#murderbot headcanons

[ineedlelittlespace]

Not strictly a Murderbot thing, but I went to a symphony concert in the park last night, and the final piece they did was Ode to Joy.

BUT they had advertised ahead of time that anyone who plays an instrument was welcome to join them on that last piece. They even provided sheet music and added vocals for the third repetition to let any audience members who wanted to sing about "community and raising their voices in unity" join in.

This meant that for the last song of the concert, people in the audience were pulling out their own violins and cellos and tubas(!), and the music was coming from every square foot of that park. Music teachers from the local schools volunteered to spread out through the crowd and help conduct. It was the coolest collective performance I've ever seen, and it gave me all the Preservation vibes after the fact. It feels like exactly the kind of thing that would be sponsored by FirstLanding university, that any or all of PresAux would attend, and that Murderbot would have Emotions about.

[ellifromspace]

these are the murderbot artworks Tommy Arnold did for the Subterranean Press omnibus editions of the series, and a photo of Kevin R. Free, who narrates the murderbot audiobooks. when fans complain about the casting for the tv show, there is a very real basis for it in these past official/canonical aspects of the book series

[wiklm]

got hit by murderbot obsession like a tidal wave. new murderbot art bc i did not like my last one!!!!

[murderbot-moodboard]

Three learning to be more assertive like Murderbot... sort of.

[minervas-hand]

Right to fear, wrong to believe

Just had a horrible realization and needed to meta it out.

How different they were before Edinburgh, when Crowley was sucked down into Hell.

Look at this flirty babygirl in the Bastille:

I mean could he climb that tree any faster?

(This is why I really like fics that place a more physical relationship here, pre-Bastille or just post-Bastille, because c'mon look at them. )

In S1 the next thing is 1862 and Crowley asking for insurance (with a cane ffs). And Aziraphale freaking out with his "fraternizing" BS. It's jarring, until we get 1827 filled in for us in S2.

@takeme-totheworld notes in this post:

Crowley sure went from "our respective head offices don't actually care how things get done" and "nobody ever has to know" to "walls have ears" FAST after Edinburgh. And Aziraphale went from looking at Crowley with hearts in his eyes to "I've been FrAtErNiZiNg" just as quickly. I'm more convinced than ever that Edinburgh was the first time Crowley ever actually got caught and punished for fucking around with Aziraphale/doing good deeds/whatever it was they yanked him back down to Hell for, and it scared the absolute shit out of both of them and changed the whole tone of their relationship after that.

Yes! - it's clear to me as well that the Edinburgh graveyard was a very bad turning point, where they both saw that Hell was listening and would intervene. And it did change their relationship drastically, for over a century and a half (really, until looming Armageddon loosened up the stakes for them).

But what about Heaven?

See the thing is, we know Azi's been worried about Heaven watching him for the past 6000 years.

But they haven't.

[GIFs posted by starrose17]

All this time, and Heaven had not seen them together. Hadn't noticed. Had not even LOOKED.

I want to mention what @starrose17 says about this here in this post:

What I love about this is her choice of words, “went back through the Earth Observation files.” This implies that these photos were already filed somewhere meaning somebody had to have been watching them which meant somewhere in the depths of the bureaucratic heaven there’s an underpaid angel clerk tasked with watching angels on Earth, and he’s been hording photos of his favourite Angel/Demon couple not reporting them to Michael because he wants to see what happens.

And that's exactly what this fic covers!: Spying Omens by @ednav

(Give this a read, it's fabulous.)

While I am here for this being exactly how that happens, the other scenario is colder and worse - there's no one watching, at all. It's just filing automatically and never seen until some Scrivener is called to pull a file.

From @fuckyeahisawthatat's comment here :

I found this scene to be quite chilling, actually. Not only is the idea of Heaven as a surveillance state brilliant (way to make “God is always watching” sound way more ominous) but this is exactly how modern surveillance states work. They don’t actively watch everybody all the time. That’s not physically possible for humans, and even if it is metaphysically possible for Heaven, it’s not a very efficient use of resources. Surveillance states watch people they deem “suspicious.” And once you’ve been put in the category of “suspicious,” they have massive amounts of data that they can comb through to collect a lot of information about you–to retroactively build a case justifying why you’re suspicious, to collect information about where you go and who you associate with, etc.

