Fandoms and all the things I obsess about

@murderbot-maladies-event day 6: manual bullet/projectile removal

Your wife is a wonderful, caring planetary leader and scientist <3

She goes on what's meant to be a mundane planetary survey expedition

this turns into a corporate death trap she and her team just barely escape with their lives

after the death trap she gets kidnapped by the corporation that made the death trap due to them not wanting to pay damages

again. she and her team miraculously escape with their lives

after what easily had to be 6+ months she finally arrives home

Your wife is traumatized, unwilling to talk about or address this trauma, and now has a co-dependent relationship with a rogue SecUnit

You and the family are really trying not to hold the 'rogue SecUnit' thing against the Rogue SecUnit. Not its fault. But it is sarcastic and glares a lot and is non-social and has installed literal spydrones everywhere. It's willing to kill anyone who hurts your wife or her extended family. This is, to put it bluntly, a bit of an Adjustment for everyone.

Your wife decides to retire from being a planetary leader. One one hand, you think it's a good idea for her to take the time to focus on her mental health and be with her loved ones. On the other hand, it's concerning all of this has made her give up one of her passions.

One of your older children is going on her first off-planetary survey. This is good, obviously :) It's just. you are all still stressing from the trauma of your last family member's planetary survey.

It's fine. It's going to be fine. Your brother-in-law is going to be with her, and a bunch of your wife's long-standing colleagues, and-- you have complex feelings about this-- the SecUnit. it will be fine.

It is not fine.

The SecUnit and your brother-in-law and your daughter have all been kidnapped by a mysterious force for mysterious reasons.

Now your wife-- who is meant to be on indefinite mental health leave-- is off to save them.

You and your third partner want to go with her. You want to. But you have no skills for this, and family at home you need to care for. So you stay on the sidelines, waiting, waiting, waiting.

THEY'RE OKAY EVERYONE IS OKAY

thank fuck. phew. okay. now they're going to come home and--

what do you meant they're not coming home

what do you mean your child has decided to go to university off world at the school that kidnapped her

what do you mean your wife, instead of retiring, has decided to become some sort of anti-corporate activist

Yeah okay. This is not a conversation to have over the feed with a 2+ month time delay. You need to have an in-person conversation. You'll make a family trip of it; Nana and Sofia will come with. This is a good, normal, family visit

There's a few lines in Platform Decay that make me think that as well, mainly:

-MB talking about Three's training (or lack there of) and what Three has been doing that's not being trained by MB

-MB talks about Sophi having grown from the last time it saw her, which if they never went back to Preservation after NE/SC would only have been like a month max, not really enough time for a noticable amount of growth even in a fast growing child

-MB talking about it's "evil secunit lair" either being on ART or on Preservation Station. This one is a bit more iffy as far as "evidence" (not that I really need evidence we're just in a sandbox with our blorbos its not that serious) but I interpreted that as, it's been some time, MB and co have been back and forth and around multiple times, and events have been by and large as "normal" as you can get in MB's circle

Also we have lines from MB about Mihira & New Tideland starting to implement the better feed security measures that MB had gotten Preservation Station security to institute, as well as Three having met more of the PSUMNT machine intelligences than just Holism and letting them all lecture at it about nonfiction topics. Murderbot had also, explicitly, visited the mental health division of the university, which had, with ART's help, started working on mental health modules for constructs. The emotion checks throughout the book are a product of this.

One complicating factor is the comment that Thiago hadn't returned to Preservation until after Farai, Naja, and Sofi set off to visit Ayda & Amena at PSUMNT. This might be why some people are thinking of this as following very quickly on the heels of NE & SC, but I think there's another relatively easy explanation: Thiago stayed behind to work with the university teams helping the Adamantine colony/ies get back on their feet.

He's not an alien remnant/decontamination expert, but he is a linguist! He specifically pioneered the translation module that everyone else in our main cast were using to communicate with the colonists in the rest of NE & SC. So it makes perfect sense that he might choose to stick around and keep expanding & deepening that translation module, especially now that the worst of the emergency situation(s) have passed, so he can work on documenting more complex cultural sides of the colonists' language(s) rather than just the most necessary, utilitarian, survival-oriented communication.

Which also means Thiago probably ended up working closely with Holism & its support ships & crews, since they were going to be sticking around to help develop infrastructure for the colonists while ART & MB got to leave.

Ok someone has to take this away from me before I drive myself insane attmepting to idk art better 🙈

In my head Secunit is like old like

meanwhile three is like

Tenna fanart is by @9Aaaalt29 on twt