#secunit 3 my beloved

[cross-d-a]

Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Murderbot Diaries

Chapter: 1/9

Rating: Mature

Category: M/M; Gen

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Relationships: Jaster Mereel/Mace Windu/SecUnit 3, Jaster Mereel/Mace Windu, SecUnit 3 & Original SecUnit Character(s), SecUnit 3 & Shmi Skywalker, Arla Fett & Original SecUnit Character(s)

Characters: SecUnit 3, Original SecUnit Character(s), Jaster Mereel, Mace Windu, Shmi Skywalker, Arla Fett, Depa Billaba, Jango Fett, Mij Gilamar, Kal Skirata, Myles the Mandalorian

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Diverse, Canon Divergence after Network Effect, The Corporation Rim Is Terrible, Slavery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Angst, Fluff, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Three has So Much Anxiety, POV SecUnit 3, A SecUnit and its Human, Jaster Mereel Lives, Mandalorian Civil War | Death Watch vs Jaster Mereel's True Mandalorians, Jedi as Found Family, Arla Fett Lives, Non-human characters, Parental Mace Windu, Protective Jaster Mereel, Protective Mace Windu, Parental SecUnit 3, Shmi Skywalker is freed from slavery, Asexuality spectrum, Three isn't all that impressed with the idea of sex but maybe it wants to kiss Jaster and Mace, Crossover pairings, mentions of sexual slavery and non-con due to ongoing slavery, no actual non-con

Summary:

SecUnit 3 just wants to save its people from slavery (it's a slow, painful work in progress). But when its ship winds up in the neighboring galaxy, suddenly its new immediate priority is saving the small human who calls herself Shmi Skywalker.

(Falling in love with the two humans intent on helping SecUnit 3 find its family? Well, no one tell Murderbot, it might just try to puke its brains out.)

[rosewind2007]

We made it to Halloween month!

🎃

Have a wonderful one! 🧡

[3cosmicfrogs]

Tagged by @erisenyo, ty for the tag! The game is to share 9 of my favorite books from the last 12 months, or 9 books on my TBR list for this year.

The top 3 (black tides of heaven, galactic hellcats, and sol majestic) are on my TBR, and the bottom are some of my favourites i've read (and am currently reading, in the case of August kitko). I've counted the murderbot diaries as one whole book but obviously it's an anthology of 7 short ones.

as you can see, i'm currently on a bit of a queer scifi kick! Here are my reviews of them:

She who became the sun & he who drowned the world (by Shelley Parker-Chan) wins this year's award for Most Tragic Most Brainrotting Yaoi!

Children of Memory (by Adrian Tchaikovsky) is the 3rd installation in the Children Of Time series and wins Best SCIENCE fiction! i am scientifically shooketh as we said back in my day.

The Murderbot Diaries (by Martha Wells) wins Best Protagonist! SecUnit i love you, never change.

The Kaiju Preservation Society (by John Scalzi) wins Most Entertaining Read! it's short, it's sweet, it's on acid... strongly recommend this one if you're looking for something playful and easy.

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space (by Alex White) wins Somehow The Gayest Book On This List. this is THE queer scifi/fantasy list and this book still takes the cake. giant sentient robots invade earth and the protagonists decide they must play Music about it, it's great. Get in the fucking Vanguard, Kitko!

again, i was tagged 3 days ago so i'm sure this has lost momentum, but i'm tagging my Beloved Mutuals @skyhawkwolf, @tavina-writes, @woobifiedvillain, @frodo-of-the-nine-fingers, @lgbtlunaverse and anyone else who wants to join!

[semistsuga]

Heyo, sending dragons for dressup. 59952065 <- This is my Murderbot fandragon. It's dressed in its SecUnit gear, so if you want to do a civilian getup for it, that would be lovely <3 Second, this one 95234557 <- One of my new Fathoms. I haven't dressed any of them yet, and I'd love to see what you come up with for them.

MURDERBOT MY BELOVED!

This is heavier clothing than I would normally put on a dragon, but what does Murderbot like? It likes not being perceived! There's a lot of references to hoods. And I had to go with something sunglass-like, because Murderbot would be ALL ABOUT sunglasses if it was given the option. Plus some bloody bandages because let's be honest, it is not kind to itself. This was an extremely fun one!

