mecurtin: A dodo, captioned Not My Best Day (dodo)
mecurtin ([personal profile] mecurtin) wrote2025-09-19 06:01 pm

Purrcy; grumbles; Murderbot

I have a set of baskets made to hold paper bags to collect paper for recycling. They're also a VERY useful for collecting cats!

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks up at the camera from inside a paper bag inside a basket. His eyes are wide, his whiskers spread.




One of our very best friends from college lives close to us. Or rather, we all still (or again) live close to college--I say that "like the salmon, we came back to spawn." She's had breast cancer, was in remission, now it's back ... metastasized. Kind of a lot. I've been to see her, she looks pretty good so far, we had a good time talking about my kids' life changes and about books. But I have a crushing pain in my chest, y'know? And I woke up this morning with my shoulders aching, and I've been *gnawing* on my night guard in my sleep ...

Meanwhile over on Bluesky there's an ongoing multiday ... thing ... because we're asking people to register for the #NoKings protest on Oct.18th, and a BUNCH of high-profile accounts don't understand why & are going on about OPSEC ... and I *do* understand why, I can explain, but it would take so much energy ...

One of the good things in my life is that [personal profile] sholio has been posting Murderbot recs! I will double her rec (if you can stand WIPs) for Robbing the Hood by [archiveofourown.org profile] Rilleshka, a canon-divergence Space Pirate!AU where Murderbot teams up with a *different*, non-verbal bot pilot before it ever meets PresAux, and things spiral from there. It gets particular praise from me because [archiveofourown.org profile] Rilleshka addresses with the *big* implausibility in canon (shut up), which is that human neural tissue is actually incredibly fussy, & keeping it functional must involve, at minimum, *nutrition*.

So, where can I get some Murderbot icons?
sholio: Gurathin from Murderbot looking soft and wondering (Murderbot-Gura)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-09-14 10:43 pm
Entry tags:

Murderbot fic recs part 2: Longer iddy h/c & plotty fic [9 fics]

Okay, I couldn't really think what else to call this, because this is mostly just recent fics that I want to roll around in like a kitten in catnip. This fandom has tons of gloriously iddy h/c, casefic, longfic, and plotty WIPs, both of the AU and non-AU variety. So this is some of what's been delighting me lately. All of these are complete unless otherwise noted.

(Also see bookverse short gen in the last post, if you missed it.)

One of the still unfinished WIPs I've been following with enjoyment is this:

Robbing the Hood by [archiveofourown.org profile] Rilleshka (gen, AU, currently 11 chapters/68K and still updating) - A SPACE PIRATE AU, really well thought out and probably the kind of thing that will sprawl onwards for a long time without any particular resolution, but I'm just enjoying the ride. It's canon divergent rather than a total AU; early in its post-governor-module life, Murderbot ends up on a ship that's attacked by raiders, the crews of both ships are wiped out, and now MB is alone with the grieving bot pilot of the raider ship, and the two embark on a freelance piracy career for survival, eventually ending up falling headfirst into semi-accidentally rescuing human trafficking victims. (The bot pilot is an OC, not ART - ART's around, but essentially this AU is following the widening spiral of various changes that take place due to MB not being around to e.g. help PreservationAux or Tapan's group.)

This AU does something that very often doesn't work for me, where the found family consists of mostly different people in this 'verse, including OCs and people who never met in canon. (The first one they rescue is a pre-ART Tarik, left to die after he's injured on a death squad mission.) But it really works for me! The AU takes the time to build up the various AU relationships, and it's rich with worldbuilding on the state of piracy in the Murderbot universe, including a gloriously OTT pirate base and some other interesting locations.

The author also has this wonderfully harrowing (complete) fic from last year:

Undefinable Boundaries (gen, 26K, post-canon)
Murderbot is killed on a mission, but that's not the end; its friends, including ART, Three, and PresAux, try to bring it back and rebuild it. Just incredibly wrenching and painful and sweet, and it does have a happy ending.

