#helpme.file

[andordean]

I keep thinking about the Murderbot finale, reading everyone else's thoughts and I keep marvelling about the tonal change that they managed to pull off.

The nine episodes were like watching your friend dissociating and deflecting your care and concern with cynicism and slapstick comedy and dark humour.

The finale was watching your friend suffer a breakdown and you were suddenly looking at the unfiltered version of the events and seeing all the cruelty and helplessness and the horrors in all their twisted ugliness.

I can't think of another show that pulled the 'unreliable narrator' off in such a palpable way. A really interesting review called it a protective skin of sarcasm and goofiness. I may be giving the writers too much benefit of a doubt here, but I can't help feeling it was a deliberate choice, and not just an accidental by-product that we're over-analysing now. The protective skin was the MB's narration. With it gone, the reality of its circumstances hit even harder.

I may be far too forgiving here, but for all the unevenness of the show, the finale floored me so I'm biased now.

Babygirl (gender neutral) is off to check the perimeter. 😭

[sabriel-writes]

God Hands You A Bible (AO3)

...you're a newly rogue SecUnit, and you try to pass on the Good Codebundle to someone who turns out to be its Creator.

Can you fucking imagine?

[cooking-with-hailstones]

query: soul?

Murderhelion soulmate au

Rated T

Beta-read by @rebeccabobecca and @mossmittens

Chapter 3:

HelpMe.file excerpt 12:

Bharadwaj: I know that the subject of ensoulment regarding sentient bots is still a pretty controversial area of study, but given everything I've learned from you and my research on constructs, it seems not only likely, but almost a guarantee that constructs are ensouled. 

MB: That's fucked up. I don't want a soul.

Bharadwaj: Why? 

MB: It's just so... Human. I don't want to be like humans. 

Bharadwaj: So you’ve said. But is it really that different from machine intelligence? When you think about it, it's kind of like a kernel.

MB: …It's definitely not. 

Bharadwaj: Humour me, then. 

MB: Everyone knows bots don’t have souls. Idiots sometimes fall in love with ComfortUnits and think they’re soulmates, but the whole point of constructs is that we’re not supposed to have souls. 

Bharadwaj: How so?

MB: We’re more reliable. We have human-level intelligence without human-level emotions, and we don’t have to deal with soul-fracture and humans get to be violent towards us or order us to our deaths, without doing damage to their souls like it would if they did that to another human.

Bharadwaj: (pause) I see.

MB: I know Mensah called it a hellish compromise when you first rented me. Most humans think it’s kind of terrifying to have something that looks human that doesn't have a soul, and doesn’t have emotions the way an ensouled entity could. 

Bharadwaj: Do you really think you don’t have emotions like an ensouled entity?

MB: …I don’t know.

Bharadwaj: I think you do know, actually.

>This was the first time I actually started thinking that constructs might have souls. Now I know for a fact that we do. You have a soul. You deserve to know that.

(Also, this post is relevant )

[d8tl55c]

so like, sometimes pets die. that's not me today, but i was thinking about it last year, 'cause it was me two years ago. and i was thinking about the piece i wrote in honor of that experience, which contains a touch of. yk. fear of death. howsabout do y'all think i should tag/format/warn about it before the moment happens?

[autismaton]

I don't often reread books, but when I'm stressed I will often reread books from the Murderbot Diaries.

The Murderbot Diaries are my Sanctuary Moon.