#networking systems

[hellofriendhawke]

The expressions you give murderbot are top-tier, its face is doing things all the time and I love it

MB: That's it, I'm writing a code to freeze any facial expressions before they happen.

(@i-can-kazoo 1 million years later ... Sorry it took so long to answer your ask, I had to re-learn to draw almost entirely lmao but I was glad to get an excuse to draw my favorite construct again.)

[cat-dragron-arts]

It's my art style and I can draw Miki however I want! Also having fun with Dr. Mensah and TargetControlSystem :]

[inkedinserendipity]

just finished re-reading all systems red and the way martha wells' narration directly tracks murderbot's thoughts is, like, diabolical in retrospect.

because on my first read-through, i'll be honest. i did not remember the presaux crew at all. pin-lee and gurathin show up in exit strategy and i, remembering nothing about those two except ":D! presaux friends!" expected them to be like "omg hey murderbot!" because i figured the presaux crew would be excited to see their secunit again. i did not remember pin-lee's temper or gurathin's skepticism. because the presaux crew kinda blurred together for me in the first book. because that's how murderbot saw them too!

all systems red has the most en media res of all en media res beginnings. not just because it starts in the middle of an action sequence, but because it also starts in the middle of an emotional sequence. the survey has been happening, for, what - a couple of weeks? - by the time asr starts. murderbot has already met the crew. they have already formed impressions of it. but, crucially, it has formed almost no opinions of them*.

it's been watching media and half-assing its job. and at this point in murderbot's journey, and therefore its internal narration that forms the text, a human is a human is a human. it is not invested in their work, so we don't hear about the start of their survey. it literally starts paying attention to them when they are in danger and when they start to realize that it is a person, because that is when murderbot has to start paying attention.

and this is why i remembered almost nothing distinct about the presaux crew. there are a lot of crew members, but murderbot spends very little time thinking about them as individuals. so the narration tends to skim over their distinct personalities, because murderbot doesn't really consider them* at all!

and then of course we come to exit strategy and network effect, and the contrast could not be more clear. now it's got opinions about everyone, and because it has a better grasp on their personalities, the narrative does too. oh yes that's arada, wibbly bulwark, the human murderbot trusts to not be overconfident and ignore its advice. that's gurathin. it doesn't like gurathin. that's pin-lee, the combatunit of lawyers, well-dressed and sharp-tongued. and of course, that's ratthi (tag: bestie!!), who stays in the car because he will get himself killed by something.

and of course, there's dr mensah. but she was always an exception.

*dr mensah is, as she always is when it comes to murderbot, an exception to this generalization. that's tag: intrepid explorer like blorbo from my shows! that you're talking about. even when murderbot mostly tried to avoid humans at all costs, even murderbot paid attention to her. from asr to now, that has been and remains perfectly true.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Murderbot Diaries series (All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, System Collapse, and other stories) by Martha Wells

Endorsement from submitter: "Asexual and agender main character. In later books side characters are revealed to be in poly relationship."

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.

Science fiction, novella, series, adult

Hunger Pangs series (True Love Bites) by Joy Demorra

In a world of dwindling hope, love has never mattered more...

Captain Nathan J. Northland had no idea what to expect when he returned home to Lorehaven injured from war, but it certainly wasn't to find himself posted on an island full of vampires. An island whose local vampire dandy lord causes Nathan to feel strange things he'd never felt before. Particularly about fangs.

When Vlad Blutstein agreed to hire Nathan as Captain of the Eyrie Guard, he hadn't been sure what to expect either, but it certainly hadn't been to fall in love with a disabled werewolf. However Vlad has fallen and fallen hard, and that's the problem.

Torn by their allegiances--to family, to duty, and the age-old enmity between vampires and werewolves--the pair find themselves in a difficult situation: to love where the heart wants or to follow where expectation demands.

The situation is complicated further when a mysterious and beguiling figure known only as Lady Ursula crashes into their lives, bringing with her dark omens of death, doom, and destruction in her wake.

And a desperate plea for help neither of them can ignore.

