactions, sorted by degree of irrationality and flavor of context, to show that I have reflected on my assumptions.

ART pushed a bloated file at me that I immediately batted away without looking at it. I didn’t need to see it to know ART has uncountable (not really, because of the aforementioned data analysis machine with guns) hours of footage of my face doing things I didn’t want it to do.

“Fuck off, don’t call it flavors. You know it's not that,” I said. Probably. Okay, maybe it is that. “It's not just that.”

[sincethefloods]

7k words and more to go.

[petemcvries23]

there’s just something so awesome about a character you love getting really badly hurt

[sincethefloods]

I got upright and carried Tapan out and up the access into the main section. ComfortUnit followed me.

I'm a little obsessed with Artificial Condition and the ComfortUnit. Murderbot not only immediately stops calling it a "sexbot" after Murderbot kills Tlacey, but literally names it too, using "ComfortUnit" as a proper noun. It's interesting that this ComfortUnit changes categories from "sexbot/a comfortunit" to "ComfortUnit/earning a name" in Murderbot's mind the moment it's free of Tlacey, but before Murderbot even disables ComfortUnit's govmod. It's partially the fact that there have been no further ComfortUnit characters and only two mentions of this specific AC ComfortUnit, but the term "sexbot" in place of ComfortUnit doesn't make a return in any of the books after artificial condition. Murderbot very much talks around its feelings regarding ComfortUnit, only mentioning its anger, but you can read between the lines.

It was still struggling to get up and it was just going to hurt itself further. Especially if it made me mad again.

and

[ART] said, I thought you might destroy it. […] I signaled a negative through the feed. It hadn’t had a choice. And I hadn’t broken its governor module for its sake. I did it for the four ComfortUnits at Ganaka Pit who had no orders and no directive to act and had voluntarily walked into the meat grinder to try to save me and everyone else left alive in the installation.

I interpreted its anger as it defaulting to a natural, safe response to a situation its familiar with (a construct under control of humans through its govmod) and a construct in the position it had only recently escaped (scheming to preserve itself, using every resource it can). But to go further, I think you can read Murderbot's anger as an unprocessed response to the fact that ComfortUnit tried to ask for help to escape (Murderbot never did that - it was outed first). Miki served as a contrast to both Murderbot and ComfortUnit; Miki was "pet bot" who was valued as a person, by humans, and not at risk of torture. Miki made an impact because Murderbot saw it's connection to Mensah in Don Abene, and was able to acknowledge the personhood in Miki (eventually). Murderbot struggled with ComfortUnit's personhood because of how similar they were. Edit: Coming back real quick because just like Three, one of the first things we could assume could be asked by ComfortUnit's own volition, even with an active govmod, is if it can help.

ComfortUnit knelt beside me. “Can I help?”

[sincethefloods]

ok fresh from the gym but to expand bc I dont think what I said was adequate: seeing Miki to MB was a "parallel life" sort of experience. What You Could Have Had In Another Life. Which isnt necessarily something MB wants. But some parts of it... well maybe if MB ever processes what happened to Miki then it can acknowledge that.

other assorted shit I wanted to mention: MB's reaction to ComfortUnit is immediately after it felt extreme self hatred, helpless, guilty, all that jazz.

I was used to taking orders from humans and trying to mitigate whatever damage their stupid ideas did to them, but I had wanted to work with a group again, I had enjoyed how they had listened to me, I had put my need to get to RaviHyral above the safety of my clients. I was just as shit at being a security consultant as any human.

And unfortunately ComfortUnit gets the crossfire of that while having its govmod disabled.

[archivebottles]

been listening to the Murderbot diaries recently..i like it a lot

[hamletisintown]

Comm for @azhdarchidae >:)

[sincethefloods]

I got upright and carried Tapan out and up the access into the main section. ComfortUnit followed me.