And your Fathom! I just decided to play around and ended up wanting to emphasize the purple tones, which led to this - which is a Lair Tsuga classic (I love me some ribbons) and also a very cool sort of blind seer vibe, which you may or may not like! But I hope it's fun to consider at least.

[void-star]

SecUnit 3 and MurderBot my beloveds

[antifathomable-shapeshifter]

grgshsvfjsh finished book 2 of the murderbot diaries. fjsbwjdbdjg. no spoliers i got 3-6 on hold from the library. 3 will be ready in 2 weeks. the rest in 6. akdbdjahehfkf.

hhhhjhhjghgjgjfjdbsjsbd robots. robots

robobbovobbobobotsssss

god i wish i was a secunit. not really. but kinda.

i just want to have 360 vision from security camera, gun arms and violence training, and the ability to get shot 30 times and not die. is that too much to ask. (although, unlike murderbot, id like a dick too. maybe id be a sexmuderbot >:3)

and ART my beloved. my baby bot. my widdle incomprehensibly intelligent research frieght ship. ily <333

just. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

robots.

[ilovedthestars]

thank you all for the asks and replies 🥰💜💜💜

maybe i should have excluded fics i've already published from the list, because somehow everyone managed to pick the exact numbers of those ones XD For the record, 1-6, 12, and 25-27 are the ones that are already on ao3. (don't ask me why they're grouped like that.)

i'm gonna answer the replies here, and the asks as separate posts:

@whataliethatwas: 3 and 26

3 is my beloved fic carry us to freedom, already finished. It's very short, and written in a poetic/prosetry style that's different from any of my other fics. I'm really proud of it, maybe most proud of it out of all the fics i've posted. @elexuscal made an offhand comment on the discord about Preservation starting an Underground Railroad for constructs, and the ideas of passing secrets through songs & navigating by stars fell together with my love of writing SecUnits figuring out how to escape, and it turned into a little piece of prosetry. The line that people have quoted back to me in comments the most is "[constructs] have only known safety as the unfaithful child of obedience," which i almost cut because I thought it might be overwritten, and I'm very glad i left it in.

Carry us to freedom is also a favorite of mine because the idea of constructs helping each other to freedom spiraled off into my big wip Old Unit, Young Unit (and a whole series of sequels/spinoffs, which are collectively working-titled Polaris, the one actual historical allusion that's stayed in). That project has expanded into something huge and exciting and i'm hoping i get to share more of it soon.

26 is another one i've already posted, what did i do? Originally known as malware 2, because I had three different concepts that were all just titled "malware" in my drafts. (all three of them are on ao3 now!) "what did i do?" might be my personal favorite of the unofficial malware trilogy. It's some very good angst-with-a-happy-ending, if I do say so myself. I've written so many "muderbot is almost forced to hurt its humans and then has emotions about it" fics--that describes the whole malware trilogy and also several other wips XD

@grammarpedant: 27!

The malware trilogy is grouped together in my drafts, so right after "what did i do?" is "they'll never pull the trigger," aka malware 3, the final malware fic that I just posted a few weeks ago. This one prominently features Gurathin, and kind of summarizes how i think of his personality & relationship with Murderbot--he is willing to make the hard choice when someone has to, and he'll take the consequences of seeming cruel if it means his friends are safe. And that's fun in combination with Murderbot's conviction to keep its friends safe, even from itself. I think this fic is like the scene in ASR where murderbot shoots itself in the chest to stop the combat overrive, but if Murderbot hadn't gotten to the gun in time. In fact, I think that's exactly what's going through Gurathin's head.

