maybe it's possible to get frisky in the day-to-day imperial fit, but the edocharei make such sad faces if they can tell that maia had sex without calling them first and letting them take off his Emperor Clothes and put on his Sex Clothes that it's just not worth it. avris doesn't say anything but his eyes are eloquent of the sentiment serenity doesn't need us? serenity doesn't make use of our service? serenity would rather get these beautiful expensive fabrics all wrinkly than call in his devoted edocharei whose job it is to take care of serenity's wardrobe? serenity wants to get fluids on the imperial white? okay that's fine we guess. as his serenity wishes.....

maia does it one time and then feels so guilty after he sees his edocharei that the next time csethiro gets handsy in the middle of the day he's like sorry honey hold that thought i just gotta call my boys real quick...[pause] they said no.

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

I know everyone's all on the "SecUnits quietly freeing themselves from their governor modules eventually escape/revolt and set up on Preservation" train but I think it would be way funnier if Murderbot and a handful of humans end up stranded somewhere and get rescued by a mysterious ship who are really tight-lipped about where they come from and won't name what corporation they're working for or let them access any information while they rescue them and weather a long trip home and MB's all "I have to pretend to be human and also find out if we've been captured by pirates or by some random corporation because we've definitely been captured by *somebody* who's trying to figure out how to make a bunch of money out of rescuing us", but it turns out that the whole reason that their rescuers were tight-lipped was because THEY thought that MB's group were pirates and/or scummy corporates trying to spy on THEM (an impression not helped by MB and friends trying to dig into their files and figure out who they are) and they're trying to maintain secrecy because they're from a different independent planet that's trying to stay as off-the-radar as possible because it's the refuge of a bunch of "stolen" (freed) constructs of all kinds that were rescued by that one comfortunit that MB freed way back, and the CU and its ever-growing cast of allies have been focusing on freeing constructs this whole time while MB's been off fucking around with its own stuff.

I love MB and it doesn't owe anyone a revolution, it can spend its own time however it likes, but if you hand a sex slave who's been forced into bullshit profit and murder schemes the universal key to its bomb collar, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if its first thought is "I'm going back in for the others". MB handed the key over in honour of the comfortunits who'd given their lives trying to protect people and everything.

Also it would be nice to see some more narrative justice for the comfortunits after MB's... entire attitude. I love MB as a narrator, nothing against a bigoted protagonist, it's a great character beat, but that person who pointed out that constructs absolutely are not ungendered and that their two genders are Prostitute and Cop wasn't wrong. It'd be nice to get some more of Team Prostitute than MB's... mis-comfort-y? Someone help me invent a word here. We got a sort of begrudging "well those were some of the good ones" re: the CUs who sacrificed themselves to try to save people in the mine and then dropped all awareness of comfortunits entirely like a loudly homophobic grumpy grandpa at Christmas quietly mumbling that the gay neighbour is a hard worker at least and then dropping the topic for the rest of the year without having to admit to himself that same sex marriage isn't evil.

#and re: the original idea#i think it would be fun if team bots figured out mb was a secunit but not that it's free#so they try to help it without tripping its governor module or tipping off its humans#misunderstandings and shenanigans (with heartbreaking implications) ensue

You understand my vision.

Stern and tight-lipped captain of the ship: Obviously a construct that's been ordered to behave human because they don't want us to know they have the backing of a big corporation and are trying to hide their security. Unusual amount of flexibility from people using corporate constructs, but might work in our favour. I'm going to see if I can subtlely convince it to sit in a chair, that's an early milestone for many liberated secunits, might as well get a head start.

Muderbot: This is some kind of obscure test. Shit. She knows. We're all doomed.

Gotta include these tags

I’m sorry Orpheus i was too harsh on you…

i was in the physics lab today and we were working with lasers, so the Lab Freaks (legal name) were being very careful to stress that we Do Not Turn Around or Look Behind Us because we’ll get extremely blinded by the power of high strength lasers

and i’m not gonna lie it was actually extremely hard to resist turning around. i misjudged orpheus it turns out this isnt extremely easy actually

okay i’ll be honest i 100% looked back at the lasers. actually multiple separate lasers multiple different times. they were pretty

and i didnt get blinded. so clearly lab safety isnt real and you should always risk it cus taking risks is awesome #gambling

but uh. my ass is NOT making it out of the underworld 🔥🔥🔥

It takes one minute to imagine the scene and 500 hours to write it

A police whistle on Bow Street. For a moment I felt a connection, like a vestigium, with the night, the streets, the whistle and the smell of blood and my own fear, with all the other uniforms of London down the ages who wondered what the hell they were doing out so late. Or it could just have been me panicking; it's an easy mistake to make.
Nightingale's breath started to falter.
'Keep breathing,' I said. 'It's a habit you don't want to break.'
I heard sirens coming closer - it was a beautiful sound.

Rivers of London, chapter 10

Candid of PC Sahra Guleed at balls o'clock in the morning, mid January.

Photographed and archived by Peter Grant in 2014.

8/?

RoL + Reductress Headlines

Peter:

Nightingale:

Beverley:

Molly:

Guleed:

Abigail:

Lesley:

Tyburn:

Dr Walid: We call that a traumatic event.

Dr Walid, turning to Peter: Not a "bruh moment".

Dr Walid, turning to Abigail: Not an "oof lmao".

Dr Walid, turning to Nightingale: And certainly not a "minor inconvenience".

reblog to bap prev with your paw

NONE OF YOU ARE EXEMPT FROM THIS 🫵

bearer of the curse known as 'i find it boring when characters in historical fiction think, feel, behave and sound exactly like modern-day people'

the real true purpose of having a brain is to think about fictional characters