my tumblr is older than my cohort's children

I finally wrote the Ratthi fic I promised after reading this post by @stormsthatrage about Ratthi getting chipped back in December. Turned out a lot more silly than I had originally expected, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! The first chapter is set in third person outsider POV, the second person from Murderbot's first person POV.

Title: the real planetary survey was the friends we made along the way

Fandoms: The Murderbot Diaries, Murderbot TV, Doctor Who

Character Tags: Ratthi, Murderbot, SecUnit Three, Original Characters, Fifteenth Doctor, ART | Perihelion

Relationship Tags: Ratthi/Fifteenth Doctor

Additional Tags: humor, crack treated seriously, based on a tumblr prompt, banter, mystery, Outsider POV, Ratthi’s Unshakeable Optimism, Murderbot is So Done, Three Just Wants to Help, Identity Reveal, If You Squint, suspense, drinking as a coping mechanism, Rescue Mission, surprise crossover, Ratthi calls Murderbot ‘Seccy’, now all the OCs think that’s actually its name, set vaguely after System Collapse, no spoilers for anything beyond Network Effect, Marvin Approved™

Notes: This fic was inspired by this tumblr post and I’m so sorry it took so long, especially since it ended up being relatively short! But nevertheless I had a delightful time writing it; and while I’m marking it as complete for now, I’ll potentially do more for it in the future. That said, I’m starting law school in two weeks—so, pretty far in the future. 😂

Also, I know that Ratthi/Fifteenth Doctor might feel a little random, but honestly it just speaks to me in a way I can’t explain. Also also, I’m gifting this fic to my amazing beta @tinysugacube because she is such an excellent hype man (/gn) and I have no idea what I’d do without her and Marvin’s seal of approval. 😍

Summary: Pavel’s research team is about to die on a deserted planet in a poison storm with no hope of rescue—until two helmetless figures emerge from the chaos outside. Between the deeply unimpressed SecUnit with the cutesy name, the deeply awkward SecUnit named after a number, and Ratthi’s “fake” alien boyfriend both being real and showing up, Pavel thinks maybe the killer storm was the normal part of their mission.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89405671/chapters/237431356 

—

Chapter One

The camera feed was a miracle of jerry-rigging: Pavel had spliced it into the Hubsystem’s tertiary power (the primary and secondary were already shot) by running a cable through five formerly sealed bulkheads that had already been in severe need of repair, all so they (herself, Ashika, Sook-hee, and Ratthi whenever he decided to come out of his room) could watch the storm—which had come out of nowhere, or perhaps directly out of Hell—tear apart the landing pad no one would ever use again for anything but scrap. The wind was roaring hard enough that Pavel had serious concerns it would rip through what was left of their walls before starting on the humans inside.

“What is that?” Ashika whispered.

The feed was showing all gray fuzz with the occasional jagged shapes of debris tumbling by. But then Pavel saw it: two shapes, human-ish in terms of outline, but the angles were wrong. Their gaits were even, precise, too direct for debris and too balanced for anyone fighting a gale that could shred a human.

Sook-hee grabbed Pavel’s arm, her augmented grip so hard it bruised. “Oh gods. Oh gods.”

The feed jumped. A sheet of something (metal, maybe? or some type of composite) spun out of the storm, as fast as a projectile, and caught the first figure directly across the neck.

Pavel felt her heart stop for a beat as the figure’s head wrenched sideways. Its body folded, falling, but then it kept falling—not in a collapse, but in what almost appeared to be a controlled crouch, one hand braced against the ground as the debris clattered away behind it. 

Then it straightened up. The feed wasn’t high enough resolution to show detail; but the figures had gotten closer now, and Pavel could see what appeared to be a dark line across its throat—could see the odd way the head turned, as if adjusting itself and checking for damage.

Helmetless. The atmosphere was eighty-five percent chlorine dioxide outside. No human could—

“Those aren’t humans,” Ashika said, their quiet words heard even above the howls of the wind. “No way. Look at the way they move.”

“Oh fuck,” Sook-hee said, terrified. “They’re coming here. They’re coming here.”

And that was when the hatch to the common area cycled open and Ratthi strode in, wiping his hands on his trousers and beaming like a man who’d just been told dinner was ready after not having eaten for the entire day. “Is it them? Oh brillant, I was starting to worry the storm might have caused too much of a delay.”

Continue reading on AO3!

Tag list below the cut, sorry if I missed anyone!

I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.

It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"

I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.

But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON

The way she kinda presented it as the official new flag even though she didn't mean that to be the old flag wasn't still to be used really rubbed people the wrong way. People found this extra egregious because making the ace flag was a huge community effort made through AVEN and lots of voting all the way back in 2010, picking the asexual flag was a HUGE community thing. So seeing it get dismissed as outdated and framing its lack of changes since as a bad thing was very much a BAD WAY to express the desire for a new flag.

