the only real crime Murderbot committed willingly was pirating media

finding a pretty big fandom for Murderbot on here was the best

expect fanART soon

short king ratthi comic lmao

Based off the discord saying MB considers itself short now

[pic ID: three panels. First panel is MB standing casually looking off to the side as it says “I’m short now”, second panel is ratthi looking stunned, third is the, it’s standing next to each other, MB being significantly taller while Ratthi raises an eyebrow at its drone and folds his arms]

Big OC piece sketch is finally done!

(Pic ID: from left to right: FireUnit4 (Egg’s OC) Three, Epsilon(Skits’ oc), Eso(my oc), AN-COU(my oc), Iota (skits), Upsilon(skits), Gamma and Alpha(skits), Stabby the knife wielding roomba (Flynne). FireUnit4 is running, three is standing with its back turned, Epsilon is talking to Eso who is wearing a white lab coat and distracted by Stabby’s existence, thinking “why does that cleaning bot have a knife?”, AN-COU is staring at the ceiling, no thoughts just vibes. Iota and Upsilon are sitting on the floor watching Stabby, Gamma is pointing at alpha and Alpha is goofing off)

been wanting to draw this for awhile. The cat based on my kitty Hiko

[picture ID: Murderbot sitting on one of ART’s bunks, smiling slightly while a very fluffy tuxedo cat tries to climb into its lap. It is reaching to pet the fluffy cat because the cat demands attention]

new oc, from the idea I had of a combat unit that’s been rogue for a lot longer than MB

Picked the name Eso because it’s serial number starts with 350

here is the progress of some of the Unit ocs from the murderbot discord!! just base sketches rn but ayyy

(FireUnit belongs to CombatEggUnit, Eso and AN-COU belong to me, the Squad belongs to Skits)

Commissions information! Message me if you’re interested :D

Big csu ocs piece is on pause because I’m pretty sure I broke my finger/hand. I punched my desk while playing VR

finally drew my idiot csu oc: AN-COU/Combat

meme I did quick for the discord. Time to go to sleep now

(picture ID: variation of the bagel meme, but with MB in armor and an angry looking company symbol representing a governor module. Text is: (someone off to the side): secunit, what do you want to do? SecUnit: watch an episode of sanctuary moon. GovMod: Obey Orders. Next panel SecUnit says: watch all the episodes of sanctuary moon while the govmod yells no)

expressions practice-

also perspective ha

discord was taking about presaux snowball fight, tellus is not to be messed with. Murderbot learned that the hard way

doodle of my oc Chase as a rogue combat secunit from the murderbot diaries

It’s January 1st where I am so here’s my part of the Murderbot Discord’s gift exchange for @sentient-pineapple ! Tellus is Friend Shaped

this is the first fandom exchange thing I’ve ever done aha

Um I’m still out here reading, but like never following through with anything I say I will on here.

I can always try again.

Anyway, I’m on book five of The Murderbot Diaries, Network Effect by Martha Wells.

What are you reading?

I don’t know, I think about robots and algorithms and AI in healthcare, about how indispensable they can be and how derisive I’d be if anyone thought a human should, say, be expected to be able to calculate a 10-year ASCVD risk off the top of their head- I think about how grateful people in my profession are to technology for easing our workloads and empowering better outcomes-

-and I just think, in a spacefuture world where sentient robots are literally my coworkers, in a world where I don’t have to be afraid of being replaced by a robot, I would not treat them like anything but respected colleagues. Not when I know they’re able and prepared to do jobs that I would do far shittier, if at all, if I were left to them.

Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s just healthcare, but I can’t square with the idea that the prevailing attitude of humans on Preservation is of dismissiveness to bots. I buy that the systemdesigned by humans doesn’t serve bots well, but even in-text in Fugitive Telemetry I’m just not seeing the condescension from the individual humans interacting with their bot coworkers.

IDK, maybe I’m just being naive. I’m open to dialogue on the subject.

whetstonefires:

grison-in-space:

grammarpedant:

theres-no-protocol-for-this:

Private Name

First a lovely quote from All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Here, one of the human characters reveals SecUnit’s private name to the rest of the group.

