If I’m going to keep writing random slivers of scenes, I should probably collect them on AO3?
Lalwendë ushered her siblings into a small parlor near the grand hall of the royal court, shut the door behind herself and turned to look them all over in all their finery. It was a showing of silks and shining splendor entirely befitting the royal House of Finwë at this 300th begetting day feast of their king and patriarch. Fëanáro was draped in jewelry of his own working, of course. The others were all at least partially draped in the same, because one couldn’t deny Fëanáro’s skill, and it was a good show of unity for the occasion.
Arafinwë looked nervous beneath his festival robes, and a bit tired, understandable for an elf with one newborn baby and one rambunctious toddler. Findis looked downright uncomfortable, accustomed as she was to a reclusive Vanyarin scholar’s simple garb, and was hiding it beneath and upturned nose and disdainful gaze. Having been in a room together for more than ten seconds, Fëanáro was glaring hot pokers at Nolofinwë, and Nolo was staring coolly back as though completely unaffected, and not at all deliberately making it worse.
Lalwendë planted her hands on her hips and stood in front of the door so none of them could escape.
“Alright, listen up you little shits,” she snapped. She added quickly, “Not you, Ara, you’re a blessing and we’re thrilled you’re here,” and focused her fury on her older siblings—her older two and a half siblings, as Fëanáro was so keen on reminding everyone.
She met his glare especially, but didn’t stint to share hers around.
“I have spent most of a year planning this party. This is for all the Noldor. This is for all the Eldar. This is for Father. I don’t require that we all act like a happy family, but if any of you ruin this event—if you start a fight, if you respond to provocation to a fight, if so much as imply with a glance that someone’s shoes are in poor taste, much less their latest academic paper—Findis and Fëanáro, that means you—then so help me Relentless Hunter and Deathly Fate, I will make the rest of your lives seem like a vacation in Utumno, until the End of the World itself! Am I clear?”
Fëanáro looked down his perfectly arched nose at her. “I certainly have no intention of interrupting Father’s party.”
“Nor do I,” Nolo said primly.
“Why is Ara not being scolded with the rest of us?” asked Findis, in a tone that might have been detached curiosity rather than whining, if Lalwendë didn’t know her sister, even when said sister had been home about twice in the last five decades.
“Because I’m not worried about him making trouble,” Lalwendë snapped. “And he has the most important job, and he knows it.” She swung to her little brother, making him jump in place. “Which is…?”
“If Father starts to look distressed, I put a grandchild in his arms,” Arafinwë recited dutifully.
“Good,” said Lalwendë, satisfied.
Fëanáro opened his mouth. Lalwendë cut him off: “None of your children are small enough for him to conveniently hold anymore, Fëanáro. Curvo is a small, inexplicably adorable version of you, but you should focus on being charming as your full-grown self—with Nerdanel’s help, as she wills. I’ve already briefed Maitimo on managing the rest of the kids.”
Fëanáro narrowed his eyes, of course, at the entirely correct implication that his eldest son was more responsible than he was. Nolo, at least, refrained from comment. So did Findis (though how could she comment, when she barely saw any of her nephews?). Ara looked at the wall and visibly wished to be elsewhere.
If Lalwendë kept them all in a confined space any longer, someone was going to start a fight and the entire point of the exercise would be defeated. So, with one last quelling glare, she opened the door and stood aside.
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you wanted to be a good friend, because you loved your friends, but the truth was that everyone else somehow had a pamphlet on being normal that you never received. most of the time you learn by trial-and-error. you are terrified of the next big mistake you make, because it seems like the rules are completely arbitrary.
you've learned to keep the prickly parts of your personality in a stormcloud under your bed - as if they're a second version of you; one that will make your friends hate you. it feels feral, burning, ugly.
instead, you have assembled habits based on the statistical likelihood of pleasing others. you're a good listener, which is to say - if you do speak up, you might end up saying the wrong thing and scaring off someone, but people tend to like someone-who-listens. or you've got no true desires or goals, because people like it when you're passive, mutable. you're "not easy to fluster" which is to say - your emotions are fundamentally uninteresting to others around you; so you've learned to control them to a degree that you can no longer really feel them happening.
you have long suspected something is wrong with you, but most of the time, googling doesn't help. you are so-used to helping-yourself, alone and with no handbook. the reek of your real self feels more like a horrible joke - you wake up, and, despite all your preparations, suddenly the whole house is full of smoke. the real you is someone waiting to ruin your other-life, the one where you're normal and happy. the real-self is unpredictable, angry.
your real self snarls when people infantilize the whole situation. because if you were really suffering, everyone seems to think you'd be completely unable to cope. but you already learned the rules, so you do know how to cope, and you have fucking been coping. it's not black-and-white. it's not that you are healed during the other times - it's just that you're able to fucking try. and honestly, whenever you show symptoms, it's a really fucking bad sign.
because the symptoms you have are ugly and unmanageable for others. your symptoms aren't waifish white girl things. they're annoying and complicated. they will be the subject of so many pretentious instagram reels. if they cared about you, they'd just show up on time. you care, a lot, so deeply it burns you. you like to picture a world where the comments read if they loved you, they'd never need glasses to see. but since that's a rule you've seen repeated - "one must never be late or you are a bad friend" - you constantly worry about being late and leave agonizingly early. there are no words for how you feel when you're still late; no matter how hard you were trying.
so you have to make up for it. you have to make up for that little horrible real you that you keep locked in a cabinet. you are bad at answering emails so every project you make has to be perfect. you are weird and sensitive so you have to learn to be funny and interesting. you are an inconvenience to others, so you become as smooth as possible, buffing out all the rough parts.
all this. all this. so people can pass their hands over you and just tell you just the once -how good you are. you're a good friend. you're loveable.
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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.
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Luffy not knowing about Zoro promising Sanji to kill him if he ever ends up losing himself makes me go feral because that's something they can only know about. Because Zoro's respect for life and death goes beyond anything, and Sanji knows he understands. Sanji knows that if somebody has to kill him, it's him.
And I don't even think it's because Sanji assumes Zoro's opinion of him is hatred and it would hurt less for him to do this, but because Sanji knows only Zoro would be able to treat the promise as it is. Because he would put Sanji's wishes before any feelings he has for him. It's not that Zoro doesn't care, but I think he respects people's ideals and decisions to the extent of being able to kill Sanji if he so desires.
That being said, he'd do it if there's no other way to fix it. If it's either dying or living as an emotionless machine, which is the same as dying for Sanji, Zoro would fulfill his promise. And there is just... Something about Luffy not knowing. Their captain. The man they're devoted to the most as if he were their God. Luffy doesn't know. It's something only the captain's wings are aware of and the thought of these two keeping this from Luffy until the end is just insane. Not even trying to make it romantic here, but the bond and respect these two have for each other is crazy.
Maybe it's the poetry of it all, too. Somebody like Zoro, who has looked at Death in her face multiple times and said "no", ending Sanji's life, who wants to give in to death to not experience a fate worse than death for him.
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