Good news! You aren't required to make your hobbies and passions "marketable." In fact, your crafts, hobbies, and passions don't even need to be public if you so choose. You don't have to spend all of your energy becoming perfect if you aren't enjoying the process. You are not a product, you are a person, a creative, and your work also does not need to be a product.
Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.
Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):
In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.
It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]
The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]
Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]
In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]
In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]
Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.
Quackity: Oh, it's gonna be so cool to see how this develops. I'm excited, I'm gonna try my best. I'm not the greatest at Minecraft whatsoever, I did nerf Green Team a little bit by accident on the second day. My bad! But, you know, I'm so ready to just grind out and see what we can do, and I just–
I wish everyone saw it with the same amount of, like, kind of enthusiasm. I think all of this and all the development and all the potential arcs, that's going to fcking allow for something absolutely incredible.
And if anyone ends up clipping any of this, something I do want to say is I implore people to view everything with a lot of enthusiasm. No stress, no anxiety, just a lot of enthusiasm. Because, again, this is going to allow for a lot of cool things in the server. Not just now, but in the future, too.
wasn't sure about posting this bc I don't wanna share like everything I have so far but it's fuck it friday so fuck it lol I'm too excited to keep it to myself haha - here's more of the christmas fic and the main idea behind it (I said it's gonna be mostly silly and fluffy and I promise it will be, just gotta add a little more sad while buck talks about his childhood lol)
prev snippet
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His eyes don’t leave the screen, while Eddie’s are glued to Buck’s face. “Well, there’s a lot of things I always wanted to do with my family on Christmas, but never got to.” his voice gets even quieter. “But there’s one thing in particular. I, uh, that’s so stupid.” he chuckles quietly, then nods to the screen, where a kid is opening a gift with a bright smile, his family surrounding him. “I wanted this.” he admits quietly, as if embarrassed. He never told Eddie much about his life growing up, but based on everything Eddie knows about his parents, he can imagine it wasn’t great. He never asked, not wanting to pry, but now Eddie wonders what Buck’s Christmas must’ve looked like, especially after Maddie moved out. He must’ve been miserable, and Eddie’s heart is breaking just at the thought.
“It’s not stupid to want a happy holiday with a loving family.” he says softly, carefully. Buck shakes his head, the red in his cheeks now visible despite the dark.
“I mean, that too, I- I never got this, and I always wished- but not just that.” another shake of his head. “I mean, the sweaters.” he mutters under his breath.
“Christmas sweaters?” Eddie asks, not sure if he heard right, just because of how quiet Buck said it.
“I know, it’s dumb. I just always imagined sitting around in matching sweaters, as a family, taking pictures, looking like we belong together, like I- like I belong.” he adds, turning his head away, so Eddie can’t see his face. Eddie reaches his hand further, touching Buck’s shoulder.
“They couldn’t give you matching Christmas sweaters?” he asks incredulously, fighting not to raise his voice.
thinking about it again (steph's anger holding a lot shame & disgust for her parents/their life choices/her upbringing and her negative biases as a result and her desire to completely divorce herself from her roots & be, what she thinks is, better than that)
On my fetch quest to retrieve Xander's assigned color from the DRDT Demo Video, I noticed something interesting-- where everybody stands in the Class Trial totally changed between the demo video and now???
Here's where everybody stood in the Class Trial during the demo:
(ignore the colors, they have no meaning) And here's where everybody canonically stands:
Like I said, almost completely different. Here are a couple of my observations that I thought were most interesting:
Teruko and Eden are the only characters who stayed in the same location. Teruko always stood in front of MonoTV, and Eden was always to her right.
Arei and Hu always stood next to each other.
Veronika and Levi always stood next to each other, although they flipped which order they were standing in.
Originally, Xander was in the position opposite the circle from Teruko. Now, that's where David stands.
I have no idea what any of this might mean, and it might be completely arbitrary. Still, it's interesting what might have been going through the creator's head when they originally chose the demo placements, and then when those placements changed.
Do you have a YouTube? I feel I bit bad spam rebloging all the banners I’ve missed so I can find them later—
well,
never feel bad for spam reblogging things! I love it when people reblog stuff from me! that is the point of tumblr! reblogs are what keeps this horrifying hellsite ticking
but also
2. I do have a youtube channel! I almost never update it, but it is here
I'm so proud of myself about finances in the past couple months. I still struggle with money but I did enough meditation and journaling and practicing about it to make myself able to actually face my loans and credit cards and savings and bills and start really truly organizing and addressing them for the first time in years instead of just flying by the seat of my pants.
Like. This is a huge deal for me. I've felt like I'm in deadly danger every time I've tried to think about money for years and years. I'm finally able to look it in the face and stare it down and start to organize and plan on purpose instead of just keeping up with the minimum to stay afloat. I'm so proud of myself.
It's still a refrain of "GUILT (funny link)" every time I think about money but I'm able to actually make spreadsheets and face the numbers and monthly tracking again, and even make a new full budget which I haven't been able to do in ages.
still feel guilt, overwhelm, and helplessness, but no longer feel as much deep elemental shame and terror. that's progress baby