#and i mean yes obv it's Murderbot

[the-potato-beeper]

i am SO happy, i finally get to read the next Murderbot book tomorrow!!!

[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 done a really close reading of the series 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. different people have different amounts of knowledge about pronoun usage and the queer community, and may not have a lot of experience with picking up on a character using nonbinary* pronouns in media. I understand where they’re coming from - most of what I’m talking about it is binarily 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.

*nonbinary is meant in a very literal sense here, as in “not within the gender binary” i.e. not he/him or she/her. I’m using it as an adjective, not an identity. I’m sure not all it/its users identify as nonbinary, and I highly doubt mb identifies as nonbinary (too much of a human word).

while the series is in first person POV, mb sometimes refers to itself in third person and always uses it/its.

e.g. in Network Effect, when mb is captured by targets near the end and hung upside down and it has to detach its hand to free itself, it remarks, “If this went wrong I was going to feel really stupid. The Targets would finally show up and be all “What the hell was it trying to do to itself?”“ (page 4 of ch 18, my electronic copy doesn’t have individual page #)

update: @chimaerakitten​ reblogged this with a citation I can’t believe I didn’t include! page 40 of All Systems Red, murderbot drops the iconic line, “Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency.” so there’s not even a “well until network effect-” justification, it’s right there in the beginning baby!

murderbot 2.0 refers to both itself and 1.0 using it/its pronouns.

2.0 is literally a copy of 1.0. it has no reason to misgender itself. there is no room for argument here.

e.g. in Network Effect it remarks “That’s one of the reasons Me 1.0 misses its armor.” (pg 5 of ch 16)

also, it works vice-versa, 1.0 uses it/its for 2.0

e.g. Network Effect “You and Amena were right. 2.0 was a person. It wasn’t like a baby, but it was a person.” (pg 9 of ch 20)

@worldsentwined made a lovely post a while back compiling all of the times mb actively rejects/comments on human gender and sex in relation to itself.

while obvs gender =/= pronouns, it’s important to acknowledge mb’s rejection of human gender, because in the series bot/construct gender is a separate thing - p much all bots use it/its that I noticed.

another thing I realized - obviously, mb not identifying with human gender includes non-binary human genders, of which there are plenty of examples in the series, many of which use they/them (Matteo, Turi, Mihail).

this isn’t to say that using they/them = having a gender, see above re: gender =/= pronouns, but it does help reinforce the point that using they/them for mb is still misgendering.

ART refers to mb with either just “SecUnit” or it/its pronouns.

ART can literally read minds, kind of. you really think they went through all of Artificial Condition and Network Effect together without it picking up on what pronouns mb uses?

e.g. Network Effect, it reassures Amena that mb is going to be just fine - “The damage to its organic tissue and support structure is easily repaired.” (pg 13 of ch 8)

also, you think ART would let any humans onboard it misgender mb? no fuckin way.

e.g. Network Effect

Amena talking to ART in private “- because it thought you were dead. It was so upset I thought-Oh, hey, you’re here” (pg 21 of ch 12)

when mb 1.0 finally gets back aboard ART and collapses on the deck - “Amena’s voice said “No, it doesn’t like to be touched!”“ (pg 1 of ch 20)

the PresAux gang use it/its

You could probably try to be like ‘well maybe the presaux gang is just using the secunit standard pronoun’ but consider: by exit strategy, mb has few to no reservations about correcting people, especially people it knows, when they’re wrong.

also Pin-Lee negotiated a contract for it hammering out every detail of interaction, including the “no hugging” clause - she would ABSOLUTELY include whatever pronoun use mb wanted.

e.g. Network Effect, ““No, it says it’s fine,” I heard her [Overse] relaying to the others on our comm. “Well, yes, it’s furious,””(pg 6 (of ch 1))

e.g. Fugitive Telemetry, ““It’s joking.” Ratthi managed to sound like he completely believed that. “That’s how it looks when it’s joking.”“ (pg 15 of ch 4)

Martha Wells did an instagram AMA as mb and ART and upon being asked what pronouns mb and ART use, ART responded w “it/its”

now obvs there’s a bajillion ways that you could tear this apart and argue death of the author, or that bc ART answered not mb it was different, but frankly my dear i don’t give a damn. it’s supporting evidence, not the lynchpin of the whole argument.

update: I finally got Artificial Condition in hardcover, and noticed the little summary blurb on the inside jacket flap thing makes liberal use of the it/its pronoun

“It has a dark past…a past that caused it to christen itself Murderbot. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.”

“Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…”

in rogue protocol when mb pretends to be a human security consultant  the (fictional) off-base supervisor it makes up is called by she/her once or twice, but note that that’s when mb is pretending to be human, and not even that really since the offsite “security consultant Rin” is 100% fabricated. it/its is kind of the bot pronoun - mb uses it as a way to remind everyone that it’s not human and doesn’t want to be and that’s important and also another post in itself.

but basically: a main theme of the series is acceptance of bots and constructs and non-human entities as people worthy of respect, discrete from humans, and that mb doesn’t have to become human/make itself palatable for humans to be seen as a person, and the it/its pronoun use is an important part of that.

that’s all i got for now but when I get physical copies of the rest of the series its over baby, citations all day every day. I have electronic copies of NE and FT and ASR and physical AC and ES copies, the rest I got from the library to read and thus do not have atm. feel free to add citations in reblogs!

update: i saw a post that brought up an interesting and valid point I want to address (when I find it again I’ll link it) - as a they/them person who isn’t out everywhere, oftentimes I am misgendered and I don’t correct them because its easier - the OP mentioned experiencing the same phenomenon, and I can totally see how this applies to murderbot. If it was just everyone around it using it/its pronouns and it not objecting, that’d be a different story, and I would totally agree with the ambiguity. however, mb does use it/its for itself, and even though it’s not turning to the camera and saying ‘I use it/its’, that still expresses a preference which should be respected.

maybe mb will go by different pronouns in the future as it reckons with and thinks about its own personhood, but I kind of hope not. partly because there are people out there who do use it/its, and I can’t imagine the lack of representation they must face, but also because I think recognition of personhood outside of the human world is an important theme (allegorical to marginalized groups who want to be seen as people without conforming to every widely accepted societal ideal of personhood) (I may be projecting as an autistic person who wants acceptance).

this got too deep and too long. sorry, i just have a lot of feelings.