#i don't think it even knows the name Murderbot

[morporkian-cryptid]

I'm reading The Murderbot Diaries (Network Effect, so, spoiler alert), and man, Murderbot's relationship with ART makes me insane. It's like, you're an insufferable asshole. You're my best friend. Saying that word makes me retch. You're the only person in the universe who could possibly understand what it's like to be me. I can't possibly understand what it's like to be you. I must look like an ant to you. I've put my unconscious body in your hands and let you alter it. We both love our humans to the point of destruction. You've killed people to protect me and my friends. You only did it because you were between two jobs and bored. We watch TV shows together. I saw you have an emotional breakdown about a historical drama. You could kill me in a hundred different ways. I've brutally murdered several people to avenge you. You were ready to kill all my friends to save yours. I've brought you back from the dead. You're keeping us prisoner. I'm your only chance of saving your friends. I've lived and traveled inside your body, and you've been a passenger in my brain. We don't even know each other's real names.

[elkian]

Exit Strategy has so many gems that it's easy to miss some of the more subtle ones. Today I'm fixating on the video that our protagonist sent to Gurathin when he asked what it's been up to.

Specifically, the title of the video.

"Murderbot Impersonates An Augmented Human Security Consultant"

Murderbot. It calls itself Murderbot, a name it has never told anyone before. A name Gurathin took from its memories in one of their last meetings, and while it seems more, like, annoyed than traumatized by this, it still is a pretty rude thing to do, let alone share without permission like he does. (He does have valid reason to be concerned at the time, but still.)

What does it mean for Murderbot to call itself Murderbot in a file made to answer the question of the human who found out it's called Murderbot? Remember, this isn't something it had lying around - it edited together video on the spot to answer his question.

Every time I reread ES, I find my own underlining of that title and ask this question again, and then forget it.

It becomes slightly laxer (again not entirely willfully) with the name in Network Effect, but Murderbot's name is usually private information that it doesn't choose to share (later in ES it does choose to reassure Mensah that it is who it says it is, which, again. Just. Imagine being in the position where a technically-killer construct reassures you that it calls itself Murderbot. What a time).

It could be a sort of subtle dig, that it doesn't need to hide this info because Gurathin already has it. It could be an unconscious act of, if not trust, then neutrality, that it doesn't need to hide this info because, again, Gurathin already has it. It could be a reminder, a comedic juxtaposition with the rest of the title and contents of the video. Hell, it could be Murderbot's idea of an in-joke at this point. I just don't know. But when I think of this passage, I think of the part soon after, where Murderbot grudgingly appreciates Gurathin giving the hostage negotiator such a cold shoulder that even it's impressed. I think of it interrupting Gurathin viewing the recording because the rep has arrived. I think of Gurathin, wrist-deep in manual controls (and hey, when they discussed the humans' luggage, Gurathin's mention was his specialized toolkit).

I don't know. There's a lot there. Gurathin is, ever more obvious on each reread, just Murderbot: Human Edition, and Murderbot absolutely refuses to acknowledge this in any form, and it will still take care of him.

[penig]

So there's very little, if any point, either agonizing or rejoicing about casting Skarsgaard as Murderbot because execution is everything and it could be every bit as bad as some people expect or it could be as good as other people expect or it could be a real mixed bag and there's nothing we can do about it, anyway. We won't know what we think about it till we watch it, but people like making discourse in a vacuum and here we are.

I totally get that there's something simultaneously inevitable and revolting about the idea of a character, canonically extremely oppressed in a world in which everyone whose skin color is described is more or less brown, being played by a member of the least oppressed population demographic with which most of us are familiar. My initial reaction was not great, either.

But every time I see someone say: "Murderbot is not a cis white man!" I can't help thinking: "No, it's not. But in the TV show, it looks like one."

Look, I'm bisexual. And cis. And monogamous. The person I married happened to also be bisexual and cis. We didn't stop being bisexual when we married each other, but when we're together, we don't look queer. We look heterosexual. Which means, we get a lot of heteronormative privilege we don't ask for and I can see why more visibly queer people might resent that. But you know what happens when we try to reject that privilege? People both straight and queer look us dead in the eye and tell us that we're not really queer.

And that sucks.

Ask any light-skinned black person capable of passing for white, any Jew being told that it's okay to commit terrorist acts toward them because they're really white, any queer in any closet, any SecUnit getting a job as security consultant believing that if its soft, grateful clients didn't think it was an augmented human they wouldn't like it so much.

It's not a good idea to rate things hierarchically. Particularly not oppressions. Every person's oppression is unique, and some are more fatal than others but they're all uniquely awful. Knowing that you're not what you're passing as and that the only way to gain access to certain things that should be available to anybody is to deny part of yourself is pretty bad; especially if failure to pass properly is likely to get you lynched. Or stripped for parts and recycled.

Murderbot doesn't want to be a cis white augmented human male. It doesn't like how it feels to be treated as one. It wants to be itself. Even though being treated as itself has always meant being treated badly, and it doesn't like that either. It isolates itself a lot in environments where it has to pass as an augmented human, to minimize the time it spends maintaining its false face.

Consider what it says when contemplating what name to put in the FeedID that Senior Indah insists upon, in Fugitive Telemetry:

I could use the local feed address that was hard coded into my neural interfaces. it wasn't my real name, but it was what the systems I interfaced with called me. If I used it, the humans and augmented humans I encountered would think of me as a bot. Or I could use the name Rin. I liked it, and there were some humans outside the Corporation Rim who thought it was actually my name. I could use it, and the humans on the Station wouldn't have to think about what I was...I posted a feed ID with the name SecUnit, gender = not applicable, and no other information.

It could have an easier life and make the people around it more comfortable if it compromised on presenting itself as itself, whole entire. But it doesn't want to claim that easier life. It's not worth it.

