in a hole in the internet there lived a fangirl

He lands and as soon as his phone reconnects to the network, a voice note from Shane comes through.

“Hey baby, I’ve been watching your flights and I know you missed your connection. There isn’t another flight to Ottawa today, but I booked you a flight to Montreal. It leaves in 90 minutes, so you should have lots of time to make it. I’m going to hop in the car and I’ll pick you up at the Montreal airport. I grabbed us a hotel room so we don’t have to drive back tonight. We’ll be tired, and also I need you inside me like… right fucking now. I’m gonna put a plug in before I hit the road so I’m all ready for you when you land.

Anyway, I sent the flight details to your email so you have everything. I love you so much, baby. I’ll see you soon.” (It’s important to note that this entire message is delivered in a matter of fact, business tone.)

Ilya experiences the Shane-specific range of emotions that his husband is oh-so-good at eliciting in him: gratitude, overwhelming affection, feeling safe and loved, and insane horniness, all before he even gets his bags and gets off the plane.

He subtly adjusts himself and texts Shane as soon as he’s in the terminal.

“Thank you for taking care of the flight. You know how much I respect you, right?”

Shane replies:

“Of course I do, baby. Why?”

Ilya:

“Because when I get you into that hotel room tonight, it’s going to seem like I don’t.”

Shane just sends back a picture of himself, back to the mirror, the merest hint of something silver between his cheeks.

Ilya:

“And they call me a fucking menace. See you soon. I love you.”

Shane:

However the drunk guys are also drinking, and eventually she can't afford to buy another pitcher for the table so she can't keep up the ever-full beer glass trick. At this point she has to resort to setting up the pool trick shot that she's never seen anyone but her boyfriend pull off, and says she'll leave with whoever manages the shot first.

to self-soothe and self-educate (through media consumption)

to protect the people around it

and this protagonist, who deescalates violence at every opportunity, who takes a thousand personal injustices in stride and only strives to do better, whose first-and-worst-and-most-brilliant act of self-reclamation—literally reclaiming its mind—was fuelled not by its need for freedom but by a desperation to never be forced to hurt anyone against its will ever again.

College, all of a sudden, went from "something I'd like to do if I can get in" to "a lifeline in an economy where blue collar jobs are going to shit."

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.

According to his birth certificate, anyway. She just kind of accepted that the details were a little fudged. Relativity, and all.

Maybe the stranger would have succeeded in whatever it was he wanted to do, except that he really did just show up. Appeared, like a ghost made flesh, right in the backyard. Clark, thank goodness, was out in the fields with Jonathan. He couldn’t bear to be alone, that boy, and they could never bear to leave him.

Which left Martha free to shoot the ghostly intruder in the face.

Martha had not always considered herself a shoot first, ask questions later sort of a person. But that was before she found a baby in a spaceship where her corn was supposed to be.

They’d switch off, Jonathan and her, who got Clark and who got the shotgun. Martha got the shotgun more often than not. Guns made her husband uncomfortable. She was hardly a fan, but she’d always been a terrible pacifist. Too determined to defend herself.

The sight of all that blood and brain and bone was still nauseating. She compartmentalized, told herself it was no different from slaughtering a cow; didn’t think about riot gear or tear gas or the friends she’d lost or all the things she’d moved away from when her heart couldn’t take it any longer. This was different. This was her son.

She prodded the corpse with her foot. It remained a corpse. A real nasty looking corpse, all big and burly and holding a gun much too large. She didn’t like making assumptions based on appearances, but she didn’t imagine he’d been coming for anything nice. She bent down to search his pockets, found a metal wallet and flipped it open.

Born 2018.

Well, hell. Wasn’t that just a kick in the pants?

Probably she ought to have been a bit more unsettled than she was. But she’d been waiting two years for someone to show up on her doorstep, men in black or UFOs or something. Hell, she’d half expected her sweet little boy to hatch into something worse.

Just because she brought home space babies didn’t mean she was a damn fool.

Jonathan had rejoined her in long strides, was holding Clark in such a way that he couldn’t see the corpse on the ground. “Well, shit,” he said.

“Eyup,” Martha agreed.

“Don’t look government.”

“Nope.”

“We burying him?”

“I’ll bury him,” Martha said, standing up. “You get Clark inside and read him a book or something. I don’t want him seeing any of this, getting him messed up in the head.”

“You sure? Looks heavy.”

“That’s why we have a wheelbarrow. I’ll stick him out behind the barn, might as well keep all our secrets in one place.”

Martha had a long time to think as she dug a time traveler’s grave. There were a lot of reasons someone might travel back in time trying to kill her kid. The first was her instinct as a mother, which was: he was a fucking asshole. Who killed a kid? Fucking assholes, that was who.

Now, it was also possible that her sweet little boy grew up to be some kind of space Hitler. She didn’t think she’d raise that kind of a kid, but she didn’t suppose there was any parent who set out to raise a Hitler.

Still didn’t sit right with her. She didn’t much like the idea of killing baby Hitler, either.

Ageless Linux intends to force the issue before the California state supreme court, then ultimately (probably) the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). It's a stupid, dangerous law, voted into place by legislators who either don't understand the core issue OR knowingly voted for it because they're assholes.

California is an influential state in the US. Many laws & regulations passed there eventually trickle out to most states. That's why it's worrisome to see this kind of thing rammed through, and why it's important to fight it.

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)

The Monster of Sentan

The Witch’s Cat

Raise Both Children

Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)

Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)

My Arch Nemesis Cynthia

Pirates and Mermaid

Eindred and the Witch

The Demon King

The Cornerwitch

Grandmother Beetroot

Apocalypse Daycare Worker

Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon

New Year Saga

A Story About Changelings

Ranger in the King’s Forest

The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit

24. The Queen with Three Cursed Children

25. Tiny Dragon with one coin hoard

26. Haunted house

27. Shark hero was about to go rogue

28. Grandma lives in the woods comic

29. A Different Aftermath comic

30. Battery (microstory but I love it so much)

31. It’s A Date comic

32. Supervillian kidnaps rival’s kid and they want to stay

33. Narrative Town

34. I have been hired to clean the wizard tower comic

35. Robot Apocalypse

36. The Statues That Do Not Weather

37. Kushiel

38. Tooth Fairy

39. Alien abduction

40. Felonious wish-granting

41. When humans met actual space orcs

Also adding a couple of my favorites! Long Forgotten God and the kindergarten class

45. Intergalactic Red Cross

46. Being Villagers

47. The monster under the fridge

48. Humans are the only species with a concept of vengeance

49. The Blue Key

50. Different stories resonate with different people comic

51. Whalefall horror comic

52. The Fox God comic

53. The Stone of Possibility

55. A Pool in the Heart of the Forest (comic)

56. I am asking you to endure it (+notes)

57. You Help Kill Heroes

58. The witch who raised herself

59. My pilot is good

60. Hsthete (comic)

61. Variations on the Frog and the Scorpion

62. The monster under the bed

63. Cleric slamming healing spells (microstory)

64. The Priest of Arepo

65. The Villain Wrangler

66. Old Gods vs Aliens

67. Last Contact

68. Dragon on a farm

69. Antler Guy

70. Bakery with mythical customers

71. ‘Port

72. The king prophesied to defeat evil

73. The Night Gentlemen

74. In love with a sphynx

75. A fae asks for your name

76. Once their home

77. When you die in the ocean (comic)

78. Toad Words

79. Kisses and Curses (comic)

80. And the Heavens Wept

81. Healer kicked out of the party

Don’t worry, it’s not an insult! Calling someone “the shit” is actually a common earth compliment!