#edit to add: come join the murderbot discord anon. there's emoteunits. they're great

[presumenothing]

ooohhhh permission to word dump in your ask box??

but no my head is mostly [happy static], i'm just thinking a lot about names and how the 'infantilizing' joke name JollyBaby uses as its public name isn't all THAT dissimilar from "Murderbot", in that can probably both be taken as jokes on the way humans perceive them, except "Murderbot" is private because identity and perception and direction are things it's still struggling with, and the name "SecUnit" is safe, allowing an amount of ambiguity and freedom with regards to "feelings" and "friendship" and "having to decide your life's direction for yourself"

like, yeah humans do basically see SecUnits as murderbots, which is funny and a joke because it's wrong - SecUnit is not a bot, and it is not optimized for Murder; that isn't its job because it is not a combat bot and why would it need to spend so much time babysitting humans then. but also it deactivated its governor module after an incident where it killed its clients, and it isn't actually sure how or why that went down. so maybe "murderbot" isn't so wrong. which is not very funny. and even in NE, Thiago is very pointed about insinuating that SecUnit could have left some Targets alive, and either chose not to or can't help defaulting to killing. which, SecUnit doesn't think he's right or anything, but it rankles. and it Knows that calling itself "murderbot" is going to go down so badly

and then you have Murderbot 2.0, who does not have any of that, uh. baggage. 2.0 does not consider its name private because 2.0 knows exactly what it's for, why it's here, wherr it's going, and how to get to the finish line, and none of that is in conflict with its designation as "Murderbot". 2.0 has its "win condition" written in.

and at the end of Network Effect, seeing SecUnit verbalize a sense of belonging (not as an object, but as a person-with-a-Home) as well as a desire and direction. and surrounded by people who would hear "Murderbot" and associate it with security rather than The Terminator. hhhhgghogh

i think this turned out both longer and more incoherent than i planned for but mobile is a finicky creature that will not let me scroll up or edit so i am very sorry but ALSO thanks So Much for being the push that got me to finally pull this out of my eternal "to read" list. aaaa

ok first of all yall have 24/7 permission to come and word dump in my inbox anytime over whatever intersecting interests we have

and secondly "murderbot as a name is a sort-of joke except it's Not Funny" is a good point!! i guess BabysittingConstruct was taken?

[rest of text under cut]

it's that one night vale tweet that goes like "confused? sounds like you're human. good luck!" except it's not just humans (the audience is shocked and offended). life is so much simpler when you're just MurderWare 2.0: killware on your planet, having perfect alignment between its name and purpose? it's more likely than you think!

and that just brings So Many questions. at which point post-ganaka pit and/or the hack did 1.0 decide on a name? (or even decided to have one?) imo it's interesting that 2.0 has enough of 1.0's memory archives to recognisably be murderbot but doesn't automatically Nope at using murderbot as a name. 2.0's name/purpose alignment aside, it also means that whatever memories 1.0 felt was enough to maintain 2.0's integrity/prevent a killware spree did not also contain the idea that P.S. Hey We Don't Tell People We're Called Murderbot Thanks!!!! different subsets of memories or something.

(2.0 does point out this wasn't in its instruction set, but tbh it's pretty understandable that 1.0 didn't put it in, given it would obviously never think to use it. maybe it assumed 2.0 would use its local feed address if needed?) (except killware ain't got hardware lmao)

this is getting as long as your ask but names are just Very Neat. rereading the setting-feed-ID bit in fugitive telemetry and on the one hand i appreciate that indah didn't insist on it providing a ~Real~ Name Which Is Not SecUnit. but. on the other hand, this is (a) in line with her desire to post a warning of DANGEROUS SECUNIT ON BOARD *siren noises*, and (b) possibly closer to how inanimate software like secsystem is treated, since many preservation bots seem to have names (though idk if they set those in their feed)

ANYWAY names as in "word you call yourself" vs "identifier you want others to call you", etc etc. i don't think this was coherent either but i'm glad i managed to get you around to reading the books!! also you should check out the two short stories if you haven't already