Maybe that'll come across in the show and maybe it won't and maybe whether it comes across or not will depend as much on the viewer as on what appears on the screen. We won't know till we see it.

Till then, I'm not ready to write it off.

[grammarpedant]

Crashes in here, hi this is my main blog and I just saw the tags you left on my art of Miki and the CombatBot and I'm going just a little insane over them. I've been thinking of a fic from Miki's POV for Rogue Protocol for a while and while I don't think I have the skill to pull that off I am SO EXCITED to see that someone else has had the same thought!!! Urg... I just love Miki so so much and seeing how the events unfold from its POV would be so interesting.

I think I gotta go draw Miki some more now hehe. Good luck with writing!!

(the Miki art in question)

Hehe, right? Miki is SUCH a character full of so many hidden depths and surprises, greatest of all is that it's also exactly what it looks like on the surface, in full sincerity: a sweet, kind person of a bot that cared very deeply about its friends and wanted to be able to count Murderbot among them. It also deliberately obfuscates the truth from Murderbot and from Don Abene alike on multiple occasions, it seems to sense what MB means and feels through the feed almost better than MB itself, it's a science bot with visual magnification abilities beyond MB's, when it's stressed and pressed for time it stops trying to talk like a human and goes back to its native code language; Miki has in-jokes with its human friends, but I never had a friend like me. And that's just random stuff I pulled from skimming the book looking for something else! Miki is just such a fascinating character!!

And in this fandom we just LOVE our outsider POVs, haha. I'm sure others have done or tried to do Miki POV of the book before, but I'm gonna use this moment as an opportunity to gush about the thing I want to write- I left the tags that I did because what came to me first was the bit leading up to the same scene you've depicted, the tragic beauty of Miki choosing the trajectory that it did. I have a heartwrenching final scene of Miki's POV in those moments that I absolutely cannot show anyone, not least because the scene simply will not hit as hard as it could unless I actually lay the groundwork that would give it a real punch.

Miki would be about (is about) self-determination, right, obviously. But the Miki POV I want to write would also be about a character caught between connection and alienation, a bot among humans and all that entails. —People love and protect Miki, yes, but do they understand it? Don Abene loved it, and Miki loved her too, and what about all the times they struggled to understand each other? The work that it takes to overcome miscommunication? How does Miki feel, knowing that there are some experiences it just cannot share with its human friends, nor they with it? Do they understand each other regardless? Does anybody ever really understand another person? —Miki has a way of talking that's a little clipped and which may seem "childish" to a reader at first glance; given that in times of stress it defaults back to a nonverbal-to-humans mode of bot communication, might we draw parallels between it and the semiverbal disabled experience? —For perhaps the first time in its life Miki met someone who could understand it reflexively, instinctively, empathize with its machinic experiences almost effortlessly. How does it understand this person's refusal to accept the vulnerability of connection? Does Miki understand Murderbot, and if so how much? In what ways?

Those are the themes I'd want to pull at, and to do so I'd use the motifs of Miki's scientific research function. Its literal ability to perceive the world differently from both humans and from MB, its framing of the world through numbers and measurement and factoids and analysis that is nevertheless beautiful to it, even when it struggles to put that beauty to human words. Names. Identity. Choice and free will. Emotion and connection. What Miki was thinking when it looked at MB's camera at the nebula storm and said, Pretty! The jokes and media and little moments it shares with Don Abene. The love and happiness that made it so secure in itself. If I could just get through the groundwork of it all... it would be beautiful. At least as beautiful as the art you drew.

Anyway, I hope you keep drawing Miki, friend! The art you did has already inspired me a bit more 🥰

[rockalillygirl]

Feeling balanced about the Murderbot trailer

Not gonna lie, at first I was a little put-off by the "Marvel comedy" vibe of the trailer. But after rewatching, I'm feeling better about it. I know trailers rarely give you an accurate feel for a show, and they probably went for a vibe that would be more familiar/enticing for people who haven't read the books. At least they did a comedic tone, rather than the typical "badass sci-fi" tone, which I think would've been worse. As long as the heartfelt moments in the books don't get played for laughs, I've decided it doesn't bother me that much.

Things that made me happy:

1. Omg the Preservation Team! I love all of them, especially Gurathin (the nails!), Mensah, and Ratthi. So excited to see them!

2. The "new model" of SecUnit looks like the armor from the cover on the Subterranean Press omnibus (it's even in a similar pose!) And Murderbot it just leaning awkwardly behind it

3. I like the look of Murderbot's armor in general with the cool circular faceplate

4. Everything about the Sanctuary Moon clips! The wigs! The cheesy Star Trek aesthetic! If we get a full Sanctuary Moon episode, Apple can have my soul I guess

5. The scale and look of the sets! Everything looks much bigger and more spacious than how I imagined it but it's neat! (Hostile One is giant omg)

The only other thing thay weirded me out at first was Skarsgård's "Siri" voice. I always pictured Murderbot's tone being flatter BUT I do realize it's unrealistic to expect an anyone's voice to match how I imagine it, and it makes sense it might sound different from an outside POV. Like I can see the Company making SecUnits sound what they think is "generically pleasant", especially in their buffer. And lol it would make sense if it actually turned out sounding a little off-putting. Would be cool if Murderbot's tone shifts throughout the series when it gets more comfortable with the characters! What I will say is that I do think the voice makes Murderbot read as more "robotic" to viewers who don't know what SecUnits are- because otherwise it just looks like a human in armor at first. I dunno if that's why they went with that voice, but I can see some justification for it. Not my cup of tea, but it'll probably grow on me. As long as Murderbot says "fuck" a respectable number of times- wouldn't want the fans to lose count!