Yes.

So we either have secret collusion in the rank and file, or we have a surveillance state that is constantly reinforced to its subjects for fear's sake, for control.

(Well, it obviously could be both.)

BUT my point is… Up until Edinburgh, Hell has not been watching (or caring at least). And up until near the end of Armageddon't, neither has Heaven.

Oh, my poor Angel. Thousands of years, of denying yourself, of pushing Crowley away, of carrying around a tension that is it's own constellation.

After 1827 you might have reason, but for the 5000+ years before that?

Thousands of years and Heaven was not watching nor cared.

You were right to fear. And you were wrong to believe.

And that just breaks my heart.

[specialagentartemis]

Aro- and Ace-Spectrum Murderbot Diaries headcanons

For the beginning of Aromantic Awareness Week, I thought I’d write out some of my a-spec headcanons for TMBD characters!

—

Murderbot: its opinions on romance and sex range from “I didn’t give a shit about [it]” to “No!” to “No, no thank you, no. No.” This one’s not a headcanon these are all direct quotes haha.

ART: Because of its limited socialization and its only very recent introduction to deeply feeling the things depicted when watching media, I have a hard time imagining ART conceptualizing romance as something it would want or has any reason to want. Its articulation of closeness, commitment, devotion, and duty is crew. I think upon meeting Murderbot, it kind of got friendship for the first time. But Murderbot is also very much part of crew now as well. I don’t see it feeling the need to add romance to that emotional-relationship framework. It’s adventurous with experiences, though, especially with things it might consider gaps in its knowledge; it may be willing to try certain types of intimacy, experience, or sensation out of curiosity.

Three: Still very new to the freedom to name and articulate its feelings and desires, let alone take initiative to act on them when they involve other people. It had a weird and unique kind of closeness with its squadmates: you’re the only one I can trust. We can’t ever trust each other. You understand me. We aren’t allowed to talk about it. Our communications are closely monitored and limited. We know what the limits are and how to express ourselves within them. I care about you. I want you to be safe. Three wouldn’t call it romance but wouldn’t know what to call it at all besides squadmates. If Three identified as anything it would be quoiromantic, quoisexual, quoi-everything: how can it fit its experiences into a framework of sexuality and romanticism.

Ratthi: Aromantic allosexual with a strong belief in relationship anarchy. Takes the viewpoint of, every one of his relationships is different because every person is different! Hierarchizing them or categorizing them is kind of beside the point! Every relationship, family or friend or colleague or coauthor or person he knows from board game night or sexual partner, is something special. Though the most important people in his life include his best friends Arada and Overse, and they consider each other family.

Gurathin: Aromantic asexual. Limited social energy. Spends a lot of time quiet and alone and likes it that way. A few strong friendships, a few work friends, a few scientific colleagues, a cat.

Pin-Lee: Gray-aroace. Romance, dating, or sex is not a particular priority she wants to spend time pursuing, and she gets an uncomfortable stomach-churning feeling if she feels like she’s being expected to tie herself down to a relationship too fast. There’s a lot about her work and her goals and her life she’s not willing to compromise on. If her friendship with Bharadwaj or Mensah became something more squishy and boundary-blending, she wouldn’t be opposed, but she won’t actively pursue it either.

Arada: Demisexual lesbian. Ideal family household is her wife and her best friend.

Volescu: Aromantic heterosexual. The aro allo het man that tumblr warned you about~ Devoted father and husband. Comes from a culture where marriage and romantic desire are a venn diagram of optional overlap more so than a necessary expectation. (This dovetails with my Divarti political refugee backstory headcanon because as you may have noticed I am going full My City Now at this point)

[rosewind2007]

You know when Murderbot says:

“Sometimes humans can’t help but let emotion bleed through into the feed.”

