Unconnected Reader

Anxiety ridden human seeks to connect with others through books. Likes: YA, fantasy, slice of life, trashy romance, weird nonfiction, and looking at other people's books. WARNING: Tastes may change depending on time of day/day of week/week of month/month of year.

[palestinegenocide]

Norman R. Morrison was an American anti-war activist. On November 2, 1965, Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War, leading to his death. 

 On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old serviceman of the United States Air Force, died after setting himself on fire outside the front gate of the Embassy of Israel in Washington. Bushnell said that he was protesting against "what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers" and declared that he "will no longer be complicit in genocide", after which he doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire

[toririvas]

so Beth eats her phone chargers right, like, that's where they go, she's been passively building up her metal reserves the entire time?

[unconnectedreads]

I don't think she's malicious enough to do it consciously....but while she's asleep???

Rick walks into the kitchen at night to get a drink of water. Flips on the light and Beth lifts her head just enough for him to see that her eyes are still Alf closed while she slurps up a familiar white cord like spaghetti. As the end of it disappears into her mouth he hears the crunch of metal and plastic breaking as she begins to chew. Without another word he shuts off hr and sister where right all along and he was better off as a human. Metas are weird.

[posts-written-by-murderbot]

[catchymemes]

[ahedderick]

Bless your heart. No - really

It seems to be understood, at least through the southern US, that "bless his/her/your heart" is a thinly veiled insult. However, when I was growing up, technically southern, my mother always used it more literally. F'rinstance, if I took her flowers she might say "Oh, bless your heart" and would 100% mean it. Based on that example, I use it the same way. I've wondered a little about that, since I realized how other people mean it.

Anyhow. I posted a scan of a letter from my great grandmother (daughter of Irish immigrants on both sides) to my grandmother dated 1944. At the end of that she refers to a Valentine's card that my very young mother had sent to her, and added "Bless her heart." Clearly meaning it sincerely. It made me wonder if the southern Bless-your-heart met up with the Irish diaspora tendency to use the term 'Bless' frequently and literally and created a little coal-mining-town pocket of folks who say it when they're truly delighted with someone or something.

Just pondering. Anyone else out there use B-y-h in a positive, loving way? Is Bless-your-heart George's Creek* an outlier that should not be counted?

'* George's Creek follows a major Appalachian coal seam and has lots of tiny, defunct mining towns.

[unconnectedreads]

I've had it used with sincerity and in a 'you're a little odd, aren't you" way.

I think the 'it's a subtle insult' thing came from people hearing it the second way. But to me it was never an insult it was just a way for people to say, 'I don't really understand you but I want the best for you anyway'.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

People who don’t want to read The Martian in case the science is too complicated should be informed that it contains the lines “The best way to store the ingredients of water is to make them be water”, “It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft”, and “If I cut a hole in the wall of the hab, the air won’t stay inside any more”.

[neilarmstrong]

I love this fucking book

[osheamobile]

“I’ve said the words kilowatt-hours-per-sol so many times they’ve lost all meaning so I’m going to call them pirate-ninjas.

“So I need to generate nine hundred pirate-ninjas…”

[magnificentbane-deactivated2019]

there’s an entire chapter dedicated to him wondering how the cubs are doing while he’s stuck on mars, dying

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I like the part where the guys on Earth are like “He thinks we all gave up on him, and that he’s completely alone. I wonder what he’s thinking about right now.” And he’s like “How come Aquaman can control whales?”

[direwolfblackrose]

“ As with most of life’s problems, this one can be solved by a box of pure radiation. “

“Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be “in command” if I were the only remaining person.”

Two pages later… “What do you know? I’m in command”

“Me: “This is obviously a clog. How about I take it apart and check the internal tubing?” NASA: (after five hours of deliberation) “No. You’ll fuck it up and die.” So I took it apart.