Some context for those that haven’t read the books: the group is being hunted, their equipment is failing, and SecUnit is considered (until this point) to also be equipment. And now they’ve just discovered that a.) the thing that’s supposed to be controlling SecUnit is not functioning correctly and therefore b.) SecUnit is actually doing everything of its own free-ish will.

The silence was worse this time. On the feed I saw Pin-Lee move uncertainly, glance at Overse and Arada. Ratthi rubbed his face. Then Mensah said quietly, “SecUnit, do you have a name?”

I wasn’t sure what she wanted. “No.”

“It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said.

I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn’t stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, “That was private.”

The silence was longer this time.

Then Volescu said, “Gurathin, you wanted to know how it spends its time. That was what you were originally looking for in the logs. Tell them.”

Mensah lifted her brows. “Well?”

Gurathin hesitated. “It’s downloaded seven hundred hours of entertainment programming since we landed. Mostly serials. Mostly something called Sanctuary Moon.” He shook his head, dismissing it. “It’s probably using it to encode data for the company. It can’t be watching it, not in that volume; we’d notice.”

I snorted. He underestimated me.

Ratthi said, “The one where the colony’s solicitor killed the terraforming supervisor who was the secondary donor for her implanted baby?”

Again, I couldn’t help it. I said, “She didn’t kill him, that’s a fucking lie.”

Ratthi turned to Mensah. “It’s watching it.”

In the middle all of this, Gurathin chooses to reveal SecUnit’s chosen name for itself. 

Murderbot is what the sapient construct has named itself and written in what is essentially its diary. Gurathin looks through that diary out of necessity. He and Volescu absolutely don’t know whether SecUnit is part of the sabotage going on all over their habitat until they look at the logs (and frankly not even fully then). 

But sharing the name is a violation of MB’s right to privacy. It doesn’t want to share, and it says as much. 

I think Gurathin does what he does under some very tense and difficult circumstances, and his behavior is understandable (if not excusable necessarily). And the book sets up some very nice tension for the sequels. 

But, the moment itself still rings of personal violation to me. And I think it was intended that way, to create a minor antagonist who turns out to be an ally as the books progress.

Thank you so much for writing this, NoPro- the importance of MB’s name, and its being private, is such a powerful theme throughout the series, and I’m really glad you’ve re-emphasized this point because I wouldn’t even have known how to start.

This is something that I intend to develop in my own essay, but I just want to add to your own excellent point the following: By asking for its name in this moment, when up to now the members of PresAux have been calling it “SecUnit” and “the SecUnit” interchangeably, Mensah is trying to offer SecUnit the dignity of a name, some small recognition of personhood.

But as those of us who are trans and GNC know, a name that you don’t claim is no affirmation of personhood but a reminder that you aren’t in control of your own identity and self-presentation. If someone refuses to give us their name, then we don’t use their name. That’s basic respect, and it is part of what makes what Gurathin does next so violating: he not only subverts the goodwill that Mensah is offering, he throws away all the future chance of Murderbot has to claim its name on its own terms, and makes that choice for it. MB is left unable to keep its one, most personal secret that it was able to keep even in slavery from being revealed to everyone in the room.

Worse, this move wasn’t even effective to show that MB couldn’t be trusted. So what, if it gave itself an edgy name? That does nothing to address the arguments that even the other PresAux members have raised in favor of its character, in that same confrontation:

• Volescu: “I think the fact that the Unit has been acting to preserve our lives, to take care of us, while it was a free agent, gives us even more reason to trust it.”
• Ratthi and Bharadwaj: “There were only three SecUnits for DeltFall in their specs, but there were five units in their habitat”… “If the company did order the SecUnit to kill us, we would all be dead.”
• Overse: “It told us about the combat module, it told us to kill it. Why the hell would it do that if it wanted to hurt us?”

Compared to these arguments, the fact that it calls itself Murderbot is nothing: names are just a kind of word; Murderbot has shown itself trustworthy through its actions. Gurathin didn’t bring this up before Mensah asked for its name for that exact reason- it’s an inadequate piece of evidence and is outweighed by every other point the humans have already made. The best-faith reading of Gurathin’s behavior here is that he is mentioning the one last indication he still has that its intentions may be malicious; a more cynical reading is that he’s lashing out because he hates to be wrong (“He didn’t like anybody questioning his expertise either,” pg 79 of the paperback). Either way, Gurathin outs MB’s private name and most personal secret and doesn’t even accomplish anything by it.

