#murderbot really just be like:

[stolenbythewestwind]

reading the Murderbot Diaries rn and I am routinely shocked by how fucking autistic the main character is. was that intentional. I feel like I'm going insane

[paging-possum]

everyone shut up I need to recontextualize ART and iris' relationship through a sibling lens. im aware that 1) ART experiences time differently than Iris and therefore any sort of age difference means nothing to them and 2) there is a decent chance they were specifically raised together because they're the same age. BUT ALSO thats not as fun to me. The options here are that 1) ART is the older sibling, which I feel like is the dynamic they would automatically fall into given that. You know. It's Like That (something about always giving unsolicited advice and pestering you to self-improve while also being deeply protective of you is older sibling coded) and also experiences time on a much slower scale than Iris so technically, to ART, it is actually older or at the very least has experienced more age. However. Option 2 is that ART is a younger sibling which is just funny. Imagine meeting Iris and she mentions her younger sibling and you're like awww do you have a picture of them? and she's like yeah, this is us when it turned 4!! and shows you a picture of herself as a kid in front of a massive research transport. what do you even say to that. Secret option 3 is that ART is a middle child (iris is the oldest and Holism is the youngest) which is objectively the funniest and therefore is the one I've incorporated into my belief system

[splankie]

i would do anything for murderbot. this includes learning mecha it appears

[oposssumsaucee]

I don't know what fucks me up more, the fact that Constructs just have a Secret Ribcage Pocket for storage or the fact that it's so underutilized that MB forgets an entire FutureTech WiFi Extender in there for an absurd amount of time. You're telling me it's not jostling in there??? Is the construct equivalent of a Glove Compartment lined with velvet??? The company would never. Thunk thunk bitch your secret best friend ham radio is audible whenever you run but no one's brave enough to make smalltalk with you about it.

[radiantmists]

so murderbot assumes that three offered its armor because it doesn't understand that the armor can belong to it and thinks mb taking the armor is just good resource allocation.

but if it assumes it doesnt have control over the armor, it would probably let whoever it sees as in charge (maybe ART?) handle it, or at least make the suggestion directly to that person. even newly freed in NE, it's willing to give its security advice (on hostage situations being undesirable) even if it doesn't expect to be taken seriously. it doesn't make sense to me that it would have so much trouble expressing the offer if it were just a security suggestion.

and then i think about how murderbot says later in the book that even if three felt fondly toward its fellow SecUnits, the govmod would prevent it from expressing that care or knowing it was returned.

so-- imagine you're three, and you havent yet internalized that you can just say "i care about you and dont want you to get hurt" to another SecUnit; but you can make sure that it has every resource it might need; you could probably do that even before the govmod was hacked.

you can't explain why, but you can hope that the gesture is explanation enough, and you can look for similar caretaking gestures in return; things like being given code and advice to do your job better, and being reassured when you express that you're finding said job difficult.

i think *murderbot* isn't aware of this language of care, because it hasnt had much opportunity to bond with other constructs. but three probably is, and probably knows how to read between the lines and guess that murderbot is starting to care about it, too.

[foxprints]

Self indulgent drawing of Murderbot <3 It and ART are cruising through space, just the two of them, and Murderbot is relaxed and comfortable. ART has more than a few feelings about this and saves an image to its archive -- unfortunately Murderbot is aware of ART watching it and it flips off one of the drones.

(it doesn't dislike the attention ART is giving it... it just makes it a bit flustered!)

See some bonus images (including ones without text) below the cut, along with an explanation of some of the design choices!

I am 100% in the camp of Murderbot having a much more expressive face than it realizes, especially when it's alone and/or comfortable.

All text in the images with a color block behind it is essentially metadata that ART has attached to any tag it makes for Murderbot.

The blue inorganics are purely because @hazelek found a post with early 2000s vibrant, semi-transparent tech and we were joking around about MB getting aesthetic upgrades lmao.

About half the tags in the last image are courtesy of @scificrows alkdjfl;kj thank you dearly for those additions!

[ghostly-cabbage]

We need to talk about the worst thing about making AUs....

The fact that then when you inevitably think about crossovers you don't want the crossover with the canon you want it with your specific AU. Your brain worms, your circus, but THEN WHAT?

