I am shocked at how many people don't have an actively hostile relationship with advertising
I am skipping your ads as fast as I can. I'm skipping past your sponsor read. I'm muting the tv. I'm muting the tab. If they get too annoying I will simply stop trying to watch.
If advertisers can use every manipulative trick in the book to get me to buy their product, I am fully within my rights to do everything I can on my end to make their job impossible
I love… Murderbot… I love that Murderbot is sex-repulsed and romance-repulsed and the narrative respects that as a valid way to be. The other characters even respect that as a valid way to be! That almost never happens! Usually in media it’s portrayed as a lie to cover up the character’s real desires, or they get over their trauma/hangups and realize they really DO need 💕love💕… but in The Murderbot Diaries, Murderbot never does. It’s allowed to be a full person with many, complex, nuanced relationships that are crucially important to it without having to prove its personhood or prove the relationships’ importance by making it romantic. And I love it for that.
I desperately hope that tyranny keeps doing her weird bad occtis impression so that by the end of cr4 there is just a running gag of the late occtis tachonis becoming a famous cryptid of Araman where he's in multiple places at once on opposite sides of the world. Sometimes he's acting like a demon, sometimes he's undead, sometimes he has a weird accent, sometimes he doesn't. All the reports are wildly conflicting and all sound made up but people swear they are true. All the while his family and their vassals keep insisting he is deceased. It's araman's greatest unsolved mystery.
I do think it’s kind of iconic for Volescu to immediately disappear after the first Murderbot book. He plays a vital part in setting everything in motion, gets traumatized as fuck, and then goes “well actually I’m not dealing with this again” and leaves. And he’s real for that
He is such a valuable character and I am sad they cut him from the show. In so many adventure stories a character like him would be judged harshly for leaving the field like he did, but in this one it is treated as a very reasonable decision and supported by his coworkers. We need more of that.
Every episode of supernatural I watch one of them is saying “we should Go and Hunt Monsters on The Road” and the other is saying “are you sure? What about that Recent Traumatic Event?” And then the first one goes “what would make me feel better is to Hunt, and Kill Monsters, on The Road”
watching the leftism leaving peoples bodies when you point out the sex offender registry is a grotesque violation of human rights
the only reason the registry exists is because we culturally view sexual crimes as inherently more evil and unforgivable than any other kind of violence. people are more willing to believe that a murder can grow and change than a flasher. if you’re woke enough to believe that ‘innocence’ is a fascist concept and sex is just another thing the body can do, then you should believe the corollary: hurting someone with your genitals is no different from hurting them with your fists
and yet, murderers and other violent offenders do not have their full names, faces, and addresses put on a public database for the rest of their lives. there is no such thing. they are not legally barred from watching movies containing violence, or owning imagery containing violence
in my state, sex offender probation means you can be searched, at any time, without a warrant, and owning a copy of playboy is a violation. it means you’ll be arrested if a family member comes to stay with you and you don’t register their vehicle with the sheriff. the dehumanization is beyond the pale
not to mention how the registry is used against otherwise oppressed groups. homeless and pissing in public cuz theres nowhere else to piss? sex offender registry. i had a gf one time who's mom met me and then immediately went and checked the registry purely cuz im a trans woman.
The conversation around abortion shouldn’t be “are you absolutely sure you want an abortion” it should be “are you absolutely sure you want a child”. You can get pregnant again. You can adopt. But you can’t half-heartedly raise a child or change your mind midway through parenthood. Children are a huge responsibility and if someone isn’t 110% sure they are willing and able to do it, they shouldn’t. Having a baby shouldn’t be the default because of how extremely demanding and difficult parenthood is and the irreversible damage it does to a kid to be raised by someone who didn’t even fully want parenthood and wasn’t prepared for that level of responsibility.
The Riddler probably has such an up and down relationship with the Robins because they all tend to tackle things differently and he’s always so thrown by how they handle his riddles.
The Riddler: To free Batman from my trap, you must answer this riddle, little bird. I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?
Dick, eight years old and freshly Robin: *thinking really hard*
The Riddler looking at Batman dangling upside down: ?
Batman: He just needs an extra minute.
The Riddler:
Batman: English isn’t his first langauge.
The Riddler, feeling a little bad: oh, that’s… take your time, buddy.
Jason, twelve years old: *lifting a hand*
The Riddler: -uh, yes?
Jason: Can you repeat that? The riddle?
The Riddler: um, yeah, sure. I have cities, but no houses. I have mountains, but no trees. I have water, but no fish. What am I?
