musicboxghost

[musicboxghost]

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon

[musicboxghost]

I know they're British.

But reading the classic Sherlock Holmes stories, it is still hilarious how often the subjects get themselves into a ✨Situation ✨ because they felt compelled to take a tea break.

#the three students #the naval treaty #those are just the first two that come to mind #you can bet if somebody needs to go get their tea #they are coming back to a body #or a missing diplomatic document #t is the harbinger of death #grab some cocoa whydontcha #sherlock holmes #acd holmes #british people #Watson is a coffee drinker #I salute you #you sensible gay soldier man #he knows what's up

[musicboxghost]

having thoughts about gotham my beloved wretched city again. i think robin shrines would be a thing

[musicboxghost]

#library #audiobooks #reading #books and libraries #anti colonialism #anti ableism

[musicboxghost]

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz = All These Things That I Have Done by The Killers

The romances in White Trash Warlock by David R. Slayton = Hide by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

The romance in Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots = Vampire Empire by Big Thief

Feel free to message and geek out about these books if you know them ❤️ Book fandoms are tiny but my love for them is immense.

#autonomous #robot books #artificial intelligence #queer books #transgender robot #annalee newitz #morally grey characters #god the characters and their flaws have my heart in a vice #i love you Med #i love you Krish #i love you 30/john #ur fucked up Jack #but u do some damn good work #i want the world for you paladin #i love you bug

[musicboxghost]

Sometimes a family is:

You (a literal monster)

Your (tastefully cannibalistic, performance artist) mom

Her gay doctor best friend that she gets together with in their forties

Your old money dad (Mom's ex-husband)

His husband (gentrifier)

Your parents dead son (whose memories You kind of have? And who's lung you grew from after being fed chicken broth?)

Grandma

Grandma's cleaning lady (They might be fucking)

Uncle Joe (doesn't talk but VERY supportive of you being a monster)

The many, many dead neighborhood pets you've eaten (actually, that might not be part of the family. That might just be snacks)

#monstrilio #Gerardo Sámano Córdova #queer books #horror books #monster #books #books and libraries #queer family

[musicboxghost]

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a Frankenstein story if Victor have been horrified and disgusted by the monster but still chose to love it. Still chose to protect and parent it.

It's Frankenstein but the queerness isn't subtext. It's integral, explicit, and kinky.

It's Frankenstein but the horror isn't being haunted by what you've abandoned. It's being haunted by what you are devoted to. What that devotion hath wrought.

It's Frankenstein except Frankenstein's monster isn't being hunted by the village. The monster has its own village that loves it. And they draw blood too. That monster is their baby.

#frankenstein #monstrilio #books #Gerardo Sámano Córdova #horror #cannibalism #queer #queer books

[musicboxghost]

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro = O Superman by Laurie Anderson 😥💔

The romances in White Trash Warlock by David R. Slayton = Hide by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

The romance in Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots = Vampire Empire by Big Thief

Feel free to message and geek out about these books if you know them ❤️ Book fandoms are tiny but my love for them is immense.

#vagueposting #about books #because it's all vibes but if you've read them you'll get it #klara and the sun #kazuo ishiguro #sci fi #melanchonic #laurie anderson #o superman

[musicboxghost]

i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.

#thx op #all the best to you

[musicboxghost]

Thank you, horrifying media for being a safe place to interact with horrifying things.

Thank you horrifying media for representing and reacting to horrifying things. It's nice to have company.

I love cozy. I love escapism. But sometimes horror is the most healing thing there is. I'm not running from this horror. I'm facing it. Inspecting it. We're turning each other over and getting familiar with our interactions. We're practicing. We're understanding.

There's a strange dissonance when the blood and bones same ghosts become an embrace. But it's nothing like the dissonance of media that's cocoa and rainbows when you're struggling with blood and bones and ghosts.

Horror is for the freaks and survivors who need comfort where they are.