Oh, yeah, to understand this crossover you need to go read this entirely different fic/series? Girl help 😭 you can't do that

[crabs-brencil]

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

[coquelicoq]

we get a lot of really great stuff in system collapse about murderbot's relationships with ART and ratthi, which makes sense, because it spends almost the entire book with them. but i also love how even though mensah isn't there for most of the story, other people keep reminding mb of her:

chapter 2, page 25: “From ART’s personnel file, she [Karime] was older than Mensah and she didn’t look like an intrepid space explorer, either, even in the protective environmental suit.”

2, 27: “It took Karime three seconds to process the abrupt statement. (She was almost as good at not looking annoyed as Mensah was.) She kept her expression neutral and patient.”

2, 28: “In the underground colony room, Karime lifted her brows. ‘Another occupied site?’ I thought she was being careful not to show too much reaction. It was the way Mensah would have played it.”

4, 70: “Iris looked at me and I saw her hesitate, because her hesitation looked a lot like Dr. Mensah’s hesitation. And I realized I really didn’t want to go down there.”

5, 104: "Iris has that same thing as Dr. Mensah, the thing where she’s able to look and sound calm under circumstances where shit is possibly about to go down.”

it's spent so much time with her and it knows her so well and respects her so much that she's the model against which it compares all other humans. it thinks about her when they're not together. it's protective of her. it has such total faith in her competence. it (non-romantically) loves her and doesn't want to not see her again. idk man, it just gets to me! and they were teammates (oh my god they were teammates!!)

bonus:

I said, aloud, "You have to be kidding me." (ch. 2, p. 28)

seven pages later, in reaction to the same thing:

Mensah had had time to review the feed video. She muttered, "Oh, you have to be kidding me." Yeah.

twinsies 🥰

[every-eye-evermore]

Infinite murderbots!

[kug-the-carrot]

Utterly and endlessly charmed by the fact that 10% of AO3's Murdbot archive is podfics, which is an unheard of percentage for any fandom I've *ever* seen

[scificrows]

Today I'm thinking about this:

Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it. I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.

And about how Murderbot slowly starts calling its humans its friends in Exit Strategy, tentatively at first:

Were they my sort-of human friends? My clients? My ex-owners, though legally that was only Dr. Mensah. Were they going to see me and yell for help, alert security?

but also more confidently later:

Maybe that was why I had been nervous about meeting Mensah again, and not all the other dumb reasons I had come up with. I hadn’t been afraid that she wasn’t my friend, I had been afraid that she was, and what it did to me.

The only tag I can access on Ratthi is a partial that says my human friend. That’s strange and unlikely, but the pre-catastrophic-failure version of me seemed sure about it, and I don’t have anything else to go on.

and Mensah confirms this at the end of the book too:

I just want you to know you already have options here, and I expect you’ll have more offers for your services or advice as a security consultant. And that you have friends here you can discuss things with, whatever you decide to do, or wherever you decide to go.

The thought that a bot could see its humans as its friends (and because they treat it as a friend too) made Murderbot so emotional in Rogue Protocol that it needed a minute to process it. And later on in the series it starts to understand that its own humans are its friends too - and how much they care about it and that it can go to them for help if it needs them and I just. I think I need to withdraw and have an emotion about this in private too.

[thesillyexpresser]

Got introduced to Muderbot and ITS PEAK FRFR 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥

(Drew these when I finished book 2 but waited to finish the current series before posting this because I didn’t want anyone spoiling me anything)

[jonahmagnus]

I liked it when it said “it’s murderin’ time!” And botted all over those guys

[riseandfallofsecunit]

Murderbot vs. Target One Round Two

[northisnotup]

Okay but like. The more times I re-read All Systems Red and the further we get in the series where we see the reactions that MB itself has around other SecUnits and I think Gurathin is very rational and correct in his assessment.

Imagine there's this cop that is paid by this shitty company to watch you 24/7 for infractions the company will then charge you for and you look a little closer bc the cop is weird and it calls itself MURDERBOT and its at the center of this murder mystery where your whole team/family structure could be killed and everyone you know is like 'noooo trust it! Its nice!' And it goes 'I don't like you.'

Like. I think maybe not trusting the Murderbot to not Murder you and your team is actually a really reasonable and understandable reaction maybe??