There was a chapter 3 to this fic, which was basically "indah finds out about Ganaka Pit." I didn't include that when I posted it because it distracted from the murderbot & gurathin stuff, and felt like it deserved to be its own story. I might come back to it and finish it someday...

can i do an extremely personalized ask game? is that a thing people do?

my ao3 is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my murderbot fanfics. all of my murderbot fanfic is in one big scrivener project, which is, at this moment, a combined 205,811 words. (my ao3 posted works, in case you were wondering, add up to 32,327 words.) the individual fics are separated into folders, and there are 42 folders, a few of which are published fics but most of which are wips that have yet to see the light of day.

if you send me a number between 1 and 42 i will tell you a little bit about whichever fic that corresponds to, and maybe post a few lines! yes, this is a blatant excuse for me to get to ramble about my fics, but i'm hoping that might get me excited to finish some of them. or at the very least, tell you all about the cool ideas that i might never finish writing so that i still get to share them in some form.

i have no idea if anyone is interested in the words in my head but me, and I am debating whether this is a weird thing to do. but ask games are fun and i am going to indulge myself in hopes that other people will indulge me <3

[tenowls]

wanted to try some network effect character designs!!

[anotherdaywestay]

Murderbot has to process an emotion, please stand by.

[hermitlibrarian]

Kayla Rayne and Trina do such a good job of running the Goodreads group for the Monthly Recommendations meme, coming up with suggestions, creating their own videos, and so on. I’ve been lax in making my own monthly recommendations list, but this is the perfect month to come back to the fold because the topic is Mash Up! Instead of a specific topic, it’s one recommendation based on the topics that have been touched on this past year.

  Monthly Recommendations is a monthly meme hosted by Kayla Rayne (YouTube) and Trina from Between Chapters (YouTube). You can find the Goodreads group, including the monthly prompts, here.

  1. Best First Book in a Series

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Published: 2 May 2017

Publisher: Tor.com

Category: Science Fiction/Novella

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

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 are 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, all it really 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 their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Murderbot is one of my new favorite characters this year. All it wants to do is be left along to enjoy its media and figure itself out. How relatable is that? But no, the humans have to muck things up and who has to protect them and figure things out? Murderbot, of course. This is the first in the Murderbot Diaries and I am so looking forward to the rest of the series.

  2. Graphic Novels/Mixed Media

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Published: 23 October 2018

Publisher:

Category: Sequential Art/Humor

Adam’s comics deal with weightier topics like seasonal affective disorder and struggles with self-esteem, while also touching on the silly and absurd—like his brief, but intense obsession with crystals. With a bright, positive outlook and a sense of humor, Super Chill tells a story that is both highly relatable and intensely personal.

Adam’s humor never fails to be both humorous and relatable, whether it’s his love for his cats (including his tripod kitty) or the trials he faces in day to day life. I could not recommend this collection, and his ongoing comic, more.

  3. Duologies

  Rise of the Empress Duology

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns/Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix

I read Forest of a Thousand Lanterns and reviewed it on The Book Bratz (review here) earlier this year because I love villain origin stories. While it didn’t turn out exactly as I thought it would, I still think that Julie C. Dao has immensely writing talent and would recommend her books. I still have to read Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix, but you best believe it’s at home here and waiting on my tbr. 🙂

  4. Mental Health Representation

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Published: 11 September 2018

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Category: Contemporary/Young Adult/LGBT+

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.

If there’s one author that I’m sure knows how to write about mental health issues, it’s Akemi Dawn Bowman. After reading her previous book Starfish, I knew that Summer Bird Blue would be on my list and I am so thankful that it was. For all the heartbreak and toughness that was in it, it was a superb read that handled difficult subjects well. You can read me review here.

  5. Books that Booktube Made Me Read

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Published: 24 October 2017

Publisher: HarperTeen

Category: Young Adult/Fantasy

On Christmas Eve five years ago, Holly was visited by three ghosts who showed her how selfish and spoiled she’d become. They tried to convince her to mend her ways.

She didn’t.

And then she died.

Now she’s stuck working for the top-secret company Project Scrooge–as the latest Ghost of Christmas Past.

Every year, they save another miserly grouch. Every year, Holly stays frozen at seventeen while her family and friends go on living without her. So far, Holly’s afterlife has been miserable.

But this year, everything is about to change. . . .

This one isn’t strictly accurate because I haven’t watched a whole lot of BookTube this year, so I couldn’t pinpoint a book I’d read because of BookTube specifically. However, there was a readathon near the middle of December hosted by a BookTuber (Book Roast) that had, as its first challenge, a requirement to finish up our current read. Close enough? For me and for this recommendation, I’m counting it! lol

This retelling of the Scrooge myth was an interesting one and it certainly had a good time with its twists and magic affecting the modern take on the old story.