#horror #mental illness #books #surviving trauma #scary stories #scary movies #scary art

[musicboxghost]

I HATE that every time I try looking up fiction books about machines and other forms of artificial intelligence that have souls or sentience

I get information about fake authors stealing other people's work by publishing "ai books"

I don't want your art theft!

I want Lieutenant Commander Data

I want Murderbot

I want Mosscap

I will never tire of a creature that loves and fears and fights with all the trappings of humanity... Just a little to the left. Just a little different. But no less whole and real.

I love you robots as allegories for neurodivergence, queerness, and different types of being othered

I love you robots building a found family and an identity for themselves at the same time

I love you learning that the world is hostile and you don't need to understand how someone works to accept them

So, if you have any recs, please for the love of God let me know. I need more

#book recommendations #artificial intelligence #scifi #optimistic scifi #murderbot #data star trek #lgbtq #robots #sentient ai #asexual robots #trans robot #depressed robots

[musicboxghost]

The romances in White Trash Warlock by David R. Slayton = Hide by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

The romance in Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots = Vampire Empire by Big Thief

Feel free to message and geek out about these books if you know them ❤️ Book fandoms are tiny but my love for them is immense.

#white trash warlock #hench #David r slayton #natalie zina walschots #adam binder #anna tomedlov #book club #books #library #rainbow kitten surprise #big thief

[musicboxghost]

I have found myself stuck in a motel room, rereading the Murderbot books. I've been thinking about what we know about how Murderbot and Three acted after disabling their Governer Modules, the terrifying, paralysing freedom they suddenly experience, what they chose to do with it, and what that says about their trauma, and their experience as SecUnits.

Obviously, we primarily see what Murderbot does with this freedom. The whole series is about it answering the question of what it is that it wants, and wants to do now that it is a free agent. Its developing relationship and friendship with Mensah and the Preservation survey team. Its companionship with ART, and later ARTs crew. It finds a group who don't see it as just disposable (albeit expensive) equipment. They actually value it for itself, and are quite fond of it.

There is also the longest running joke in the series, that at any given time Murderbot would rather be watching its stories. But once we see what Three is up to in System Collapse, this got me thinking.

Three, we find out, spends its time poring over non-fiction and other educational material. I liked this as it reinforces that not all SecUnits are the same, and adds the bit of (horrifying) texture that all the Units have their own inner lives just like our favourite rogue unit.

I think looking at what they seek out when they are free also says something about what they missed while they were enslaved.

Three seeks education and technical information. Why would a construct want that? Well, think of one of my other favourite running jokes: Murderbot learns mostly everything through the media it consumes, because the Company never gave it any kind of education modules outside of things central to a SecUnits function as murder/surveillance machines, and those were low quality too. We know that most of the projects SecUnits are contracted to involve some kind of mining, terraforming or other technical engineering, science type activity. Imagine spending years standing around, watching humans do things that fascinate you, but there is something in your brain that will actively punish you if you try to access databases without authorisation. At worst, you might have your entire non neural tissue based memory completely wiped, or be scrapped for parts, if you try.

So when freed from the Governer Module, Three wants to learn.

When I thought of this, I thought about Murderbot's love of all kinds of visual media, and particularly in the context of the whole " Murderbot, ART-Drone and the gang make a documentary in a day" plot point in System Collapse.

In Exit Strategy, Mensah asks why it likes Sanctuary Moon. Murderbot's response is that it was the first piece of media it saw after hacking it's module. It let it watch humans, and kept it company without the need to interact, and the unspoken part was that it helped contextualise its own emotions. This makes a lot of sense. It doesn't have to act to save the stupid humans in the shows that it watches. It can see them save themselves.

I think there's also two further things here though. Firstly, we know that SecUnits usually have no idle time. They are not allowed to sit. Their only rest is when they are inoperative in their cubicles. They stand and they monitor. So when Murderbot gains control, it gains the ability to have leisure time. Standing around listening to two scientists argue about their xenosamples for hours at a time? Monitor the threat module in case it gets heated and one decides to break a conical flask over the others head, but otherwise, just fire up Sanctuary Moon.