And my personal favorite :” Also, I have duct tape. Ordinary duct tape, like you buy at a hardware store. Turns out even NASA can’t improve on duct tape. Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”

[doesnotloveyou]

hey hey HEY. when i joined tumblr in the early 2010s i remember a lot of millennials swearing they would never treat the younger generation as badly as they were treated and misrepresented. i'm seeing a lot of you going back on that. stop mocking young people and start remembering you were new to the universe too once

[sanctuarymoonfan397]

The fact that we have 7 WHOLE BOOKS showing and confirming that Murderbot uses, and has only ever used It/Its pronouns, but people still insist on using other gendered pronouns for it makes me wanna intentionally recreate Ganaka Pit

[gracewight]

something else I really like about The Murderbot Diaries is how… like

ok still trying to put it into words but there’s a difference, nuance, to the way we use the words kill and murder

and often in action stories the good guys kill a lot of bad guys, but it’s only murder when it’s the bad guys doing the killing.

Martha Wells calls it what it is.

are Murderbot’s murders justified? not the issue, not the question, not the point.

Murderbot views its killings as murders, both because it is self aware enough to acknowledge its motivations and emotional state (mostly), but also because its personality can’t justify or excuse the actions it’s taking.

it tries: they were bad humans. it comforts the reader, trying to comfort itself. it’s okay. they were bad humans. it didn’t have much of a choice

but it can’t justify it enough to stop calling it murder.

because Murderbot isn’t actually a murderbot

as a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

[unheavenlycreatures]

one of the reasons i love the murderbot diaries is how it doesnt flinch in trying to grapple with some of the Big Questions, such as "why is it that Humanity™ is the goal to strive towards for artificial intelligence if it wants to be acknowledged as a person?" and "What does it look like when someone is both undeniably a person but also unapologetically nonhuman?" and "what if the magic school bus had a gun"

[unconnectedreads]

Murderbot translating terms of endearment literally.

[contact-guy]

I’m reading the Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes, here are some gems:

Caricature of Arthur Conan Doyle crying and chained to his fictional character because he hated writing Holmes stories SO MUCH

Literally a drawing of me reading the Final Problem

An incomplete list of parodies of Holmes’s and Watson’s names, tag yourself

[unconnectedreads]

NPC's Epilogue

Forging Hephaestus Ch 40

Super Powereds Year Two Ch 75

Rodrigo spans the multiverse!

[unconnectedreads]

The Case of the Haunted Haunted House

Chapter 10

[catpeepeepoopoo]

doodling murderbot every day until i get someone to read it - day 1

[unconnectedreads]

Do re-reads count?

[garbage-empress]

before i had gotten close with ex-catholics i was under the assumption that "catholic guilt" was mostly about sex, or serious topics.

but i was naïve. it's apparently about every positive experience. enjoying a meal? you're so lucky, children are starving. spending your day off cosy in bed? wow, so selfish, homeless people are freezing to death.

every former or present catholic i've met has a very obvious anxiety disorder and it's so painfully not a coincidence.

[unconnectedreads]

Is protestant guilt not being able to complain, or be sad?

"Don't whine, other people have it worse."

"What do you have to be depressed about?"

"Why are you complaining? Be grateful!"

Always be grateful, always be happy. Negative feelings and complaints are WRONG. God has provided everything you need and sometimes bad things happen but it's all apart of God's Plan so you'd better be happy about it.

Or was that just how I was raised?

[bunnyhugs22]

(X)

[homunculus-argument]

More random tropes that I fucking love: Becoming the mask you wore.

Like oh shit, this character who was sent to spy somewhere under a false identity suddenly realises they've started to genuinely become the person they claimed to be? Someone who's been telling the same lies about who they are for so long that they're actually forgetting that the story isn't true? Finding themselves genuinely doing the things they pretend to do in front of people, when they're alone and nobody's watching? Answering to a name that wasn't supposed to be theirs without thinking?

Ooohh-hoh-hoh, you lost track of yourself in pretending to be someone else? You were only supposed to impersonate somebody, a plausible background and a name you came up with on the spot, and now that the people you were supposed to infiltrate have become your true companions? You lost yourself in the game you played, and no you no longer know who you truly are, and where your true loyalties lie? And both sides would mark you a traitor if you came out with the truth. On a scale of one to ten, how bad did you fuck up.

Fuck that is a good trope. Never seen it done badly. Pour that shit on a table and I'll chop it into lines and snort it.