bifil that on that seson, on a day

As in, you can't just tell me I'm safe. I have to determine that for myself.

As in, I have to check the boundaries of what I'm allowed or not allowed to do now. Will you let me just walk away?

Murderbot TV textposts round 2

I was planning on having Sam say something about building community with kindness, but apparently he had other ideas.

So I guess this is instead, a cockroach moment. A "I'll be as queer and asian as I want, fuck you" moment. A "it's your turn to recognize my humanity" moment. A "I will keep asking uncomfortable questions and making you acknowledge what you're doing" moment.

TBH I almost didn't draw a comic this year, since I haven't consumed any Marvel content in over 4 years, and, well... ::gestures at everything::. But it turns out that my brain still wants to trot out these 3 dudes and make them talk about America, so I banged this out in 5 hours.

Yes, I've been doing this for 12 years. Here's the AO3 link if you want to see all 12: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1968099 (wow, look at baby me's opinions from the first Trump term!)

And here's the tumblr tag: https://potofsoup.tumblr.com/tagged/happy%20birthday%20steve/chrono

We are shown over and over again throughout the Murderbot Diaries that humans are mistreated just as badly as (or sometimes, in MB's own opinion, even worse than) bots and constructs. We see humans stripped of their rights, reduced to corporate assets to be bought and sold, sent into suicidal situations, abandoned and discarded as things. We see humans trapped in multigenerational labor contracts -- people born into an indentured servitude that requires them to pay back their food and lodging to the same company that will not let them leave.

None of these are hypothetical scenarios. These are all things that happen to real people in our world today.

And that is a huge part of why it resonates so much. The overarching theme of "capitalism is hell" actually means something because it isn't only applied to the fictional dynamic of bots vs humans. The theme is constantly reiterated through the humans themselves.

And that's also why it's so important that MB demonstrates empathy for and solidarity with humans who are themselves victims of the system. Because ultimately, that's one of the main things the series is about. It's about what it's like to be simultaneously a product, and victim, of a corporate hellscape.

Who are telling it how any food or medical treatment they require will come out of their funds they make

And Murderbot thinks “at least the company doesn’t charge me for my repairs”