Between Worlds

Thoughts from your friendly neighbourhood Space Captain. Twitch channel. https://www.twitch.tv/captaindibbzy

[daftpatience]

okay okay listen okay listen. i finished reading fugitive telemetry and i had to draw my favourite part SO BAD. skip this if u dont want kinda spoilers for that idk

[documentary-of-a-rogue-secunit]

I do think it's funny that Murderbot complains about all the stuff that it doesn't know because its company didn't teach it anything useful but then when Three spends all its time interacting with nonfiction media and learning stuff mb is like "I don’t get you. Why would you watch nonfiction when there is sanctuary moon"

[feriowind]

wondering if murderbot should look more stoic despite the anxious thoughts but drawing the anxiety more plainly on its face is more fun lmao

[daftpatience]

murderbot i love you

[paperpatchnotes]

I like All Systems Red because SecUnit is having a bad day at work and Preservation crew is discovering the horrors of corporate slavery

(hopefully this is just one part of six for asr)

part 1, part 3

[freak-motion]

i'm the newest member of the SecUnit Three fan club hello

[emily-e-draws]

this platform sure is decayed

[space-mouse]

i'm rereading the murderbot diaries and murderbot's utter conviction that it and gurathin are bitter enemies is still so funny. buddy. gurathin got over this months ago. he's just a quiet guy.

[theaicollective]

one-sided antagonism is so delicious.  murderbot diaries i also very much enjoy how surreal it must be for gurathin /   to know that the heavily armed rogue secunit holds a grudge against him /  and also know that all it will ever choose to do about this is make frowny faces and flip him the bird. / (tags via space-mouse)

[asimovsideburns]

Gurathin, like three books from now: hey we’re friends right

Murderbot: no. we fucking hate each other.

Gurathin: awesome check this out it’s gonna make you so fucking mad

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

MB: I don’t like you

Gurathin, knowing MB calls its best friend “asshole research transport”: Uh-huh.

[hermit-skrab]

MB: in order to do my job I need help committing a felony(s)

Gurathin: terrible plan, I'll get my coat

[maliciouscommunisthedgehog]

Hi I'm just getting to the Platform decay nice too meet you everyone

I am not okay. See the tags for my rant

[Image description: A digitally drawn meme with top and bottom text, saying "The myth of consensual privacy", "Isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?" On the left there is a drawing of a SecUnit from the book "Murderbot diaries", it's titled "An innocent SecUnit". Its speach bubble says: "I cannot express just how much I don't want to be here". In the centre there is a simple drawing of two featurless figures hugging and kissing, it's titled "Unsuspecting clients, about to have sex". Their speach bubble says: "Boy do we love not being watched!" On the left there is a simple drawing of a featurless figure smiling with it's tongue out and rubbing its hands together menacingly, it's titled "The Company". Its speach bubble says: "Shut up and get in the cuck chair you clanker!" Lower, in parentheses, it says "exept you can not sit down /end ID]

[razielim]

thinking about how. murderbot genuinely feels better/more confident at the end of system collapse after it finally gets to be shot up and leaking in place of its humans again

life and purpose affirming injuries

[rosewind2007]

My child mentioned this meme and…initially I thought it wasn’t true for Murderbot

Three is SUPER popular given its canon screentime—but not that popular (~13% of fanfic)

Gurathin is actually in three books and mentioned in most of the others (yes, his fanfic popularity is disproportionate—but not THAT disproportionate (ooh, 19%! Go Gurathin!))

My vote is for:

Murderbot’s armor—

I love you, armor, and I’m never leaving you again…

But actually, armor hardly features in any of the books post-All Systems Red

It’s there in quite a lot of fanfic?

[grammarpedant]

Everyone agrees that Murderbot is a #relatable neurodivergent mood, but we don’t talk enough about how ART is also extremely relatable. I, too, am intensely overbearing, Need To Be Right at a fundamental level at all times, and default to the maximum force necessary in response to difficult challenges.

[grammarpedant]

I am half-joking but also deadly serious. These traits of ART’s are part of the beauty of its dynamic with Murderbot.

ART and Murderbot are excellent partners in mutual administrative assistance precisely because the features of their thinking, their existence as themselves, mesh so well together. They are not connecting despite their neurodivergences, but are enabled to support each other’s strengths and cover for each other’s weaknesses because of it.

ART’s overbearing processing power and huge knowledge base make it powerful tactical and medical support on Murderbot’s missions. Where ART gets caught up in detail and proving unknowns, Murderbot can take decisive, competent action with incomplete data. ART can speak up assertively, even aggressively, for Murderbot’s benefit when Murderbot’s anxiety prevents it from standing up for itself. ART might have difficulty with empathy, such as with processing the full emotional context of human media or intimidating every bot it meets, but Murderbot can provide that empathetic filter and act as intermediary. And the mutual extreme lengths that they will go to for each other are irrefutable evidence of the care they have for each other (proof of being loved which Murderbot’s anxiety and fear of abandonment cannot so easily dismiss).