Well, my headcanon* is that Murderbot is also leaking into the feed…but that only certain people and things can detect it—Ships (Asshole Research Transports included) really like Murderbot, I think that’s the “bleed through” of just it being IT

Anyway, I think Gurathin is weirdly sensitive to Murderbot’s emotional leakiness, which is how come he spotted it was rogue and also why they work together so well…but I think this has a serious downside for Gurathin in that when Murderbot thinks:

(Note to self: tell someone to tell Gurathin his vision augments need adjusting.)

…it think it looks like this in the feed:

but to Gurathin it looks like this:

*I have many headcanons about these two, some of which are contradictory! Ha! That’s what headcanons are for! Go wild!

[murderbot-moodboard]

I can see Murderbot doing this at least once, very deliberately and dramatically, to Gurathin, and Gurathin has to work very hard to keep a straight face and act like he's taking it seriously because Murderbot's melodramatic ways of showing spite are just too damn funny sometimes.

Okay I know accessibility devices are never one-size-fits-all and that there’s a use case for these somewhere, but I can’t stop imagining trying to talk to someone at a party and they look at you and move the level down a few ticks

[crabs-brencil]

mb-art interactions featuring ratthi (with a surprise appearance of the electrical gloves lol)

[art-of-a-space-duck]

Murderbot in graphic tops (and a ponytail). I like to think it got a few extra clothes while on Preservation, most of them gifts from its humans.

I’ll let y’all decide what all the As stand for.

[murderbot-moodboard]

Ratthi is definitely that bird person

every friend group needs at least 1 bird person I'm not even joking you need somebody where you can just take a picture of the most blurry feathered beast on the sidewalk and go "hey amanda do you know her?" and you get the most enthusiastic detailed reply about how wonderful and precious and dear this bird is followed by "and they sometimes stab other birds' eggs for fun :)"

[thepringlesofblood]

important question: does murderbot (the murderbot diaries) wear socks?

we know socks exist in murderbot world (it describes human living spaces as smelling like dirty socks).

we know that mb's feet are inorganic and don't look like human feet or augmented human feet.

when mb gets new clothes, which it does several times throughout the series, it never mentions socks (at least not to my knowledge, and I have these books practically memorized at this point). the most we get is that some shoes are described as "soft".

when in armor, mb mentions its "suitskin", which seems to be an all-over bodysuit sort of deal that could cover feet as well, thus negating the need for socks. for most of the series, though, mb is not in armor and not wearing suitskin.

considerations/potential points

mb might hate the smell and/or human connotations of socks enough to go sockless

mb mentions its shoes being soft bc it doesn't need to wear socks with them

suitskin = no socks for secunits, but mb got some post-All Systems Red to when it had to start wearing human shoes

maybe human socks don't work with secunit feet, or aren't necessary for them (although shoes work, so i feel like socks would work too)

if mb mentions getting shoes, perhaps it can be assumed that it's also buying socks, and just didn't mention it bc it doesn't deem them important.

thoughts?

[just-a-space-duck]

I’m gonna be honest. For a long while, I forgot Volescu existed.

[ur-fav-is-autistic]

(if you havent done this already) secunit/murderbot from the murderbot diaries is autistic !!

Murderbot from the Murderbot Diaries is Autistic!

[murderbot-moodboard]

^ ART totally does this and then comments with a bullet-point list of how each person's argument does/doesn't hold up

[ramshacklefey]

Murderbot Diaries Aspec Event Entry: The Infamous Shipping Chart Rises Again

Heyo! This here's my entry for the @aspec-tmbd event for the prompt:

The PresAux team get their hands on Murderbot's shipping diagram from ASR and have a fantastic time finding all the mistakes it made because it didn't realize humans could be aspec. Honestly, this is just a framing device for exploring all the possibilities for nuance opened up by adjusting the diagram to include aspec relationships.

(Image Descriptions are under the readmore because they are. Long.

Preservation Aux Relationship Reference Chart

A flowchart depicting Murderbot's "shipping chart" for the PresAux team from All Systems Red. The chart is dark grey with a burgundy border. The names of the eight PresAux members are in grey rectangles arranged in a circles, connected to each other with curved lines with arrows on the ends to denote whether the relationship is reciprocal or not. The lines are color coded, according to a key at the top of the chart, which is as follows:

Color Key:

Green: Friends

Purple: Something?