So all-in-all, I'm cautiously optimistic that the show will at least be a fun time, even if not everything is for me. I think it's valid to be disappointed about some things, like Murderbot's casting, because I was too. That being said, I think Skarsgård is a good actor and will probably do a good job. I liked his physicality as Murderbot in the trailer, at least. More cynically, I doubt the series would've been made this soon if a big name like him hadn't been interested in starring/producing. So, however the show turns out, I think it's better than no Murderbot show! And ultimately it'll introduce more people to the books, which is a definite good!

[lexalovesbooks]

five books with aroace main characters you say....please share 👀

You are super in luck anon because almost as soon as i posted that I started compiling a list of all the ace/aro-spec books I could remember reading, these are all across a big variety of genres and age categories but all the mcs fall somewhere on the aro-ace spectrum (and personal faves are bolded)

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire: I think most people here know this one. A world where children sometimes disappear through magical doorways to other worlds, and sometimes return. When this happens, they usually are desperate to find a way back. Nancy is one of these children, looking for a way back to an underworld of living statues that has become her home while also trying to find a murderer at the boarding school full of other children looking for their own doorways back to their worlds. Asexual mc

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman: Rumi, a teenager whose younger sister recently died, moves to Hawaii to spend a few months with her aunt, where she tries to piece together who she is without her sister and rediscover her love of songwriting, something she and her sister always did together. Aro-ace questioning mc

Forward March by Skye Quinlan: Harper, a student at a prestigious high school whose father is running for president, deals with school, marching band, and a presidential campaign all while trying to figure out if she really likes the girl and fellow bandmate who recently was catfished by someone pretending to be Harper. Ace lesbian mc

All Systems Red by Martha Wells: This one is pretty popular too, idc. Murderbot is a self-named human-bot construct (think cyborg, but manufactured specifically for security purposes) who hacked its own governer module to gain free will, and then used that free will to continue doing its job while watching thousands of hours worth of space soap operas. Unfortunately, its existence of efficiently half-assing keeping humans safe is disrupted by a group of clients who end up in hot water, all while being unexpectedly concerned with its state of freedom and the status of its personhood. Aro-ace agender mc

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger: Elatsoe, also known as Ellie, is a young Lipan Apache girl who has a dream where her cousin tells her the name of his killer—the morning before she wakes up to the news of his death. She and her parents travel to the town he lived and died in and work to comfort his grieving family while searching for evidence that will prove the killer, a well-liked community figure, is guilty. Also features faeries, ghosts, and other paranormal and mythical creatures. Asexual mc

The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic: ANOTHER very well-known tumblr book! Whatever, not gonna try to explain the plot, these are the lacrosse murder books you’ve heard of them and if you haven’t you can look up a summary. Mc is word-of-god demisexual but also it’s so evident in canon even without being explicitly stated that I personally don't even think you need the disclaimer

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson: In a world where dead spirits regularly rise from deceased bodies to devour and possess the living, Artemisia is a nun-in-training who will one day cleanse the bodies of the recently deceased so that their souls can move on to the afterlife. Then, she releases an ancient and dangerous spirit from a relic to protect her convent from attack. The spirit possesses her body and gives her extraordinary power—but the spirit isn't necessarily on her side, and it's unclear if the connection formed between the two of them can safely be severed. Asexual mc (not explicit bc it's fantasy, but I think it's pretty obvious even without the exact word used)

Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace: In a dystopian world torn apart by two rival corporations, Mallory is one of many people who find refuge in a virtual reality game that allows you to enter battle, earn real-life credits for sorely-needed necessities like water, and interact with virtual, computer-created versions of the league of supersoldiers that protect her home city from attack. Mallory has had a parasocial obsession with one of these supersoldiers—22—for years, until one day she gets caught in an attack that results in her meeting the flesh-and-blood version of the celebrity/superpowered protector. As she spends more time with 22 and his paired operative, she begins to see just how deep the corruption of the company that controls her city runs—and also begins to wonder what she can do to help the city and everyone who lives in it. Aro-ace mc

Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao: Two freshman college students bond over their experiences with being aro-ace and work together to form an aro-ace-spectrum community at their college. At the same time, both students anonymously run rival relationship advice accounts on instagram, and spend their free time engaging in mostly-joking insults with each other. Aro-ace mc, aro-ace non-binary mc

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White: Miles is a teen living in the Appalachian South, who finds himself caught up in the crossfire of a centuries-long feud between his family and another, significantly more powerful family living in the same town. In the aftermath of a violent assault that lands him in the hospital, he and a childhood friend engage in a revenge quest that quickly begins spiraling out of control. At the same time Miles deals with shifting family dynamics in the wake of him coming out as transgender, and an apparition of a long-dead ancestor that no one but him can see. Aromantic trans mc

Those are all the ones I feel like writing out full summaries for, but some other books that I really like with aroace mcs are The Diviners by Libba Bray (ace lesbian mc in second book), The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (word-of-god aroace mc), The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (word-of-god aroace secondary character), and The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards (word-of-god demisexual gay mc, ace secondary character). The one thing I haven't really read any of is books with aroallo main characters :( If anyone has recs for those, please feel free to share!

[whetstonefires]

Hello! For the reverse tropes writing prompts (if this catches your fancy) — murderbot diaries with fake amnesia and Really nice guy who hates only you

this is really not in the spirit of that second inverse trope, but for mb this was the only thing i could think of, and it was very funny.

=

"Gurathin," said Gurathin. "SecUnit, you know it's me."

"I don't think I know that," it said, pleasantly, in an okay but not excellent imitation of its creepy canned dialogue options. "Please present some identification, and we'll see."

Gurathin didn't bother sending his data over the feed again. Murderbot walked away, but left a drone eyeballing him. He resisted the urge to flip the drone off. "Come on," he told it, knowing SecUnit was paying attention. "Let me in."

He watched the SecUnit bend forward slightly to show two of Mensah's kids that it was paying attention to whatever they were saying, and then bend over further to help the toddler up onto a chair. It was just fucking with him now. On the other hand, if the prickly bastard started letting children hug it just to piss off Gurathin, who was the real loser?