Moving on, these are pretty much all Murderbot & Gurathin-centric with lots of h/c. This one just dropped today:

Over Imperfect Bones by [archiveofourown.org profile] lookninjas (gen, 8K)
A full on idfest of the "trauma-bonded characters refuse to be more than few feet from each other" trope. Something *really* bad happened to MB, we don't know what for a while, but it can't see or speak or move, except one hand, and it will not let go of Gurathin's hand; we don't find out why for a while either. The way this slowly drops the details of what happened to them and lets the reader read between the lines to what everyone isn't talking about is really well done. There's also some nice stuff with ART, Mensah, and Ratthi.

This one is more thriller/plotty action rather than h/c:

Distress Call by [archiveofourown.org profile] e_va (gen, 9K)
Murderbot wakes up in a cargo container, unable to move, and the only person it can get in touch with is Gurathin, who appears to be on the ship with it. Lots of nice action/spy stuff with bonding and mutual worry.

A few more plotty and hurt/comforty gen )
sholio: murderbot group from episode 10 (Murderbot-family1)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-09-14 10:00 pm
Entry tags:

Murderbot fic recs part 1: Bookverse Short Gen [9 fics]

See also my Murderbot recs from May over at [community profile] recthething, when I was first getting into it (all bookverse).

So I've been wallowing around in all the good fic in this fandom lately, and I'm finally getting around to posting some recs here. I'll start off with something pretty basic: bookverse gen featuring a variety of characters.

9 short bookverse genfics )
mecurtin: A dodo, captioned Not My Best Day (dodo)
mecurtin ([personal profile] mecurtin) wrote2025-09-15 01:50 am
Entry tags:

2 Purrcys, doomscrolling

Sometimes Purrcy is just such a funny little gremlin, wiggling around lovingly, showing the trap that is the soft soft underbelly.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby wiggles upside down, showing his belly, looking very silly and touchable and not at all like someone who will grab any hand that infringes his airspace.




In college I got in the habit of taking my shower at night to avoid the rush & I never stopped. Nowadays Purrcy often comes in after I'm done to Stalk the Wild Drips, and he'll mew at me if there aren't enough.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is gazing intently up a wet shower wall, waiting for a Wild Drip to appear




This past week was officially Too Much. I've been spending too much time on social media, doomscrolling and distractionscrolling. And then reading things to distract my self, and playing particularly pointless games, which in my case is using our NYTimes Games subscription to play Tiles over & over & over again, especially the New Haven tileset, which is just colors, no patterns.

I've got a lot to *do*, but I'm so agitated by the Horrors. I was really worried last week that we were heading for a full Reichstag Fire event. Now I've *got* to wean myself off social media, which at this point is just Bluesky, and buckle down and deal with my to-do list. Maybe I'll try adding a sentence to my DW post draft every time I feel tempted to open it up again, see how that works.
sholio: aged sepia paper with printed text saying "If undelivered, return to Air Ministry, London" (Biggles-london air ministry)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-09-14 09:48 pm

Just Married

The [community profile] justmarriedexchange revealed today, and I adore my gift!

Precipice (Biggles/EvS, 3300 wds)
Takes a Holiday AU in which things go very differently after Erich goes looking for Biggles when he's hiding in the attic. Incredibly sensual, wonderful character voices and a great sense of their mingled attraction and enmity/distrust; it's tense and sexy and just exactly what I want from them at this point in canon. The author's notes hint at a possible sequel, which I would LOVE and - no pressure! - hope that it does happen someday. <3
sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-09-13 10:19 pm

Tumblr meta on 90s TV

I fell down a rabbit hole this evening reading the comment reblogs on this Tumblr post on 90s TV. I ended up deciding to copy some of them here to save them from the inevitable linkrot and post decay.

https://www.tumblr.com/laylainalaska/794609119262900224

Original post:
I don't know what those '90s sci Fi TV writers were putting in their shows but I wish they'd start doing it again

#they de-escalated the stakes every once in a while so that you can see what the characters are like when they're not under duress
#they made statements about the world through allegory
#they invested in depicting developing friendships and relationships between their characters
#they assumed that their audience was paying attention to the screen and wanted to be there
#and that their audience has enough intelligence to follow narrative clues and even sometimes to predict the ending
#dont even get me started on this i will go ALL DAY


I don't agree with every single point in every reblog. I also think there's quite a bit of TV now that still does most or all of this, though usually it's the dramas and procedurals rather than scifi, and a lot that's not great about 90s and earlier TV. But there is also a lot of food for thought in here, so I just threw a bunch of the comments into this post to mull over.