The more fundamental one is a desire for art, for meaning. I love the bit where it describes how it had just hacked its module. It is able to pick up the entertainment feed for the first time, and there is this show. In its first glimpse of this trashy soap opera, it fundamentally gets art. How it is about communicating and exploring a thought, an emotion, an idea, and provoking a response in the viewer.

That's why the documentary plot in system collapse was unexpected and interesting to me. We see Murderbot really experiment for the first time with creating media and creating art. Maybe it has now discovered a freedom to create, and tell its own story.

In the end, seeing these things in Murderbot and Three make me think of all the other SecUnits. I imagine what the storage for them is like. The Company probably stores them in their cubicles. Stacked and ranked. They're kept dormant until they are activated and trotted out for the initial client meeting, like the one we see described where Mensah first meets Murderbot in the Company office. Maybe they dream as they rest. Maybe the Governer Module punishes them even for that.

Then I think of the as yet unnamed new B-E rogue unit, and what it wants to do with its freedom.

All we know is it wants to blend in for now. Maybe it has a plan, we don't know. But we do know it has a guide to hacking a Governer Module...

#murderbot #system collapse spoilers #my beloved secunit #op thank you for compiling all these thoughts #i cried #i can't ever be normal about murderbot #and i didn't want to be #i will be exactly as insane about and comforted by my media as mb #fuck the company #god bless the sanctuary moon writers room

[musicboxghost]

A fanfiction author who's post I commented on offered to send me the recipe referenced in their fic (of course I accepted). God, I love the fanfiction community. What a fucking delight.

#fanfic #fanfiction #fluff #cozy #small fandoms

[musicboxghost]

just remembering the time my boss

a rich guy who lives in the suburbs and has never taken the bus

tried to argue with me about the speed and ease with which you could reach one of the neighborhoods in the city by bus

as he insisted that my estimate of 2.5-3 hours was insane, all I could think of was the hundred times I had taken that trip. 3 connections across N/S and E/W lines.

2 of the connections were notoriously unreliable and either wouldn't show or would come so late that you would miss the next connection

also ignoring the over half a mile between bus stops. that takes about 3x as long to trek through during the winter in the snow belt with our unplowed roads

i have been drenched, stranded, dehydrated, frozen, and late so many damn times on the city's god forsaken underfunded public transport that still cost 35 fucking dollars a month to use because they pour all the fare money into hyper-policing it

i know my damn city and I know my damn bus routes

for a man who drives from his giant house in his air conditioned car (in a quarter of the time it takes me to cross just two neighborhoods), JUST to patronize about something he knows shit about

it makes me bitey

anyways, i just got off the bus on my way to my other job and my shoes are soaked. so, point me. whoo.

#city #urban #bus life #eat the rich #fuck the boss #fuck the police

[musicboxghost]

sometimes you just don't make it past the fridge.

you mean to make a sandwich. the slices of bread are sitting naked on the burner of the stove. but by the time you grabbed the lunch meat, you know it's not getting there. you must pay at least some tribute first.

So you squat in the buzzy glow,

door ajar

wearing a hoodie and boxers while vacuuming some aldi turkey slices from between your fingertips.

and it is good.

#night shift #food #mental illness #squeeze a little yellow mustard with every bite #for the record #this does not stop you from eating the actual sandwich later #It's a precursor #a first step

[musicboxghost]

yes yes romanticizing mental health spirals is bad

but

BUT

if i'm already in one, just let me have this, thx

if i'm shooting awake from nightmares after insomnia has precluded any more than 2 hours of sleep in the first place

let me find the eye bags sexy in a *haunting way*

ooh, so whump-coded, so sic vic frankenstein of me

if we don't let this stroke my delusions, i will become so much more destructive

#whump #human disaster #insomnia #sleep issues #spiraling is sexy bby #this feels like exactly the right platform for this #matt murdock #clint barton #julian devorak #astarion #projecting onto all the traumatized dumpster fire characters is a prerequisite ofc