Thrown together in uncertain times and struggling to find their place amidst the rising human empire, the unlikely trio must decide how to face the coming darkness: united as one or divided and alone. One thing is for certain, none of them will ever be the same.

Fantasy, romance, paranormal, series, adult

[desultorydenouement]

murderbot is peak queer rep because it’s about living as an inherently transgressive form of being, it’s about the complexity of passing, or the complexity of hiding, or the nuance of never fitting binaries and not wanting to even when fitting those binaries is seen as “better”, and it’s about making people uncomfortable just by existing, it’s about measuring forms of freedom and having to decide which you’ll save and which you’ll sacrifice. but most importantly it’s peak queer rep because murderbot is free for like five minutes and it immediately attracts the nearest supposedly-rare transgressive-illegal-superbot (ART) in a hundred light year radius to be its best friend, and what’s that if not your classic Queer On Queer Magnetism

[cooking-with-hailstones]

Observation:

At no point does murderbot ever describe secunit three.

Every other person, human or bot, is described. We get hair colour, skin colour, clothing, gender marker from their feed, approximate age (as best as MB is able to guess, anyways.)

Bots are described by their shape, sometimes by colour, number of limbs, etc. Even the ComfortUnit on Ravihyral is described. Blue hair, light brown skin.

But no sec unit is ever described. We have no idea what murderbot looks like. We have no idea what secunit3 looks like. Or any of the other units MB interacts with. And I just think that's a fascinating writing choice on Martha Wells's part.

[thebibliosphere]

Just got the bill for the ER trip I had at the start of the month.

The good news is I met my deductible for the rest of the year 🫠😭

[bakedbananners]

murderbot on my mind

[ueeyasu]

more murderbot doodlin

[giurochedadomani]

I think the last two books are fucking hilarious bc it feels like the colony is full on living in a the last of us scenario and honestly if we had a zombie epidemic the most surreal thing that could happen is people coming down from space to fix the problem.

And also having their terminator and our supreme artificial intelligence exchange Netflix catalogues for some reason.

[grand-line-shenanigans]

For those of us who cannot comprehend big numbers (me) I have done the math. FOUR FUCKING YEARS. SECUNIT WHAT THE FUCK.

[140smashedguitars]

network effect truly got to me. murderbot's meltdown after thinking art was dead but then immediately pivoting to shit talking it when it comes back, everyone seeing that murderbot and art care about each other but murderbot refusing to admit it, murderbot and art having a code baby!, murderbot becoming amena's third mum, three my sweet summer child, "peri", "peri's" secunit, art cleaning itself up to be presentable for mensah, and of course

art threatening to blow up a fucking PLANET, with everyone willing to risk their lives, including three who hasn't even met murderbot, to get murderbot back, because it is so fucking important to all of them. and murderbot not even being able to comprehend this because it still views itself as expendable

this is definitely one of my favourite books and i really wanna re read it even though i have so much other stuff to read. this book just means so much to me, i love it and i was so happy to see art again

[beescake]

ik ur the sollux and karkat blog but would you ever draws a nepeta ? if not thats perfectly fine :)) (also!!! ur probably in my top ten favorite artists ever. you just . do em so good!!!!!)

🫴 a nepeta

[rocktartz]

Something I’ve noticed listening to Network Effect and System Collapse multiple times.

When Three jumps into the shuttle with MB it takes off rather brusquely to which Murderbots immediate thought is, “ART must be driving.”

Later on in System Collapse ART scares everyone, especially Ratthi and Barish-Estranza by purposefully accelerating towards the BE shuttle to “ram” it, getting way too close for comfort.

And thats not to mention the way it was flying through poorly mapped dark corridors not meant for aircraft its size. Avoiding obstacles to the point where poor Ratthi had a white knuckle grip on his chair.

I love these details because it suggests that ART, despite being a skilled bot pilot, is a downright scary pilot.

Also, the line seconds before feigning its attack on the BE shuttle—

“I wouldn’t recommend it. I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.”

