Breaking news, a sentient surveillance machine wishes not to be perceived! Double standards much? More at eleven!
(Much gratitude to a friend who volunteered to translate for me an Old English variation of the warning sign, which was challenging because of that one little problem called "nonexistense of the concept of videocameras at the time this language form existed".)
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.
as much as I love the common "Tim worships/stalks Jason" trope in TimJay fanfiction because it's Good and making Tim a weird little freak is Fun, I think the underutilized dynamic is where Jason is the one weirdly obsessed with Tim and makes it Tim's problem.
Like, the moment Jason is confronted with the information that a third Robin exists, the first thing he does is cover his wall with pictures of Tim so he can just obsess and torture himself over it. That is the behavior of a man who is Unwell over Tim's existence and I love it.
red hood: lost days #4
And as much as a shitshow as The Titans Tower Incident™ is characterization-wise (though I think it has far more merit in depicting Jason's character than people give it credit for but I digress-) there's something very fun about the fact that even after kicking his ass, Jason respects Tim and is impressed by him.
teen titans (2003) #29
And on top of that, Jason can't seem to stop trying to ask Jason to Tim to work with him in some capacity.
robin (1993) #177
batman: battle for the cowl #2
While Battle for the Cowl is an exceptionally bad comic, especially for its characterization of Jason and the "be my Robin" bit is taken deeply out of context, I do think it's interesting how obsessed Jason is with believing that Tim is extremely competent, only held back by being "brainwashed by Bruce". (hence him leaving Tim for dead later on in the comic.) Jason seeing a darker side of Tim and wanting to bring that out of Tim, wanting to see what Tim could be if he let go of his loyalty to Bruce is so fun to me, tbh.
And in Robin #177, Jason seems genuinely upset Tim doesn't want to work with him. Jason sees such a raw potential in Tim and is obsessed with it, constantly wanting Tim to work for him and see Tim be the type of person Jason is. And despite Tim rejecting him, Jason doesn't shoot to kill Tim. I just cannot get over the fanfic potential of Jason obsessing over Tim, tracking him and seeing what he's capable of and what he could be capable of. Wanting to make Tim see things the way he does. To Tim it's corruption, to Jason it's freedom. Tim trying to 'save' Jason is fun and all, but Jason trying to corrupt Tim? That's even more fun to me. Watching that power struggle between them, Tim unable to get Jason off his heels as Jason gets more and more possessive and bold with each attempt.
And when Jason sees Tim successfully get Gotham back under control after a gang war, he's impressed. He praises Tim, even. And then Tim just. Breaks him out of prison.
robin (1993) #182
The way they're constantly trying to see something in the other that isn't there, hoping the other will come around? That is the most fucked up hate/love dynamic ever. Jason keeps coming back to Tim, keeps trying to find ways to get Tim onto his side. They're always chasing each other. And I think Jason would be the one to confess love first, the one to do anything to make Tim his. And when you consider after all of this, Tim has his Red Robin arc and is at his lowest, getting the closest he ever gets to considering murder? I think it'd be so fun to see Jason take advantage of that and worm his way back into Tim's life and finally push Tim over the edge.
There's something that feels like it's gotten lost within the modern non-human, otherkin, and related communities, and I think that maybe it'd be good to remind everyone.
At the end of the day, these are experience-based communities. That is, the unifying thing that members of these communities share is a similar set of experiences related to being Something¹ Else. Everything else is just window dressing.
That includes trying to divide things up based on the origins of those experiences, or trying to figure out who's "valid" enough to be part of the community.² At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is if someone's experiences with being Something Else are similar enough to experiences of other community members for everyone involved to be able to have good discussions about it.³
What someone does with their experiences, or how they may or may not outwardly express them, matters far less to me than the fact that they have those experiences in the first place. These communities are at their best when those experiences are being shared and explored together.⁴ That sharing is what builds the community in the first place, and without it, there's nothing there.
That's why the most common advice about getting involved with the community is to make posts and talk about things. It's about starting and getting involved in conversations around shared experiences, because at the end of the day that's what the community is made of: shared experiences, and the conversations around them.