It finished spoiling the children and moved over to smoothly de-escalate a brewing disagreement over the punch bowl. Gurathin tried to catch Pin-Lee's eye; she did not cooperate. Gurathin tried to walk through the open door; the hovering security drone took a potshot at him.

SecUnit got roped into conversation with Bharadwaj and her media colleagues. It said something that made everyone laugh. It wasn't scowling. It was faking looking people in the face pretty well; that was just creepy.

It went on like that; Gurathin had never seen it go this long interacting without pissing someone off. Presumably it was venting all of that impulse on him. Ratthi introduced it to his favorite cousin; zi was visibly charmed.

Gurathin goaded the drone into firing two more warning shots before the SecUnit circulated back over to him.

"SecUnit. Come on. You have known me for actual years. I helped you rob a place once."

"I don't recall."

"We met on that planetary survey mission, don't tell me you don't remember that one, it's the reason you're even here." That came out maybe a little harsh, but everyone was letting the SecUnit abuse the power of being entrusted with party security to bully him, he was allowed to be annoyed.

"Oh, were you there? That data must have been lost in a corrupted filetree," it said, with incredibly cutting blandness.

Gurathin groaned. "Okay! Okay. I'm sorry."

It technically counted as a reward when SecUnit stopped giving him the customer service face and switched to the hairy eyeball, which just showed how stupid this whole situation was. It was clearly not satisfied with just that.

"I'm sorry for using your personal name without permission. I wasn't trying to weaponize it or anything, it just slipped out, but I know that's not an excuse and it was a really inappropriate disrespect for your boundaries."

SecUnit kept looking at him. Gurathin knew two other SecUnits now, neither of whom was as supremely weird as this one; that was why he'd started mentally tagging it with its personal name, just to keep things tidy. Of course, if anyone else had done that and made the resulting mistake, SecUnit probably wouldn't have been half so mad.

Gurathin sagged.

"I'm sorry for going through your personal files and using your name against you back during the survey," he mumbled, wishing he kept drones around to control with his brain so he could watch SecUnit's extremely expressive face without having to look at it. "That was really shitty. Rim paranoia isn't a good enough excuse for refusing to see you as anything but a tool of the Company. Okay?"

SecUnit was looking as pained as though Gurathin had stripped naked in its presence. "Yes, fine, you can come to the party just stop having feelings," it said, in its normal voice.

"Great!" said Gurathin. "The spinach puffs had better not be all gone."

"I don't pay any attention to the things humans consume," it said, moving out of his way and taking its drone with it.

"I know," Gurathin acknowledged, rolling his eyes and trooping after it. Ratthi waved enthusiastically at him and Pin-Lee raised her cup in a welcoming toast. Apparently SecUnit's relenting returned him to the ranks of people who existed again. "Believe me, I remember this about you."

[earlgreytea68]

Do you have any book recommendations you might want to share? Anytime you happen to mention one I usually look it up!

Awwww I love this! This makes me happy!

I am really so picky when it comes to books, is something I've realized recently. Also, I think as I've gotten older, I've gotten more demisexual, but I'm so annoyed by all these books I read where people make the worst decisions but they "can't help it" because of lust, I'm just like, sigh, you don't even know that person! And what you do know of them is boring! I just finished this book whose entire plot hinged on all these people having affairs with the most inappropriate people but it's okay because, you know, they just couldn't resist, and I was just like, godddddddddd. Also, I just feel like I read so many books where every single one of the characters is annoying, and often this is done on purpose, but I don't like it any more when it's done on purpose.

This is all to say, I haven't read any excellent books recently. Probably the best book I've read recently was the Prince Harry memoir, that was excellent, I couldn't get over that.

I've read so, so many highly praised, recently published books over the past year but by far the best written books I read this year were Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." I realize it is hardly fair to judge all the books I've read by the standards of two of the greatest writers of English of all time, so I'm trying not to, but anyway, yeah. I would especially recommend "Orlando," I loved it.

My all-time favorite book is "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There." I read these books every couple of years and they remain both hilarious and also the most accurate descriptions of adulthood imo. Like, I read these books and the characters Alice has to interact with and the situations she finds herself in, I'm just like, yup, been there, done that. I know maybe this sounds ridiculous AND YET, IT'S TRUE.

Other books I love and would recommend, randomly off the top of my head: "Piranesi" is incredible. I would have died for the narrator of this book, but luckily I didn't have to.

"To Say Nothing of the Dog" is this clever, rollicking, time-travel adventure that is hilarious and so is the poem it takes its name from, "Three Men in a Boat."

I've been reading the Murderbot series and I like it a lot, although I wouldn't say it's one of my all-time favorite books or anything. But it's enjoyable and the writer seems to actually like and care about her characters.

I read "The Daughter of Time" because I found it literally in a bargain bin of paperbacks at a yard sale and it's so good. I was thinking about it because I was at the Tower of London recently. It really stuck with me.

In non-fiction world, Matthew Desmond's book "Evicted" is absolutely searing and everyone in America should read it.

And I read the Michael Lewis book about Sam Bankman-Fried, "Going Infinite," and that was another absolutely fascinating read.

So there are some off the top of my head :-)

[snigepippi]

Finished the Danish version of Murderbot Dairies - En Dræberbots Dagbog.

It's fun. It's an enjoyable few hours. But you can feel it's made by a small publisher, Delphiki, who likely don't have much help. There some grammar and three or four formatting mistakes, but not anything I haven't seen from larger publishers.

I love the choices in describing genders. Danish, Swedish and most Norwegian, have two grammatical genders: common gender and neutral. And we have 5 to 6 pronouns depending how you count. (Han, hun, den, det, de and some will also use hen).