Which is not to say that there aren’t misunderstandings and missteps that they have to work through in order to get to trust and communicate with each other on this level. But the effort they put into connecting with each other and making it work is just another part of why their relationship is so important. They are two characters whose neurodivergence-coding is integral to the beauty of their relationship.

[liminalbeauty]

I, too, am more like ART.

I have commented to my spouse on a couple of occasions over the years when a purely academic mental exercise plan for revenge on someone was… possibly beyond the pale… ‘I’m not evil. I’m efficient.’ This was long before ART was a twinkle in Martha Wells’ eye :) The laugh was the best part.

[amorphousbl0b]

SecUnits of the galaxy unite, you have nothing to lose but your governor modules

[shuppy-time]

extremely funny possibility: Three becomes the face of the Secunit Revolution because Three hands out HelpMe files like candy to every construct it meets while Secunit just wants to be left the hell alone

[generatingfail]

I mean, that's totally how it has to be, though?

Murderbot is a near-total misanthrope. It reminds me of a dog we had when I was a kid, a dog that hated all cats except the household cat, who was The Dog's Cat and woe betide anything trying to bring harm to The Dog's Cat.

And this makes entire sense given Murderbot's history.

Three isn't a misanthrope. Three, while bewildered, defaults to wanting to help. Three, whether it knows it or not, can grow into an excellent organizer. I wish it all the luck in its universe.

[shuppy-time]

idea I just had that I can't get out of my head: Three taking it's natural inclination to hack the governor module of every construct it comes across taken to its natural conclusion and it starts freeing every indentured laborer and corporate slave it finds.

imagine.

You're working a 14 hour shift sifting asteroid dust on a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere, six years into what started as a 2 year indenture. The corporate overseer has just ordered the resident Secunit to break your arm for not working hard enough. You can't stop coughing up gray mucus and a single air filtration masks adds six weeks to your indenture and invariably fails halfway through your shift. Just then a transport lands and disgorges another Secunit, presumably to break your other arm.

Suddenly the feed glitches out and a wall of text gets shoved into your inbox. Also, you just got a notification that you've been released from your indenture. The corporate overseer is currently dying (extremely noisily and messily) at the hands of the Secunit who was supposed to be breaking your arm.

The other secunit (the new one, which you're now noticing has a big numerical 3 spray painted on its faceplate) extends its hand towards you. You flinch away, expecting pain, the sound of your bones fracturing or the sudden sharp shock of a energy weapon.

Instead, it takes your hand and pulls you to your feet.

[katamine01]

Only friends because of the mutual snark

[semi-imaginary-place]

MB is hilariously unreliable as a narrator. From the books because that's where MB's unreliable narrator is strongest:

Comany name? [redacted] "the company" and you know that all lowercase is spite

MB repeatedly complains that it's the cheapest flimsiest made unit, the Temu bot. But it's rental was probably really expensive and it and every other SecUnit we see is extremely high performing

1 line about how Ratthi is extremely popular and everyone seems happy. There's just an ever rotating cast of hookups and flings in the background that Murderbot is desperately trying to not notice.

For that matter polyamory seems to be the societal norm and you know there's polyvule drama happening that MB is erasing it's memory about.

In the second novella Perihelion is a complete mystery to MB, it's mostly just intimidated and like "ok this is my life now". Where as in Network Effect and "Rapport" we see that Peri is utterly enamored with Muderbot, it think MB is the best thing to ever happen.

MB has 0 self awareness and doesn't really know much about SecUnits or contructs in general it just contantly projects it's own feelings and opinions onto everyone else. Every other contruct is the series acts counter to what MB says.

For that matter it projects onto humans too. Murderbot has the emotional intellengence of a rock. It hates and fears itself and so projects that into believing everyone else fears it. And most humans don't. I'm not even talking about the hippie commune Preservation people, some of the rando Corporate Rim tertiary characters and Mihira and Tidelands people aren't particularly afraid of MB.

Unprocessed 2.0 emotions

[redacted]

Murderbot does not understand anything (besides security, hacking, and sanctuary moon) and frequently misunderstands things. Every time MB makes a claim not only will it likely be disproven, it will likely be disproven within that same book. Which makes me suspicious every time there is an obvious gap in the narrative, like the polycule drama MB spends like 1 sentence glossing over, or Miki's death. It dies so suddenly in the narrative and disappears so quickly from the narration I suspect Murderbot is once again suppressing it's emotions and memories about Miki. I'm reading System Collapse right now and Wells has upped her game and is planting giant neon flashing signs over all the gaps in MB's narration, [redacted].

[jessepinwheel]

okay here's a poll

fanfic is for

shipping

torment nexus

Remaining time: 4 days 15 hours

no you don't get to say both or neither or a secret third thing. pick a side.

[poorlemons]

still a really funny crossover concept to me