There will always be room for debate and (healthy⁵) discourse. Those things come naturally with any sizable group. But we have to remember that all of that has to be in service of understanding ourselves and our community better. Disagreements happen, but we can choose to make those disagreements productive rather than destructive.
I think we all need to remember more that, when all is said and done, we're here because we have a similar set of experiences around being Something Else. Those experiences are the tie that holds these communities together, and forgetting that means forgetting why we're here in the first place. Everything else is just window dressing (even if we can't agree on the colour of the drapes.)
(Footnotes under the cut.)
¹ = I use "Something" a bit loosely here, mostly for expedience. The same ideas apply equally to fictionkin, for example, and it would be inaccurate at best to refer to most characters as "Something" rather than as "Someone".
² = There is a reasonable discussion to be had about if engaging with the community is healthy for some people, but in practice that's generally more of an individual assessment than one that can be made about large groups (such as those whose nonhuman identity is rooted in delusions). Not relevant to my larger point, but I do think it's worth mentioning in general.
³ = The strongest example of "experiences not similar enough" would be the KFF ("kin for fun") crowd. Strongly relating to a fictional character is not similar enough to being Something Else to enable good conversation about the overlap (if any) between those experiences. Thus, the community consensus becomes that KFFs are not inherently a part of the community.
⁴ = An important note about "shared and explored together" is that it requires some amount of depth in what's being shared and explored. Thus the long-standing frustration with posts that are little more than "I miss my kintype's home environment"; there's not enough to explore there, and thus there's no room for discussion and building community.
⁵ = There are whole essays to be written on what constitutes "healthy" discourse, but I'm personally defining it (extremely briefly) as debate in which all participants are open to changing their minds, and everyone's goal is to educate and present their thoughts, rather than trying to "win" an argument. That is, it's about building everyone up, rather than tearing anyone down.
I love vOwen so much (he's literally the first POV I watch every time), but some people really do be talking about him as if he isn't a violent, manipulative asshole and it boggles my mind.
Like, I'll see people point out Scott's victim blaming (fair enough, he does it a lot) and completely ignore that Owen has done it too. He was literally the one to tell Shelby that 'running activates our chase instinct' and implying quite strongly that they were to blame for how traumatic their turning was, and so is anyone else who ran.
He asked Legundo for permission to turn him the first time, that doesn't mean he cares about consent on that front. He stated himself that he wanted everyone turned so they could experience being as much of an outcast as him. The only reason why he changed his tune is because the other vampires are finding a sense of community despite his 'gift' and he's salty about that. Besides, Scott has offered his 'gift' without turning the person several time too, and I don't see people trying to claim that makes him better, because it doesn't. Because both of them were so willing to go after Pyro and Shelby. Because both of them made that deal with Apo. Because it doesn't really matter whose fangs sunk in, they're working together and they never at any point disapprove of the other's actions.
It's not just the 2799 people he killed before that make Owen an asshole, it's also his actions now. I'm not blaming him for lashing out last episode, but everything before that? Him changing the gift Avid left for Shelby into a threat? Him attacking Drift and Avid twice when they were alone? Him victim blaming Shelby (and also Pyro due to how similar their turnings were)? Yeah. He sucks.
He and Scott are pretty much equal. Their motives are different, but I doubt the people they kill are gonna care much if their stabbing comes because of a love that at this point Owen is partially using as a shield and an excuse, or because Scott has gotten bored. They still got stabbed at the end of the day
please tell me more about your sad gay french people
welcome to barricade day, which is probably going to be slightly incoherent if you weren't in/around the les mis fandom in 2012-2018, partly because this isn't even about the main characters. the short version is that everyone's dead ^_^
let's meet our dead people:
and the honourary amis!
the big ships are e/R (enjolras/grantaire (baby's first otp 🥹💕)), courferre, Épossette, JMB (jolllly, bossuet, musichetta). and valvert of course, some of the actual main characters, but neither of them died in the next 48 hours so they don't count. the memes are everyone being dead, weird american modern AUs, the fandom being so old we've thoroughly ran out of posts, and viccy hugo going on long narrative tangents about the parisian sewer system.
with the exception of the bottom row and jehan, all of these are their last names. their first names are, of course, jean. yes all of them