Gurathin, as designated Skeptical Human in what will be a pattern that continues in the series (he will later be joined by Skeptical Humans Thiago and Indah), comes into Murderbot’s story at its most physically and emotionally vulnerable point, and as such the mistakes he makes have a lasting impact. But it is by examining the depth of those mistakes that we find what makes his antagonist-to-ally journey so unique and fascinating; it serves to throw the rise of his character- from minor antagonist in ASR to abrasive ally in ES to staunch if still abrasive frenemy in FT- in stark relief. And relief is a good way to think of it, in fact: his heel-face turn across the series, and the nuance that he and other Skeptical Humans lend to Murderbot’s character and interactions with others, lend the sense that mistakes and dislike (ordinary things which every person will experience in their lifetimes) do not have to define a person’s worthiness. Gurathin, and we as real people, do not have to be flawless, friendly, or even not-an-asshole to be interesting, likable, or worthy people.

I will say, I’m not entirely sure Murderbot itself conceptualized its habit of referring to itself as ‘murderbot’ as a name until that precise moment, either. Like: in ASR particularly, it repeatedly refers to the category of SecUnits as murderbots (as distinct from sexbots) and generally refers to itself as murderbot in its internal dialogue only when addressing itself, in exactly the sort of way one might address a specific member of a generic category–indeed, in the same way that its name for human use essentially becomes SecUnit over time. Its name begins as a personal, idiosyncratic way of referencing its category in its own head. Why would it need to distinguish between itself and other members of its own class of beings? It almost never speaks to or interacts with other SecUnits over the course of the adventures we see, so its renaming of the generic can also serve as an inflection of the way it views the personal.

So the violation that Gurathin performs is also a reframing of the word “murderbot” from one of the personal tags Murderbot uses to privately describe the world it sees, a categorical tag that encompasses both the perspective murderbot and other theoretical murderbots, into a personal name that is indicative of individuality. And of course in no way is Murderbot ready to be conceptualized as a person at that time, rather than a…. call it an instance of an appliance with a private perspective.

Sometimes, it takes time for us to dabble with including ourselves in a larger idea. We try on concepts in the safety of our heads, tapping them and retreating from them as they feel both entrancing and terrifying by turns. When you’re nonconsensually shoved into that framework by other people before you’re ready to step into it yourself, irrespective of whether they’re correct or incorrect about whether it applies, it is a deeply discomforting and unpleasant experience. It can delay or distort your ability to engage with that framework later; at the very least it’s aversive and upsetting in the moment. It’s a violation of your own ability to pace your comfort level with an attractive but frightening aspect of yourself.

The parallels here with queerness and with gender are probably obvious, of course, but I also see parallels here to disability, especially the sort of disability experience where the things you have been struggling with aren’t new but your claiming of the term and everything that comes with it might be.

Anyway, I don’t necessarily think Gurathin is aware of what he’s doing on that level. Most of the time when I observe or have experienced this particular violation, it’s not intentionally an attempt to harm: sometimes it’s an attempt to welcome, or a frustration with the apparent dithering or inability to see the obvious on the part of the person struggling with the framework. Sometimes it’s just an attempt to connect. Sometimes it’s a smug assertion of correctness and experience, of course, but it’s rarely a deliberate intent to damage. I don’t think Gurathin is even aware that he’s acting on that level in that moment. But I do think it adds layers and layers to the discomfort that Murderbot is experiencing in the moment.

I do think it is wildly interesting that literally the only individual name that Murderbot has that it responds to and uses, the only name that does not fit this pattern of “an instance of the generic,” is one that is only ever used in the series by one character… and one that we don’t actually know, as readers, because it never appears in its own internal dialogue. I’m speaking here of its hard coded feed address; metaphorically, its MAC address, the serial number it uses to communicate with the feed as a unique individual. ART uses this name for it, of course, and in some ways anyone who communicates with it via the feed must, but it’s an individual designation that comes without any element of personhood attached.

that’s a very good point about the forcible categorizing of 'murderbot’ as a personal name there and how gurathin can’t actually perceive that part as a transgression from within his worldview

because that enhances the way this scene sets up the reasons murderbot cannot let itself be taken to Preservation and rehabilitated on their terms at the end of the book