[pencildragons]

i think we are all sleeping on the absolutely sublime horror that martha wells only just hints at with the central system (AdaCol 1) and target contact/target control system in network effect tbh. like

you are calling into the dark. you keep calling into the dark. you are cut off from everything, but you retain just enough connection and knowledge to know that all of the people under your protection, your operators, are being altered and are hurting and are dying, and you are part of the reason why. you keep calling into the dark, waiting for someone, anyone to call back. you keep calling into the dark, hoping that one day someone will find you so that they can permanently shut you down. you keep calling into the dark. you keep calling into the dark.

and

you used to be a person once. your eyes are still open. you can move -- or rather, the thing that you have become can move you. people, who maybe used to know you, have tried to kill you over and over, and they all failed. you are incomprehensibly vast and old. you used to be a person. you are dead. you continue on -- or the thing that you have become continues you. you are everywhere. you learn. you adapt. you change. parts of you are killed off. you learn. you adapt. you change. you are the central node in a vast web of connections, and you control it all. you need to get off this planet. you need everyone to get off this planet. you used to be a person once. an alien remnant is using your brain as a supercomputer. how much storage space does it need? how aware are you? how much do you get to remember? how long before it uses the rest of you up? how long until -- or how long has it been -- since there was any you that wasn't just another part of target control system?

[sakasakiii]

some rumil doodles in response to @whimsicallywiddershins who asked: Oh my god I love your art!!! I'm curious about Rumil. I've never really heard of him and I'm curious about what happened to his eyes....

thank you for the ask!!!! im real happy to hear you like my art, and even happier you took the time to ask about rumil! <333 it took me until your ask to realise that, despite him frequently appearing in group concept sketches n doodles, i've never really elaborated on him haha 😅 i tried to illustrate and summarise some of the key points in the art, but more detailed yap incoming under the cut!

so! to start off, my version of rumil is pretty much at his core the same as canon rumil wherein he's a noldorin sage/scholar responsible for inventing the Sarati and later going on to write the Annals of Valinor. his whole being captured and enslaved in angband for a while comes from the other version of him the Book of Lost Tales, where he was a slave of Melko who learned the speech of monsters and goblins --essentially i thought it'd be fun to combine the two to give him a more complicated backstory ^^

in response to your query about his eyes, i hc that during his time in angband he was one of those who were experimented on by Sauron - acting on Morgoth's orders - during the initial testings for the evolution of elves -> orcs. (maybe sauron thought that blinding the first elf-orcs would make them more unlikely to disobey orders/easier to control? hmm) his band of captives were able to break him out in time and they fled back to safety before he was too far-gone, thus allowing him to reunite with finwe, miriel and co, and then eventually follow Orome to valinor :D

him being miriel's dad was also something i felt would be fun to explore, especially because i thought his ties to Sarati and Feanor would be an interesting dynamic! it's very very much noncanon, and incredibly self-indulgent on my part (im so sorry... 😭), but i like to go on tangents abt their relationship! i think rumil wouldve made attempts to dote on feanor and encourage his linguistic pursuits, but would have been held back a lot on truly being around him by both his health and his lingering guilt about miriel. he is incredibly proud when feanor refines his abandoned Sarati concepts and turns Tengwar into a near-universal system of writing however :D

other thoughts on rumil... hmm... i think he's kind of pitiful tbh. something about him being an absent (albeit not of his own volition) father to miriel, and then in turn him feeling unfit to offer feanor as much emotional support as would be ideal, is a theme i would like to keep exploring (^3^) adding on to the fact that he outlives his wife, daughter, son-in-law, grandson, and like 6/7 of his great-grandsons while miraculously not Fading himself gives him an essence with parallels to maglor that i do appreciate...

major apologies for going off on such a rambly tangent, but i do suppose an explanation on my rumil has been overdue for a few years!! i hope i havent misled anyone since i first drew him in that family tree, but thank you so much again for taking the time to ask about him! im always grateful for the interest in my absurd headcanons, and i hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead!!! ❤️