  6. Audiobooks

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Published: 13 June 2017

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Category: Fantasy/Horror/Fiction

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you’ve got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

Any of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series would be a delight to listen to, but I’m highlight the second in the series, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, because it is read by the author. Technically this book is a prequel, so I suppose you could read it before Every Heart a Doorway, though I think there might be just the slightest bit lost in character surprise if you did. So, read them in order, but I think you’ll  be in for a real treat when you listen to this, book #2, because Seanan does such a good job of reading her children to life.

  7. Books Worth a Reread

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Published: 12 August 2005 (originally 1943)

Publisher: Harper Audio

Category: Classics/Historical Fiction

A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900’s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity. His wife Katie scrubs floors to put food on the table and clothes on her childrens’ backs, instilling in them the values of being practical and planning ahead.

When Johnny dies, leaving Katie pregnant, Francie, smart, pensive and hoping for something better, cannot believe that life can carry on as before. But with her own determination, and that of her mother behind her, Francie is able to move toward the future of her dreams, completing her education and heading oft to college, always carrying the beloved Brooklyn of her childhood in her heart.

I’ve read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at least twice a year for a couple years now, so I can definitely say it’s worth a reread. Whether you decide to pick up a physical copy, an e-copy, or listen to the incomparable Kate Burton read this classic story aloud, you’re in for a treat.

  8. Underrated Books

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Published: 28 July 2016

Publisher: BOOM! Box

Category: Sequential Art/Young Adult/Fantasy

Eons ago, it was prophesied…four distinguished champions would be chosen to lead the universe into a new age of strength and peace. They were expecting warriors; what they got was a little bit…different. Join Amie, an art student, Sandy, a single mom, Kevin, aging athlete and Silas…a goldfish?…as they learn to navigate Earth and each other as the most unanticipated powerful beings in the universe!

Created by New York Times-bestselling writer Kate Leth (ADVENTURE TIME, BRAVEST WARRIORS) and illustrator Matt Cummings (BATTLE DOG), POWER UP is a super team-up with a twist…and in the end, finding a family where you least expect it.

This hilarious, bright, wonderfully illustrated comic does not get talked about enough! The team behind it, Kate & Matt, are just amazing. The story is so out there that you can’t quite believe what’s going on, but that’s half the fun! 😀

  9. Marathon Worthy Series

  The Illuminae Files

These are honking big books, but I think you’ll want to marathon them despite that. With the twists, the unique formatting, and the cliffhangers in the first two books, it would be impossible not to marathon this series once you start. The characters, the scenarios, everything just draws you in so that you have to know what happens next to the various crews in their quest for survival and justice.

  10. Witchy Reads

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Published: 13 March 2018

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Category: Fantasy/Young Adult/Paranormal

From the author of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender comes a haunting maelstrom of magic and murder in the lush, moody Pacific Northwest.

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Guilt and fear instead led the island’s original eight settlers to burn “the witch” out of her home. So Rona cursed them. Fast-forward one hundred–some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life. She has reason to hope: First, her supernatural powers, if they can be called that, are unexceptional. Second, her love life is nonexistent, which means she might escape the other perverse side effect of the matriarch’s backfiring curse, too. But then a mysterious book comes out, promising to cast any spell for the right price. Nor senses a storm coming and is pretty sure she’ll be smack in the eye of it. In her second novel, Leslye Walton spins a dark, mesmerizing tale of a girl stumbling along the path toward self-acceptance and first love, even as the Price Guide’s malevolent author — Nor’s own mother — looms and threatens to strangle any hope for happiness.

This book is packed full of witches and witchy themes. You can read my review here.

  11. Relatable Characters

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Published: 9 March 2017

Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre

Category: Fiction/Contemporary

Lost for Words is a compelling, irresistible, and heart-rending audiobook from author Stephanie Butland

Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look carefully, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are some things Loveday will never, ever show you.

Into her hiding place – the bookstore where she works – come a poet, a lover, and three suspicious deliveries.