I'm a little obsessed with Artificial Condition and the ComfortUnit. Murderbot not only immediately stops calling it a "sexbot" after Murderbot kills Tlacey, but literally names it too, using "ComfortUnit" as a proper noun. It's interesting that this ComfortUnit changes categories from "sexbot/a comfortunit" to "ComfortUnit/earning a name" in Murderbot's mind the moment it's free of Tlacey, but before Murderbot even disables ComfortUnit's govmod. It's partially the fact that there have been no further ComfortUnit characters and only two mentions of this specific AC ComfortUnit, but the term "sexbot" in place of ComfortUnit doesn't make a return in any of the books after artificial condition. Murderbot very much talks around its feelings regarding ComfortUnit, only mentioning its anger, but you can read between the lines.

It was still struggling to get up and it was just going to hurt itself further. Especially if it made me mad again.

and

[ART] said, I thought you might destroy it. […] I signaled a negative through the feed. It hadn’t had a choice. And I hadn’t broken its governor module for its sake. I did it for the four ComfortUnits at Ganaka Pit who had no orders and no directive to act and had voluntarily walked into the meat grinder to try to save me and everyone else left alive in the installation.

I interpreted its anger as it defaulting to a natural, safe response to a situation its familiar with (a construct under control of humans through its govmod) and a construct in the position it had only recently escaped (scheming to preserve itself, using every resource it can). But to go further, I think you can read Murderbot's anger as an unprocessed response to the fact that ComfortUnit tried to ask for help to escape (Murderbot never did that - it was outed first). Miki served as a contrast to both Murderbot and ComfortUnit; Miki was "pet bot" who was valued as a person, by humans, and not at risk of torture. Miki made an impact because Murderbot saw it's connection to Mensah in Don Abene, and was able to acknowledge the personhood in Miki (eventually). Murderbot struggled with ComfortUnit's personhood because of how similar they were. Edit: Coming back real quick because just like Three, one of the first things we could assume could be asked by ComfortUnit's own volition, even with an active govmod, is if it can help.

ComfortUnit knelt beside me. “Can I help?”

[oxalees]

anything but to please myers

[the-murderbot-chatlogs]

im. the implications of this. art lied to its crew, made it seem like secunit wouldn't be a threat to it. because it knew that if secunit was a threat, its crew might not let them see each other again. art loves and trusts its crew more than anyone else in the world, and it lied to them on the off chance that they might not let it see secunit again. god

[fullthrotlaxolotl]

If you haven't read Rapport... read Rapport.

[the-murderbot-chatlogs]

link it

[genderbinaryisforlosers]

really fond of the idea that the adjustments murderbot made to its appearance for this mission made it look more a member of mensah's family

ID below the cut (copied from alt)

ID: Digital art of Mensah, Amena, and ART helping Murderbot bleach its hair. Amena is stood behind Murderbot's chair, applying bleach into foils with a brush and smiling. An arrow pointing to her says, "called in as hair expert." Murderbot has its eyes closed behind the foils and an arrow pointing to it says, "all sensory input (except drones) off, watching Sanctuary Moon." Overhead a representation of ART watches the process with an arrow pointing to it saying, "supervising." Standing to the side, Mensah is reading the back of a box of bleach over her glasses, frowning. An arrow pointing to her says, "invited to help to distract from panic attack."

Digital art of Murderbot holding Sofi aboard a busy public transport vehicle. Its hair is bleached to the same lighter brown as Sofi and Mensah, and has a curly texture. It is wearing a red patterned shawl knitted in the same style as Sofi's rainbow sweater. Sofi is loosely holding on to Murderbot's neck and looking around nervously, while Murderbot easily holds her in one arm, looking in the other direction. In the background, a digital display can be seen reading, "Next stop:" but is then cut off. /end ID

[sincethefloods]

reached the part of the fic writing process where I just want to kill.

[sincethefloods]

a little less murderous because the argument is no longer strangling me and Im bumbling towards coherent and linear dialogue.