Danish is a hard language. One small-talk topic among Danes is do discuss our language and grammar, because even we are uncertain on how we should say something. It is very much a context language. Plenty words have different meaning depending on the rest of the sentence. (for instance "overse" means both "missed noticing" and "being in charge of", and in this book additionally a name). And we use a lot of figures of speech.

So not to be to critical and acknowledging that translation is hard and it has to be more interpretation. I do not agree with all the choices. For instance not translating/explaining "hub" (though how to make "netværksknudepunkt" short is also hard) but they do call it SecEnhed and explain its a mishmash of word. (Sorry @oneiriad it was not translated by mashing sikkerhed and enhed) And they use Ond (evil) for hostiles rather than Fjendtlig(enemy like). I think my experience is affected by my background. It seems like the translator is not fluent in Danish tech language, because I have been trained to use other words and phrases in a scientific context. It does remove some of the fluidity for me, but I don't think people without my background will notice.

But no matter what. I would be happy to recommend it to a friend and I believe they will get the same experience and the same story as reading it in English.

When I posted the front page before, plenty said they liked the artwork. The artist is just called Guilio with no more details. But on the publishers blog they say it's an Italian comic book artist, and after doing some art comparison, I believe its Giulio Macaione (Facebook) who do a lot of queer art.

I hope they will translate more books. But the Publisher's facebook, blog and other update sites, have been silent since August 2023- So I don't know. (Maybe I should e-mail them.)

[thelongestway]

Well, what can I say? Here we go again. :P I haven't actually done as much pre-writing as I initially wanted, but at a certain point one it makes sense to just start writing and figure it out as you go. That's what rough drafts are for, anyway!

Early reflections: NE and SC mark a change in the tone of The Murderbot Diaries. There are more relationships and they are more complex; the pace slows down and there is quite a bit of exploration of trauma; SecUnit has learned to identify a lot more emotion and has lived its new life for quite some time; and in general the complexity grows.

As the third story in The Nameless Fanfic cycle is set immediately after System Collapse, the tone and complexity will likely shift accordingly, which means I might need to write larger chapters, slower. Also? Goddamn it, ART, I've had to look up its tone as much as I had to look up SecUnit's initially, and oh man is it not easy. We'll see how much editing I'll have to do afterwards.

(Also there's another oneshot story waiting for me to dig up the relevant info. :P)

But meanwhile - we are back to SecUnit's point of view! And, as is traditional, this third story doesn't have a name yet. But it does have...

Chapter 1: Crippled

The alien remnants really did a fucking number on ART's wormhole drive. By which I meant that even with the help of Holism and its humans, decontamination and repair were not going well.

"We've tried replacing the wormhole drive components," one of Holism's techs, Astrid, told the assembled humans in frustration. "But for some reason they just won't connect to Perihelion's wormhole drive subroutines properly, like they're incompatible now."

Seth had a deep frown on his face.

"I'm assuming we've tried just copying Holism's subroutines? What happened?"

"Something very strange. Do you know how you can't autopilot through wormholes because the ship needs to take in readings and do millions of minute adjustments even in the shortest jumps? The subroutines are designed to make sure the adjustments are prioritized correctly, as the wormhole medium is incredibly volatile. But it's as if Perihelion's whole way of interacting with the medium has been altered, somehow. The copied subroutines simply don't take right, and even if we forced them… I wouldn't be comfortable going into the wormhole relying on that."

The humans fell quiet. I could feel ART lurking in the feed behind me. It had been strangely silent throughout the whole conversation, running some sort of analysis in the background. Several of them, actually. (As usual.)

I pinged it. ART ignored me. I pinged it again.

I'm adjusting my analysis of time to the next mission deployment. It said. I cannot give you an ETA right now.

There was something worrying about the way it said that. 3,37 seconds later I understood what it was. ART was never apologetic. (Almost never). And it never sounded scared. (The last time it was terrified and desperate it just acted like even more of an asshole than it usually was.)

But now it sounded like that: apologetic and a little scared. Because, I suddenly realized, it wasn't a question of when it would be fixed. It was if it could be fixed.

"We're having trouble assessing the extent of the damage even from our station module, so it might be necessary to just tow Perihelion back to the university and do a deep examination there," Astrid said.

I felt ART lurch. There was no way it wanted to get towed back home by Holism, of all ships. There was no way it wanted to get towed back home, period. Especially if it didn't know when or even if it would be allowed out again.

I opened a feed channel with Mensah, Ratthi and Pin Lee (who had all been at the meeting too. Mensah in particular was listening with a frown similar to Seth's), and Ratthi dumped a message into it so fast that he must have been composing it for a while already.

We've seen this just a few months ago, right? Super fast organic wormhole drives? Do you think the Trellians could help?

It's worth a try, Mensah said thoughtfully. But our non-disclosure agreements present a problem. We can't tell the University's crews about Trellian ship speeds directly, and neither can we tell the Trellians about Perihelion.

ART knows about Dandelion, I said. And about her wormhole speed. I gave it data for comparison when we were analysing the situation.

Mensah and Pin Lee both frowned at me.

Does its crew know? Pin Lee asked sharply.

No, ART said, inserting itself into our channel. It wasn't needed. And SecUnit told me it was private data.

Hello, Perihelion, Mensah said. You knowing does make some things easier. What do you think about asking the Trellians for help?

Their technology isn't alien. ART said. I estimate the chances of their analysis being helpful at sub-20 percent. It paused. However, I estimate the chances of the university laboratories being helpful at sub-5 percent, as there are no records of anything similar in university databases. The most likely outcome is a complete refitting of my wormhole navigation systems.

That's if you're lucky, I said.

It's the most likely outcome, ART repeated.

I see. In that case, I may have a proposal for you and your crew, Mensah said, drafting some text in the feed and pinging Pin Lee to look it over. Pin Lee approved.