Especially since it seemed to not take into account any of the history and feel very focused on new aces. Along with the language again failing to sound at all like she wasn't just trying to completely change the flag for personal taste and distance the community from the one we've been using with basically no complaints for nearly two decades

From what I can find a big reason she decided on making a new ace flag was based on not agreeing? on the flag stripe meanings? Which to be honest I don't think I've met anyone who overly cares about the flag stripe meaning, I seriously doubt most people could name what each stripe of the gay flag means let alone when we get more complicated then bisexual.

Specifically with the white stripe which stands for allies, which she thought was weird to have in such a big role and be centralized in anyway. Which, having seen the shit aphobes have put our allies through and the specific dynamics that can go into asexual relationships even with straight partners, I disagree extremely heavily with this. However I also understand why a lot of people would want to change it.

So instead of just... changing the meaning, which we could totally just do without changing a single other thing because lets be so real how many aces actually knew the meanings, she made a whole new flag and presented it as just objectively superior even if she may not have meant for it. Especially since so many people didn't even know there was any sort of polling or anything about this topic. I sure didn't.

This all sparked a lot of outrage, with one big point against it being that Love is something actually very hot button controversial in the ace community. Having it so highlighted in the flag despite the efforts of those of the loveless identity to fight that derogatory "well just because we're ace doesn't mean we don't loooove" standpoint. See op above.

So people got real mad, and because Grace is black, means some people were ~really racist~ about that anger at least so I've heard since a lot of this happened on instagram and you can't make me use instagram for longer then like ten minutes if forced but I fully am willing to just believe because it feels obvious it would. Which also sparked a conversation on race in the community which some people definitely took too far in the opposite direction to say all critique of the flag was done out of racism so now everyone's agitated and annoyed!

Again, I do want to reiterate that Grace did not deserve all the racism and hate, just because a black woman did something perhaps not as well as possible or worded things badly or just made a mistake or however you read it doesn't mean she deserves to get strapped into a pyre. At worst we are two people in the same community with a disagreement over the flag and its purpose. That's it. Our community should be held accountable for the racism and we should examine our biases as a group. Though the turning the whole thing into a race thing of "only racists dont like it" to shut down all negative discussion even aimed to be constructive is kinda stupid ngl.

At the end of the day there's nothing inherently wrong with just having more flags even if it was framed poorly. I personally think its ugly and dislike how it was presented. The framing of it like its some software update or logo rebranding gives me major ick so I likely won't ever associate with it any time soon. However, if other people like it then sure, whatever, their choice, not my business.

But yeah, that's been the ace discourse for the last like month or two, I really think a lot of this could have been avoided if she just... framed it less like she was making the true successor to the ace flag everyone should use (which she very much did even if she didn't think so due to a lot of her language sounding kinda corporate talking about logo change with statements like "Whether this change to the flag will be implemented or not") and instead leaned more into it being something to go along with the ace flag as like, a bonus. Race 100% did play a role in the backlash, i dont want to understate that, but it definitely was pretty poorly presented from the start.

Honestly the whole thing is just kinda stupid and I cannot imagine it catching on but hey thats what I said about the sunset lesbian flag debacle and look at the world now so who knows, not me.

Supercarrier: fandom flagship.  Everybody and their dog ships it.  The fandom is glutted with artwork and fic.  You cannot escape this ship.

Dreadnought: massively popular.  Nearly everybody ships it.  You can, with dedication, in theory, reach the end of the AO3 archive for the ship’s tag, but it’ll take a long time.

Cruiser: pretty popular ship.  Not everyone ships it, but everyone knows about it.  Has a good amount of fic/art, and probably multiple ask blogs.

Frigate: just plain popular.  Feels like it could use more fanworks.  New people to the fandom might not know about it, but they’ll stumble across it sooner rather than later.

Gunboat: bit of a rarepair.  It might have an ask blog or two.  A couple big name fans ship it.  Probably only takes a few weeks to get through the entire AO3 backlog, and one new fic gets added during that time.

Tugboat: rarepair.  Almost never seen except as a side pairing to a more popular ship.  You can usually get through everything on AO3 in a matter of days.  You’ve forgotten what it is to be picky about what you read.

Rowboat: less than a dozen people ship it.  You all know each other.  You exist in an endless cycle of the same five people desperately producing art and fic and one person who constantly contributes headcanons.

Raft: There’s two-to-four people who Ship It Hard and a few others who grab onto the side for safety when there’s drama on their usual flagship.

Barrel: There’s orphaned fic of it. There’s unsigned art of it. There’s headcanon asks on anon. Someone must ship it, but no one knows why or who they are. Your friend got a glimpse once before they ducked back down.