dxmedstudent
theinsidiousdice
thepringlesofblood
murderbot uses it/its pronouns, and here’s why
im just sick of seeing people try to be all ‘but its up for interpretation’ ‘it’s ambiguous’ ‘we don’t know’ ‘who can never be sure’ and I saw one of those posts like ‘but an agender/gender-neutral protagonist means I can project whatever i want onto them’ and i have simply had it. essay under the cut. *spoilers* obviously for p much all the books, mostly network effect. there’s 1 quote from FT but it’s not plot-relevant
tl;dr mb refers to itself with it/its pronouns, on top of the quadrillion times it actively rejects human ideas of gender (which is an important theme in the series), on top of its Crew and ART using it/its, on top of Pin-Lee writing it detailed legal contracts using it/its pronouns, on top of that AMA where ART says it and mb use it/its, on top of the blurb on the inside cover of Artificial Condition using it/its.
disclaimer: i 100% get people who haven’t gone as deep in the paint on analysis/close reading as I have using they/them for mb as a ‘i’m not sure what to do’ thing or a ‘given no direction i use they/them until a person expresses a preference’ thing. that’s valid, and I understand where they’re coming from. most of what I’m talking about it is actively gendering mb (e.g. he or she gross). although using they/them for murderbot is still misgendering, since mb does demonstrate preference for it/its as early as pg 40 of the first book (see below), it’s still incorrect.
straycatj
stylinglikeitsthe90s
stability
vergak
appalachiananarchist
I make a big long post like that and I’m sure it sounds really awful, so let me clarify something to anyone who was reading along: We doctors do not sit around and rank you on who is most likely to live or die. That is not how any of this works. Firstly, we are not in a shortage of anything dire enough to need to extubate one patient to reintubate another right now. Even despite soaring cases, that isn’t happening. What actually happens is this: people come in. We decide who is sick enough to need ICU care, vents, etc. We give it to them, regardless of any underlying factors. IF there are not enough vents or beds at our facility, we transfer them to another one. IF there are no beds or vents or whatever at the other facility, we give ourselves migraines while calling multiple more facilities. IF, despite these many many calls, we still cannot find a place that can care for the patient, the patient is placed on a wait list, usually at multiple facilities. It is only after the wait list comes into play that we start even thinking about stratifying patients on survivability because these lists are designed based on acuity and need.
I have been a physician during the entire pandemic. The only time I have ever seen a patient be outright denied wait list placement was for ECMO because it is so scarce that they have very stringent criteria. I’m talking “they had a cutoff age of 50” stringent. However, apart from ECMO, we were almost always able to either treat the patients adequately at our facility or, if not, keep them stable long enough to get them to somewhere that could. Even when we were short on BIPAP, CPAP, or what have you, we managed to scrape together what we needed to keep the patients stable until transfer–even if that meant standing over them and bagging them for extended periods. If any of you, vaccinated or not, come into the hospital, this is the care I would hope you all receive. Again, this is a fairly pointless post, but I didn’t want to worry anyone with how scary it sounded.
Aaand now I am done for real.
discovernow
ursiday
arcticflakes