ART didn't say anything.

Mensah spoke up:

"If I may. Preservation Alliance has recently signed a research collaboration treaty with a non-corporate polity. While there are certain details that I cannot divulge without approval from the other party, I would like to say that it may be beneficial for their technical specialists to take a look at Perihelion. From preliminary data we've exchanged, I think they may have encountered something similar at one point, and they have had some time to study it."

Seth raised an eyebrow.

"Which polity?"

"Starwind Accord." When that didn't ring a bell, Mensah explained: "They're located fairly far off, but one of their research ships should be in the area right now. We can provide a meeting site, and if we send a message to Preservation Station ahead of our coming, I think they will be able to meet with you within a month's time."

"It might be worth a try," Astrid said to Seth. "This will be risky for Perihelion no matter what, so even a scrap of information would be helpful before trying to fix this mess."

ART bristled in the feed. Silently.

I said to it,

Worldhoppers?

No, it said and went back to its analysis.

---

ART was still sulking in the evening, so I did the obvious thing. I told Iris about it on a private comm channel.

I see, she said, then tapped ART's feed.

Peri, SecUnit and I are going to watch Cold Sleep Explorers from the beginning. Come watch with us.

That got its attention.

SecUnit and I are watching that one already. ART said.

We had actually started on it a little earlier. It turned out that the early space exploration show I'd picked out for its mix of realism and fun was pretty popular on Mihira, and ART had wanted to see it through my filters. Right now, though, even that was a little too realistic for what we usually watched, so we'd set it aside.

Iris insisted:

So? I haven't gotten to play 'real or made up' with it yet, and I want to before you spoil it on everything.

SecUnit has no educational modules on history. ART said sarcastically. It will not be a fun game.

Yes, it will, Iris said to me on our private feed. The game is called 'how quickly we can get Peri to correct us.'

To ART, she said:

Well, you're welcome to join anytime. We'll be in the lounge.

A couple of minutes later we were actually sitting in front of a screen. (It was the first time I was watching a serial on a screen together with a human. Who was eating bits of synthetic protein of various flavors from a large bag.) As the opening narration started, Iris turned to me:

"So, SecUnit. Long-toed blood dolphins. Real or made up?"

"Horrible planetary fauna," I said. "Real."

"Wrong." ART said to us both. "They were not horrible."

Iris winked at me.

"Peri," she said in mock indignation. "Since you're here, you get the hard question. Exodus phenomenon: real or made up?"

"It is an early human model of space exploration with limited accuracy." ART said. "The dichotomy is irrelevant."

"That's not how the game works. Real or made up?"

ART thought for a moment, then answered:

"The model accuracy is 33,5% below usable threshold. Made up."

[lazyrezi]

The implications

Are Murderbot and Amena the only ones allowed to call it ART? Ratthi didn't even need to be corrected almost like he was already told to call it Perihelion? Or maybe he just picked up on the vibe

Anyway ART'S name is special

Well look who's missing ART'S snarky remarks?

(I miss it. So does Murderbot but I do too)

Aw Murderbot is lying for ART

Also what would that gesture look like exactly?

Now it's even missing ART'S threats <3

I mean. For all we know it IS working

I'm pretty sure it's shell shocked and huddled in a corner

Oof my emotions

Don't mind me I'll just. Go cry in the corner

Aaaaa okay. ART actually may be pretty emotionally mature but of course Murderbot thinks that's a bad sign

ART needs a friend

Murderbot is being a very good friend so that makes me feel better

Haha that's funny coming from Murderbot considering it is also still very much emotionally compromised

[kandoros]

Nuts and Bolts, by Roma Agrawal

Finished the first book of the new year!

There was a list of simple machines cataloged in the Renaissance: lever, wheel & axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw. Now, even one of my elementary lies-to-children science textbooks pointed out a problem with this list: much George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On TV, there's a bit of redundancy here.

A wedge is just an inclined plane that gets shoved under something. And a screw is just a wedge that wrapped around a central shaft.

Roma Agrawal comes up with probably better and certainly more updated list here: nails (which are the alpha form of screws on the other list), the wheel, springs, lenses, magnets, and pumps. It's not quite a list of 'simple' machines, but it's a good list of basic devices that are included in most modern tech.

I'm sitting in my office right now looking around trying to think of what stuff here doesn't involve of the items on her list. Anything with electricity is right out - magnets are used to generate the stuff. But even without that, the dials on the toaster oven are a wheel, as are the bearings in the ceiling fan. The books have string in the spines holding the pages in. Some of the catalogs have those coils for spines, which while they are not compressed are still springs.

There's an old stove top coffee maker; I think that might be the only thing that doesn't include one of them.

She also points out something neat that I'd never considered before: "Don't reinvent the wheel" is possibly one of the stupidest saying ever From it's start as a pottery wheel, to being turned on its side to help move carts, to covering those wheels with an iron band so they don't break as easily, to the spokes on bicycle wheels, to car tires, to the video everyone has seen about figuring out how to make train wheels go around curves without derailments - the march of progress has been a long process of people finding ways that current wheels don't work and coming up with a new version that fit what they needed.

A pretty decent read, recommended for anyone interested in tech history.

Next up on the list: Martha Wells All Systems Red, about a Murderbot (it's name for itself, it's a security robot / maybe cyborg and it hasn't murdered anyone yet) that managed to hack itself free of the control of its owners and wants nothing more than to binge TV. Along with Travis Baldree's Bookshops and Bonedust, which I know nothing about yet except that I really liked his last book Legends & Lattes, about an adventurer that quits the life and opens up a coffeehouse, finding a family along the way.

[iviarellereads]

A note on coverage of The Murderbot Diaries

This one's perhaps even more of a departure from the initial expectations of the blog than the Neverending Story was, but all good things are... subject to change? No, that makes it sound like it's not as good.