Someone has found out about her mysterious past. Will Loveday survive her own heartbreaking secrets?

Loveday’s got it. Books to people? Sounds about right. The Lost for Words Book Shop is her refuge and I think a lot of us can agree that it sounds like heaven, being able to have that sort of place to go, to have support us. Archie, the owner, is such a dear and is just the best support network for Loveday. The overall bookish feel of this story, obviously of Loveday, is totally relatable.

          All media (pictures, quotes, etc.) belong to the respective owners and are used here solely for the purpose of review and commentary.

      Monthly Recommendations: A Years of Recommendations Kayla Rayne and Trina do such a good job of running the Goodreads group for the Monthly Recommendations meme, coming up with suggestions, creating their own videos, and so on.

[rosewind2007]

Someone asked about rogues in The Murderbot Diaries and I thought I’d start with All Systems Red:

In All Systems Red there are [15] uses of the word “rogue”.

[1] Page 69 “Mensah gave the orders and we started forward, me in front, the humans a few steps behind. They were in their full suits with helmets, which gave some protection but had been meant for environmental hazards, not some other heavily armed human (or angry malfunctioning rogue SecUnit) deliberately trying to kill them. I was more nervous than Ratthi, who was jittery on our comms, monitoring the scans, and basically telling us to be careful every other step.”

Theoretical rogue SecUnit

Other adjectives: angry, malfunctioning, “trying to kill them [PresAux]”. This is Murderbot’s nightmare rogue; where it got this image of a rogue from we don’t know. The logical assumption (given how it’s been spending the last 35,000 hours) would be media portrayals.

[2&3] Page 76 “Maybe these clients had been terrible and abusive, maybe they had deserved it. I didn’t care. Nobody was touching my humans. To make sure of that I had to kill these two rogue Units. I could have pulled out at this point, sabotaged the hoppers, and got my humans out of there, leaving the rogue Units stuck on the other side of an ocean; that would have been the smart thing to do.

But I wanted to kill them.”

These are now apparent rogue Units and MB does acknowledge possible mitigation, but still wants to kill them, even if this isn’t the smart thing to do.

[4] Page 78 “Even these two rogues wouldn’t be dumb enough to ignore the creaks if I took the quick route and walked over to their position.

(They were not the sharpest murderbots, having cleaned the floor of the between-habitat corridor to cover the prints they had left when staging that body. It would have fooled somebody who hadn’t noticed all the other floors were covered with tracked-in dust.)”

Suggestion they’re dumb, not the sharpest.

[5] Page 86 “Blood ran down my torn suit skin and I reached up to my neck. I expected to feel a gaping hole, but there was something stuck there. “Dr. Mensah, there might be more rogue units, we don’t know—”

By this point Murderbot honestly doesn’t know how many rogue units there are. It’s having a bad time. Also note lack of capital letter—no idea if it’s significant.

[6] Page 87 “The DeltFall SecUnits hadn’t been rogues, they had been inserted with combat override modules. The modules allow personal control over a SecUnit, turn it from a mostly autonomous construct into a gun puppet. The feed would be cut off, control would be over the comm, but functionality would depend on how complex the orders were. “Kill the humans” isn’t a complex order.”

Revelation time! So, ignore all those previous references to the DeltFall units as rogues—they weren’t.

Murderbot is very clear that SecUnit with override module does not equal rogue. It clearly has a firm internal definition of a rogue.

It’s interesting that it sees them as acting like everyone expects rogues to, killing the humans.

[7] Page 88 “The unknown SecUnit inserted a data carrier, a combat-override module. It’s downloading instructions into me and will override my system. This is why the two DeltFall units turned rogue. You have to stop me.”

Here using “turned rogue” though it has already said they weren’t actually rogue: but it’s talking to humans who it reasonably expects to see combat overridden behaviour as rogue behaviour.

[8] Page 92 “Pin-Lee was saying impatiently, “There’s no danger. When it shot itself, it froze the download. I was able to remove the few fragments of rogue code that had been copied over.”

Rogue code—as in code that could have turned Murderbot rogue! Ha! (Not really rogue, obviously)

[9] Page 92 ‘He gestured to me. “This unit was already a rogue. It has a hacked governor module.”’

