my favorite thing in Justice League fics is when a character fucks up so badly that their only option is to go talk to Batman. And they still — still — take a moment to figure out how desperate they are before going.
Bruce has such “don’t bother me, I’m working, also why the hell would you do that” disapproving dad energy. It’s stunning.
10K notes
·
View notes
so ya boi has been super depressed, like clinically, for way longer than usual and it led to me heading down to the local psych urgent care for an evaluation today
During the eval, which was over zoom, the person assessing me asked me if I keep any "gods or ancestral gods" in the house.
I'm thinking "weird question for a psych eval, but okay sure", and I get about two sentences into describing my weird pagan ways before she leans into her screen and says "GUNS. Do you keep any G U N S or have ACCESS TO GUNS in the house."
so that's probably the funniest thing that's happened to me recently
8K notes
·
View notes
Unexpected Guests Chapter Ten, Act Two: Page 14
First / Previous / Next
Gaster offers his counterargument, and a counterattack--and this time lands a hit....
That panel with Alphys protecting Frisk is a moment I've looked forward to drawing for a very long time! Her having electricity magic isn't entirely headcanon--she uses it to block one of Flowey's attacks when he captures everyone--but it's something I don't see used nearly often enough and it was fun to bring in :>
I'll try to have the next update done for Mar. 28th! Keep an eye out!
Wingdings translation under the cut:
Panel 2: "NO. I CANNOT YIELD."
1K notes
·
View notes
Listening to Artificial Condition again, it strikes me how much Murderbot uses empathy reflexively as a survival skill. Look at this bit.
Upon meeting it, ART allows it on board and then announces that it knows that Murderbot is rogue. Then ART threatens to destroy it if it hacks ART's own systems. Murderbot is immediately terrified and shuts down all inputs, gives serious thought to spending the entire three month journey unconscious, and then considers the potential avenues of damage from ART's drones. ART, not realizing why Murderbot had suddenly gone silent, tells it to quit sulking, which understandably pisses off the still-terrified Murderbot. It dumps a bunch of memories of coercive treatment into ART's feed, and ART goes silent.
Then this happens:
Then it said, I’m sorry I frightened you.
Okay, well. If you think I trusted that apology, you don’t know Murderbot. Most likely it was playing a game with me. I said, “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to ride to your next destination.” I’d explained that earlier, before it opened the hatch for me, but it was worth repeating.
I felt it withdraw back behind its wall. I waited, and let my circulatory system purge the fear-generated chemicals. More time crawled by, and I started to get bored. Sitting here like this was too much like waiting in a cubicle after I’d been activated, waiting for the new clients to take delivery, for the next boring contract. If it was going to destroy me, at least I could get some media in before that happened. I started the new show again, but I was still too upset to enjoy it, so I stopped it and started rewatching an old episode of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.
After three episodes, I was calmer and reluctantly beginning to see the transport’s perspective. A SecUnit could cause it a lot of internal damage if it wasn’t careful, and rogue SecUnits were not exactly known for lying low and avoiding trouble. I hadn’t hurt the last transport I had taken a ride on, but it didn’t know that. I didn’t understand why it had let me aboard, if it really didn’t want to hurt me. I wouldn’t have trusted me, if I was a transport.
Maybe it was like me, and it had taken an opportunity because it was there, not because it knew what it wanted.
The thing about Murderbot's survival is that it clearly involves quite a bit of negotiating with other constructs and bots. That's how it talks its way onto cargo hauler bots in the first place. It uses empathy--envisioning the emotional and cognitive context of the individuals it encounters--to work out what different kinds of people want, so that it can offer them fair trades. It also uses empathy to consider what humans might be looking for, so it can practice blending in and hide.
Murderbot would never have survived so long if it wasn't capable of assessing the individual desires of the people--human, bot, and construct--around it. It thinks about ART's probable fears and motivations so that it can consider whether ART is inherently an ongoing threat or a potential ally.
When your survival depends on evading detection, you get really good at assessing perceptual biases so that you can shape yourself to fit into them. People talk about murderbot being radically empathetic as a choice it makes, or as a feature of its personality that makes it a good person. But I think murderbot would be the the first person to tell you that this empathy is part of its threat assessment suite, a skill that was developed out of necessity in order to allow you to survive.
It is also a trait that makes murderbot a good person, of course: it chooses very carefully to try to survive by doing as little harm as possible and by offering things, like media, that buy it access to things it needs. But it started as a survival skill. It's part of hypervigilance.
I think one of the strengths of this series is that so many of the things we love about SecUnit are traits developed for survival in an inherently threatening world. The shape of its mind and heart have been changed by the trauma of its origin--but they don't make murderbot less good for being altered, even if that skill was developed in a traumatic context.
I like that.
1K notes
·
View notes
I didn't get back from dnd until three am and then had a work mess wake me up at seven am, so I went to pottery after that and just got back and I (a fool) painted some lumber and crawled into bed while I wait for it to dry
and now i do not want to get back out of bed
but the aviary stained glass windows will not build themselves...so i must. get out of the cozy. again.
745 notes
·
View notes