Jason: Yeah, you’re a map but when you’re talking about multiple species of fish, which you probably are, you can say fishes. If you’re using fish, you’re only talking about one species.
The Riddler:
Jason: I just think you should know that. You know as a “genius”
The Riddler: The more you take, the more you -
Tim: Footsteps, where’s Batman?
The Riddler: No, you have to let me-
Tim: Nuh-uh
The Riddler: The fuck do you mean “nuh-uh”? Who raised you?
Tim, on two hours sleep, with two essays due on this fine Thursday night: *fucking launches himself at The Riddler*
The Riddler: I have-
Damian: *launches himself at the Riddler*
The Riddler: Batman, fuck, FUCK, he’s fucking biting me-
The more I reread All Systems Red (too much) the more I adore Mensa, expect more of her scenes because she deserves the world.
Mensah said I could learn to do anything I wanted. I learned to leave.
This may be the most important line in Exit Strategy. At first read, this may sound condescending or sarcastic, but I think it meant it literally.
Murderbot hacked its governor module, and still stayed in the company for around four years. It wasn't until after meeting PresAux, and Mensah bought it that it left.
It understood that it was safe, and it had options.
So.
It. Learned. To. Leave.
And something I love about the Pres humans is that the whole b plot of the series is them realizing how bad their cognitive dissonance was and that they are in fact just the nice slave owners of the universe. That their system based on ‘equality and freedom’ (and community is just for humans) still does perpetuate oppression/inequality and that they are now active participants in that systems continuation. I really like how simple Martha keeps it. They’re good people in a flawed unjust universe who realize if somethings gonna change they’ve gotta lead the charge. And. They. Do.
I love that it’s not on MB to educate, debate, and justify its existence and fight for its rights. I love that’s there’s no angry out for revenge bot/construct uprising plot. That the story is its personal diary entries about figuring out autonomy and what the consequences of its actions mean to it.
It’s messy, mean, prejudice. It has an outright distain/repulsion of comfortunits, a superiority complex over lower functioning bots, is terrified of relationships, and has an extremely toxic disregard for its own life. To the dismay of all around it. Books 2-5 are about it confronting those things about itself. While Presaux does all the peopleing/legaling/advocating boring stuff in the background. It doesn’t care about being a political rebellion leader or whatever. Ew. That’s way too much attention. It wants to be like the protagonists of its serials, solving murders/mysteries while f*cking over CR management whenever it can (because it doesn’t blame all of humanity for the few that actually cause the majority of harm. Even if there are a lot of sad angry assholes, but it’s a sad angry asshole too so it can’t fault them there.) And it likes doing those things.
Because it’s systems and capitalists that are the problem not all of humanity. Mb loves humanity. Well it definitely loves the things humans make (ok so pretty must just serials but still humans are necessary to make those). But even preservation humans treat bots/constructs as second class citizens. I like that story makes it clear the humans are the ones that need to reflect/act on that. That it shouldn’t have to be the oppresseds’ sole responsibility to topple/dismantle the systems of their oppression. That’s why I love presaux.
Bhardwaj making the documentary to spread awareness and the hack, Pin-Lee being its CSU legal counsel, Gurathin being down to help commit crimes with/for jt, Ratthi supporting it in social situations, Arada actually consulting it because she hired it as a trusted and qualified/skilled individual, Mensah admitting she originally hadn’t considered the depth of its autonomy and was wrong to try and decide what was best for it. Later setting boundaries to protect their friendship in their inherently unequal legal relationship/status. Because Mensah knows it well enough to know it will try to be the person she needs even if it doesn’t want to be that person. And it loves Mensah for knowing it well enough to understand that, and for respecting/caring about it to not ask it to do that, without it even needing to say so.
And it is honestly hilarious to me at how realistic/casual and in the background the portrayal of legal advocacy is. Like yeah, there’s no over night fixes, it’s gonna be a lot of rights campaigning, lobbying, like constructs = person is a whole mental a** societal paradigm shift that needs to happen. And at the end of the cycle it’s mostly gonna be money fights/legal battles. (Because the business of slavery is worth the profit and won’t be forfeited easily! Yay the cr is terrible.)
The story focusing on MB being a free-roaming security consultant/intrepid galactic explorer with its asshole gunship partner in crime instead of political drama is just so fun to me. I love the subversion away from bitter/destroy all humanity MI trope. (And moving into the but I’m still willing and able too if the price is right area) And that MB gets to experience being in an encouraging environment and actually having a support network. Where the not my problem fuck offery of it all is just: chefs kiss!!