Oh Gurathin, my beloved: Murderbot fails to appreciate that Gurathin is using the same definition of a rogue as it does: a hacked governor module. I guess it was distracted.

[10] Page 123 “I could leave them to cope on their own, I guess. I pictured doing that, pictured Arada or Ratthi trapped by rogue SecUnits, and felt my insides twist. I hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon.”

Imaginary rogues here, figments of Murderbot’s imagination—which are either not really rogue units but overridden ones; or it’s just defaulting to its own personal horror tropes?

[11] Page 127 ‘“They may believe the company and whoever your beneficiaries are won’t look any further than the rogue SecUnits. But they can’t make two whole survey teams disappear unless their corporate or political entity doesn’t care about them. Does DeltFall’s care? Does yours?”

That made them all stare at me, for some reason.’

Again, these SecUnits were not the Murderbot definition of rogue, but again it’s talking to humans.

[12] Page 137 “We didn’t know who EvilSurvey was, who we were dealing with. But I bet that they didn’t either. Mensah’s status was only in the Security info packet, stored on SecSystem, which they had never gotten access to. The dueling investigations if something happened to us were bound to be thorough, as the company would be desperate for something to blame it on and the beneficiaries would be desperate to blame it on the company. Neither would be fooled long by the rogue SecUnit setup.”

Murderbot here acknowledges that even the human investigators would be likely fooled for long by the pretend rogues—so again: as far as Murderbot is concerned a combat-override module controlled SecUnit isn’t an actual rogue.

[13{ Page 140 “He said, “Did they punish you, for the deaths of the mining team?”

It wasn’t completely a surprise. I think they all wanted to ask about it, but maybe he was the only one abrasive enough. Or brave enough. It’s one thing to poke a murderbot with a governor module; poking a rogue murderbot is a whole different proposition.”

Here Murderbot refers to itself as a rogue, a rogue murderbot at that, and acknowledges Gurathin knows it’s a rogue and is poking it. Oh these two…

[14&15] Page 154 ‘That was still annoying, even though I knew we had allowed plenty of time for this part. “You used combat override modules to make the DeltFall SecUnits behave like rogues. If you think a real rogue SecUnit still has to answer your questions, the next few minutes are going to be an education for you.”’

Here Murderbot is talking to evil survey, aka GrayCris. The DeltFall units didn’t really behave like rogues, not at all. We have one actual rogue (by the Murderbot definition) and it doesn’t behave like that. Though it does think a SecUnit might if it had been mistreated? Again, it’s talking to humans, and sort of “speaking their language”, but even here it is keen to draw a distinction between a SecUnit with a combat override and a “real rogue SecUnit”.

Fun!

Themes are: a SecUnit with an override module isn’t (as far as Murderbot, our narrator, is concerned anyway) a REAL rogue: it’s just acting how people (humans and Murderbot) expect a rogue to act. Murderbot thinks a real rogue could have reasons to act like that, but its overwhelming (apparently, even stopping it doing the smart thing) sort of automatic urge is to kill rogues (as it sees them as a very real threat to its humans). Of course, in All Systems Red there is exactly one rogue SecUnit (by Murderbot’s definition) and it doesn’t act anything like it and everyone else seem primed to expect (though Murderbot doesn’t think the investigators would be fooled by the fake rogue SecUnits either?).

It’s me so there has to be extra Gurathin content: Gurathin sees a rogue as a SecUnit which has hacked its governor module. He is remarkable in that he doesn’t seem to have bought into the media (news? corporate propaganda?) portrayal of rogue SecUnits

[rosewind2007]

Just wrote this meta, which is all about the name Murderbot. However it also (perforce) involves Three.

Three: Murderbot 2.0 asked me what I wanted.

Again we have Three (whose name of choice, by the way, is a matter where we have way less clarity—is it Three, is it SecUnit 003, SecUnit 03, SecUnit 3 or just 3?) using Murderbot 2.0’s name: thinking about, thinking through, a fairly life critical conversation. Again here, as on page 383, these are Three’s inner thoughts.

This is my motto, my mantra, my life

SecUnit03, aka Three, aka 3

Network Effect, Martha Wells