Rose: Attraction

Pink: Marital Partners

The connections on the chart show the relationships between the PresAux members as described by Murderbot:

Arada and Overse: marital partners

Ratthi, Arada, and Overse: friends

Ratthi and Pin-Lee: unreciprocated attraction on Ratthi's part

Bharadwaj and Pin-Lee: something?

Pin-Lee and Mensah: unreciprocated attraction on Pin-Lee's part

Volescu and Mensah: unreciprocated attraction on Volescu's part

Preservation Aux Shipping Chart 2.0

Murderbot's flowchart, heavily edited by the PresAux team to show a completely different set of relationships. The boxes with the team members' names are now each a different color, and the names are all in different fonts. All the lines except the ones connecting Ratthi, Overse, and Arada have been scribbled out, and even those ones are now different colors and have become different styles of dashed lines.

The color-key at the top of the chart has been updated as follows:

Green: Old Friend

Purple: Close Friend

Rose: Situationship

Pink: Marital Partners

Yellow: Mentor

Lavender: Come Back with a Warrant

There is also now a second key at the bottom of the chart, indicating the meanings of different sorts of dashed lines. It reads as follows:

Three dashes and two dots: Sexual & Romantic

Dots: Sexual & Aromantic

Dashes: Asexual & Romantic

Spaced Dots: Asexual Aromantic

Long dash and two dots: Come Back with a Warrant

The new relationship lines are as follows: (described as color/line meanings)

Pin-Lee and Bharadwaj: Situationship/Come Back with a Warrant

Pin-Lee and Gurathin: Close Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Pin-Lee and Ratthi: Old Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Pin-Lee and Mensah: Mentorship/Asexual Aromantic

Mensah and Volescu: Old Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Volescu and Bharadwaj: Old Friend/Asexual Romantic

Volescu and Gurathin: Mentorship/Asexual Aromantic

Overse and Gurathin: Close Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Overse and Ratthi: Come Back with a Warrant/Come Back with a Warrant

Overse and Arada: Marital Partners/Sexual Romantic

Arada and Gurathin: Close Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Arada and Ratthi: Come Back with a Warrant/Come Back with a Warrant

Ratthi and Pin-Lee: Old Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Ratthi and Gurathin: Marital Partners/Come Back with a Warrant

This version of the chart is also covered in commentary from the PresAux members. The comments are all in speech bubbles, and the color and font of the bubbles matches their names to show who wrote each comment. Comments (listed by relationship):

Mensah and Pin-Lee:

Pin-Lee: For fuck's sake SecUnit! She was my advisor at university!

Mensah and Volesu:

Mensah: Did I never mention we used to be married?

Volescu: We've been best friends ever since the divorce.

Volescu and Bharadwaj:

Bharadwaj: Does a 30 year long frienship even count as "friends" any more?

Ratthi: "Old Friends" means something specific in media.

Overse and Ratthi/Arada and Ratthi:

Ratthi: Should we try to explain this one?

Overse: Did you not read the key, Ratthi?

Overse and Arada:

Arada: Hey, you got one right!

Ratthi and Pin-Lee:

Ratthi: We've known each other since we were three...

Pin-Lee: If you'd ever asked, you'd know Ratthi doesn't do crushes.

Pin-Lee and Bharadwaj:

Pin-Lee: Mind your own damn business.

Bharadwaj: Now, now, it was just trying to understand us better.

Pin-Lee: it was being a nosy asshole and it knows that.

Gurathin (directly from his name): Your faith in my ability to make friends is touching...

Gurathin and Ratthi:

Gurathin: Now, it was not in the info packet. No, we will not be explaining.

Ratthi: You know it's just going to be more determined to figure it out now, right?

Gurathin: It's welcome to try. Pin-Lee's the one who hid the documentation.

Pin-Lee: SecUnit, I am not afraid to sue you for breaches of privacy.

PresAux Shipping Chart 2.0 (No Commentary)

The same chart, but with all the comments removed so it's easier to see the relationship lines.