The asterisks separate out each different reblog; basically each is its own separate comment, generally in dialogue with the original post rather than each other.

Thoughts are welcome!

Under the cut )
mific: (ear trumpet)
mific ([personal profile] mific) wrote in [community profile] amplificathon2025-09-13 09:37 pm

A change to the url for the Audiofic Archive


We have a new alternate address for the Audiofic Archive: https://audioficarchive.org
  • This an additional domain name that works exactly like the old jinjurly one
  • Both this one and the prior one, and all links deriving from these urls will function normally 
  • The new link makes it a little easier for us to manage domain name renewals
Podfics posted from now on will have the new address in the post link and in any audiofile links. 


sholio: cute smiling cartoon cupcake with a candle (Birthday cupcake)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-09-13 12:23 am
Entry tags:

The Fandomening

Whumptober ficlet status: 12/31 (4 Biggles, 2 Bab5, 6 Murderbot)

I put in a tentative signup for [community profile] trickortreatex. This is the first time in at least 3 years that I'm not requesting Biggles, because greerwatson (of "Unrequested Nazis Are Awesome, Actually" fame) usually does this exchange and I don't want to accidentally summon her. :P However, it's early yet and I'm still adding fandoms, so I'll see if I feel like it's worth the risk later on. (I don't really mind so much being assigned to her as a writer; I can always write the minimum and leave it anon. But ugh.) Also, while my motivation is - let's be real - mostly avoiding Greer, it made me realize that I've requested Biggles in every exchange since spring 2022 and it might be fun to cast my net wider this time, and request some fandoms I haven't asked for in a while.

Also, I put in a signup for [personal profile] spook_me, the annual Halloween/horror challenge with art prompts that I've been doing every year, or at least most years, since their very first round back on LJ in the late 2000s.* True, my years of finishing anything for it are relatively rare, but it's genuinely one of my favorite events of the year, and I will be very sad whenever they stop doing it.

*(Edit: their first year was - HOLYSHIT - 2006, I found their master list on LJ, and I did actually write for it that year. I thought I remembered participating in the first one! This means this is their 20th year, and I've signed up for most of those years. What even.)

**(Edit2: The first spook-me signup post from 2006. I completely forgot that early on, they asked you to veto what you *didn't* want to write for, and then assigned you a creature and art prompt!)

In other news, Casefic Exchange revealed! I wrote Smuggler's Beach, a 13K post-Buries a Hatchet Biggles/EvS fic that is basically Biggles Goes Alone but with Erich along this time.
mecurtin: tabby cat pokes his cute face out of a box (purrcy)
mecurtin ([personal profile] mecurtin) wrote2025-09-13 12:58 am
Entry tags:

Bug-eyed Purrcy

There were bugs up on the rafter above Purrcy 's head. I don't think he thought they were prey but they sure were *fascinating*.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lying on top of a cardboard box, gazing upward with blown pupils and fascinated whiskers. He looks both eager and wary, like he can't quite believe what he's seeing.
mecurtin: face of tuxedo tabby cat Purrcy looking smugly happy (purrcy face)
mecurtin ([personal profile] mecurtin) wrote2025-09-12 12:35 am
Entry tags:

Purrcy in the bed

The last week or so the weather has gotten cool at night, which means open windows and a cuddly Purrcy at my feet every time I lie down or wake up. It's a good life.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is at the foot of the bed and has wiggled onto his back, exposing the soft, fluffy underbelly and dangling his white paws. He looks perfectly cute and loving and not at all like someone who would attack any hand that tried to pet the tummy (IT'S A TRAP)
mecurtin: face of tuxedo tabby cat Purrcy looking smugly happy (purrcy face)
mecurtin ([personal profile] mecurtin) wrote2025-09-11 12:09 am
Entry tags:

Self-satisfaction

When Purrcy is very happy to be next to a human he sits upright on his butt like a little guy, spreads his legs, & prepares to lick his belly & otherwise have a good time. He is extremely vulgar & the envy of all human males, I'm informed.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is sitting up like a human with a kind of dopey expressing on his face. Trust me, I've chosen the camera angle carefully.