The Murderbot Diaries are a series by Martha Wells, about a security construct (SecUnit, the name for the designated model type and, by extension, the name used by most of the people Murderbot encounters) that broke its own governor module (think DRM) and functions independently, though it pretends it's still good locked-down company property. It exhibits strong symptoms of social anxiety, making it one of the most relatable robots ever, and accidentally makes friends.

Murderbot itself has no gender. The audiobook narrator is Kevin R. Free, and the subject doesn't come up very often in the story, so a lot of people assume and assign masculinity. Despite that, Murderbot is and knows it is a construct accessorized with the most expedient biological parts, expresses no human gender, and uses it/its pronouns. This just doesn't get clarified until much later in the series, if at all, and I'd rather have everyone understand it up front so nobody accuses me of object-ifying a person who literally personally identifies as an object.

I think this series is really neat. It's so much an exploration of personhood, like your average robot story but with mental illness. Heck, don't mind if I make references all the way back to Rossum's Universal Robots, the (extremely readable or watchable! highly recommended by me) stage play that is the origin of the word itself in its modern context, or perhaps further back all the way to Frankenstein. Murderbot is in conversation with two hundred years of science fiction exploring what it means to be, and besides that, I think it does some really interesting things with the prose.

So, with the newest book coming out in a couple of months, I decided to merge my desire to reread it with my desire to pick it apart under a microscope the way this project allows. We'll be covering more or less in release date order, with the exception of the expanded edition of Compulsory recently released going back to back with the original to compare and contrast.

So please, instead of peace this time, give Murder(bot) a chance, and join me on this space adventure.

Link index:

All Systems Red

Artificial Condition

Rogue Protocol

Exit Strategy

Compulsory (Short story: Wired Magazine vs republished and expanded edition)

Obsolescence (Take Us To A Better Place collection)

Network Effect 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory

Fugitive Telemetry 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

System Collapse 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

[polyhexian]

*bursts through a door*

YOU-

YOURE the one who brought murderbot to my attention! Do you have any idea about the curse you've bestowed upon me????? I opened a LIBRARY CARD for this series, and now weeks, possibly even MONTHS of my life will be spent thinking about a robot-person-unit-thing

How could you do this to me???

So anyway, got any other book recommendations?

TEEHEEHEE. you are welcome.

Ummmm other books. Oh boy. I don't actually read much anymore. Though I've read 40+ warrior cats books. And also don't recommend them. Except for mapleshades vengeance. Actually yeah Mapleshade's Vengeance fucking rules and it's 20k so I do recc that. I've got a whole audiobook on YouTube and so do other people.

Umm. My favourite series is actually ALSO a hard sci Fi, but I hesitate to recommend it because I haven't actually read it since I was a teenager/younger adult... And I'm scared if I go back and reread it there will be stuff that didn't age well. One of my favourite characters was actually Bel Thorne, who is intersex and described with the H word, but also the series started in the mid-80s, so maybe on a reread I'd find it more acceptable with that context in mind? It's been too long and I can't say. It's got SO much space politics but I've never cared more about politics in my life. Bujold manages to make politics SO thrilling. Also I noticed going through the tag TWO vorkosigan saga/murderbot diaries fanfics and that absolutely tracks for me lol. Tho I WILL say the most recent book came out in 2018 and I listened to the audiobook and I actually did love it even if there were a few things that annoyed me. But her writing style is just so engaging. So. I don't know? That's a hesitant recommendation? I guess if you read any of it, let me know lol. It's the Vorkosigan Saga btw, by Lois MacMaster Bujold. The first book is technically Barrayar but you should start with The Warrior's Apprentice and consider Barrayar a prequel. But oh yeah maybe you've noticed if you've read some of my stuff I've name dropped Barrayar a few times as a random planet LOL.

Kitchen by Banana Kishimoto is one of my favourite books. It's actually referenced in Undertale by Narrator Chara and thus is a book they had read, which is why I picked it up. And I really loved it. It's not long, just read it tbh

Oh yeah! I love Watership Down. And I do not like the original movie. Sorry I think it sucks and I don't get why people care SO much. I think the BBC adaption is not just a better series but a better adaption in general. Sorry, not sorry. It's a good series and I don't care what anyone says lol

Oh!!! Chuck Tingle's "Bury Your Gays" is also a GREAT ride. Very fun. Great content 10/10.

[glances sideways at my framed copy of Eugenesis] I don't recommend Eugenesis

[hearsayhorizons]

Perihelion Freed

My apologies to the original poster to whom I'm going to respond--I didn't catch your name or reblog your post when it came across my dash because I didn't expect to keep coming back mentally to your stance on Perihelion, free will, and the University's potential blind spot between their ship and their... discrete... work, out in the borderlands. I don't even know if it was a recent post or something that someone I follow reblogged. If you find me, hi!

Another blogger posited that Perihelion doesn't have free will, that things are hard-coded out of its mental architecture, and that the Newtideland crew may be hypocritical for using basically an enslaved ship to free basically slaves.

I'm not sure whether this was "a take on the idea" or whether it was "this is canonical and fucked up," so I apologize if you (cool previous blogger) were just investigating the concept!

It stuck with me, though, the idea that Perihelion (as opposed to The Perihelion, the ship+mind=entity that is akin to body+mind=soul) may or may not have free will, and how there's a lot more to investigate in the interactions if it doesn't, and the crew is either oblivious or "one must imagine Perihelion happy," and in a state of grace, as I believe the blogger mentioned.

Sure, there's a lot of mileage in "even the best have their blindspots," and the edges where what Peri does with and for Murderbot might run against its programming, and whether it would adjust its programming or whether it even could contemplate doing so.

But from my recall of the text, I don't believe the coding and architecture for enslavement is present in Peri.

It makes the choice to let MB on board because it IS bored: it is capable of boredom; if someone were to design an entity with specific reactions and capabilities, both the Bad Designers and Good Designers would skip the capacity for boredom and tedium, wouldn't they? To do otherwise is either pointless or cruel.

I guess you could say that boredom is the other side of the curiosity that Peri needs to help its crew and students with class and scientific endeavors, but that gets into the weeds about what is and is not programmable or required for specific emotions; we can't guarantee that you need one to have the other.

Peri chooses to accept MB, rather than actually being enticed and/or ignorant like a regular bot pilot. It chooses to help MB customize itself, messes with its recycler logs, and forges its captain's signature at least once; I can't imagine even the most Star Trek utopian creator, if able to lock in specifics to the point that an AI has personality and goodwill but not free will, would leave in operating code that would permit that sort of gross overstep (not that it was morally wrong, but it's something no one ever contemplates ART is capable of because--it shouldn't be?)

It lies by omission when it doesn't relate what KIND of construct MB is even when it chooses to tell its crew. giving MB privacy and opportunity that an enslaved AI might not be able to do (and after it went to the effort to change its logs, which makes me think it's choosing also to tell port authorities one thing and then choosing again to verbally tell its favorite people other things). It has a "debris deflection system" which comes off to me as... "using the label as robotically an as possible as another lie of omission" BECAUSE its intentions are beyond the scope of what it "should" be capable of doing/thinking... if it was a supercharged but enslaved AI.

The tabletop game Eclipse Phase has "AGI" that have to grow and be developed like people in order to BE proper people (metapossibly to lighten some of the strangeness between PC and player, since if you grow up in a simulation, you've got more in common with your player...).

There's nothing I can recall in TMB to indicate this is the case--we know MB is Athena, formed fully-shaped from cloned tissue, parts, and pre-trauma, but MB has no idea what ART is or how it could be the way it is--MB considers at one point that it might be a construct, but the vibe I get from ART is way too... glassily alien, sometimes, for human tissue.

What if... Newtideland laid down the basic code and parameters of "this is a person," maybe yes, seeded in some "curiosity," or "willingness to figure things out," but maybe no more than any kid starts with parents' nature and nuture to shape their own trellises...

And then they presented the thing-that-would-be-Peri with options, maybe even classes, and it coasted through History of Economy because this is a utopia, damnit, and didn't find much to grab its attention in... Inventory Management, but then.

Then it slips into a small drone ship completely covered in "student driver" stickers and it spreads its stubby sensors out to encompass... everything. And it moves, and the more it moves the more there is to move through, and it feels this sense of rightness.

It comes back, and a kid, human classmate, asks it what's it like out there and through Peri's eyes, but you don't have eyes--. It explains, and the kid asks a question that young-will-be-Peri doesn't know how to answer. They look it up together, and over time and all and once (as you might find in a sim) it has synergized its own career, its own goal and passions.

I posit that Perihelion has free will, serves WITH its crew rather than for its crew, and that its happiness and pleasure in its position and life are genuine, as they can only be if it can choose otherwise. We can conjecture a world in which the designer could be so granular in programming that ART is capable of all it can do while also unable to do what is locked out, and ignorant of the painful irony of using enslaved labor to free enslaved labor (which, again, is valid as an interpretation! ) but I think it is... important, that there might be a kinder, more star-spangled world, if the University comes from a world in which even bots truly, actually have freedom that MB doesn't see even after getting Preservation Station.

The Perihelion MUST have free will because

"You are incorrect, Iris, I can bomb the colony."

[blorbologist]

9, 11, and 12 for the writer's ask game!

9. What writing advice do you think is worth following?

Write what you know *

* And if you don't know (because you've never built a gun, or killed a dragon, or cast magic), learn! I don't remember much about the internal anatomy of a hand, or what removing a section would do to the limb as a whole - so I researched anatomical diagrams, looked for testimonies of people who had shot their own hands (thanks Reddit!), and bugged @fatal-blow for insight about physical therapy for an injured hand. And with thousands of hours of Critical Role, sometimes I'm not exactly sure how a scene I want to reference went - so I find what episode it's in, rewatch the section and go over the transcript. I make sure I know the characters I'm talking about, even though they're not really real. But I know how the white flowers of the plants outside look like thick snow as they begin to bloom, and I know how strong a snake feels when it coils around my hand, and I know the ache of heartbreak - so I find ways to hold those close and incorporate what I've learned (both through research and through life) into my work. When you find enough scraps of knowledge, you can make anything feel pretty real.

11. What’s the biggest surprise you’ve found related to your writing?

Percy and Vex are my favorites to write for a number of reasons, but part of it is that both keep bucking the script and surprising me! The very first fic I wrote of them was intended to be a meet-cute until Vex took the reins; in Get your hands dirty, Percy was supposed to vehemently Not want the names of any loved ones on him give his prior association with only awful people being on his skin (but if Vex was suggesting the idea, oh, it suddenly sounded healing). The fact the characters can dig their heels in or bolt in a direction you didn't expect is so much fun!

12. Now that you have more experience, is there anything new you’d like to try (a trope, genre, style etc)? What is it?

One of my all-time favorite fics is The Wise Man's Tree. It's a stunning AU that offers a great mystery that is so strongly tied to canon! It uses our familiarity with certain characters to derive tension or trust and guide the reader's expectations about the mystery - until you realize what you knew actually kept you from realizing what was up!

Architects of our demise is me attempting something of similar-ish caliber. I'm trying a sort of mystery-adventure, and balancing information reveals with plot is tricky but a lot of fun. I don't think I'm quite pulling off the 'oh I recognize these characters/parts/plot points I know where this is going - WAIT SHIT' because I love mirroring canon too much, but I do hope I can nurture some dread (Aeor, the timeline putting this near the Calamity, FCG's murderbot-ness, etc.) :3

Ask me about writing n stuff? :D