for some reason i felt like ep 10 was an hour long...
"you will address me as madam president" gurathin's tiny little smirk
pin-lee zeroing in we love to see it
"they don't play fair." gurathin lfg
"tell papa he has to sing" love wins your drug dealer is gay
when gurathin's so triumphant that he's found murderbot's memories and clicks download all memories, and then his expression shutters when he realises oh shit this is going to be. A lot
like how can you download a whole other person into your brain yk
him crying yay <3 i love that he cries so much in this series. i feel so represented
does anyone know what gurathin is saying no to when he says it to bharadwaj right before he hardwires to mb? like she's the one who's plugging the wire into both of them...
godd they're all sooo eager for it to recognise them
murderbot's big wet eyes after getting back all its memories....
"i will be your guardian." thinking abt how in the book it immediately thinks that "guardian is just another word for owner". so true
the slow realisation and the single tear when gurathin realises murderbot is leaving aughhhhh "you need to check the perimeter" exploding.
murderbot stealing <3 lfg
i was really happy the novella ended how it did and that the show followed it!! no clean happy endings
Gurathins "i guess if you expect to have died already everything after is great is so funny to me
Not to pin-lee though
The eye contact thing is so dumb. Comming back to them torturing each other with things they themself hate. Idiots
Pin-lee and gurathins conversation lol
They dont like the killing. But they get it... and murderbot is even kinda sorry about it. Like sorry. This is the best i can do. If i weren't so crappy i could do better but i cant
Oh it knew it likely would be asked to go along as well
"I want you all to know i... i copy" bruuuhhj
Love that they just strapped that thing to the drone
Murderbot saying sorry and immediatelly thinking whats wrong me
Alien fucking fauna
Oh it is so bad at stalling. No murderbot your conversation skills are still so so bad. Its painful
The hand clasp and boldness is all. Oh that was so cringe but it probably thought it was cool
Mensah going out to hopefully save murderbot... but it just wants you save!!
The quick little eyeroll gurathin does whrn pin-lee asks if the guy is okay. Hes just like, welp whatever. Sucks to be him. Hes about as fed up with it all as murdetbot
Murderbot needs to better oick dialoge options. Also its "what" wasso genuinely surprised. Buddy you are not nearly as subtle as you thought
A little sad we didnt get to hear the canned you can leave me sentence and mensahs shut up
Last thing murderbot sees is them hurrying to its side as it thinks my clients are the best clients
I can not stop thinking about the stare-off between Murderbot and Gurathin. Like, when he says "See? That's not so bad." and Murderbot thinks "It was so, so bad."? Hilarious. Peak. Murderbot invented comedy.
Gurathin: "I-I have some, um, behavioral therapy modules if you'd like to try them?"
Bharadwaj: "Oh, you mean for the... for the..."
Gurathin: (cutting in) "They're non-specific."
What in the world kind of trauma is haunting Gurathin? (And when will we find out about it?)
In this episode, the story has him sneak into Mensah's room and bury his face in her pillow. Like, personally, to me this isn't as creepy as some other people are making it out, as he is clearly in a distressed state when doing this (trembling and hugging himself, breaks down crying). I see it as he's seeking comfort, it's not sinister or lecherous. Boundary-breaking? Yes, it's invasive. But I think that's mostly down to draw further parallels between Gurathin and Murderbot (as we see the crew getting upset learning Murderbot is reading their logs).
I get the impression Gurathin thought to do it after Bharadwaj said she kept smelling the creature in her flashbacks and could practically smell the creature still on her. Thinking of the emotional affect of smell, he used Mensah's pillow to summon the calming reassurance of her presence.
Which... we already know he's got some kind of PTSD from his behavior in episodes 1-2, but all of what we saw in episode 3 was just to drive that plot deeper down the road.
Plus, fun, we get a hint toward Gurathin's backstory with this little line:
Gurathin: "S-Sorry, it's an old habit. Being quiet."
Which...was he quiet because he snuck up on people? Is this a clue he was a former assassin? Or a spy? Or could it be hinting at trauma from being abused? Needing to be quiet to remain unseen from a threat?
Show, what happened to this man? How did he get so damaged?
In the books, the human character I identified the most was Baradwaj, who seemed to put the most real effort into understanding SecUnit out of all its friends clients, like I imagine I'd want to do. But in the show, I finally realized that the reason Gurathin is breaking down so hard is that he's living out my second-most-common recurring nightmare.
They've already alluded to some backstory that doesn't come up in the books for several more volumes: with Mensah's help, Gurathin defected from a really horrible situation in the Corporation Rim. With Mensah's help, Gura managed something almost no contract labor slaves ever get away with, broke his contract, escaped to a place where slavery is illegal, virtually impossible.
And his whole found family say that they know that hating the Corporation Rim is personal to him in a way it isn't for people who are native to Preservation. They're (trying to be) empathetic with the suffering he experienced, they're (trying to be) supportive, they SAY that they understand.
But Mensah was coming back to the Rim with or without him. Nobody could stop her. Which means that she's dragging him back to the scene of a half-a-lifetime's worth of trauma. And when he warns them, from hard experience, just how much danger they're in, they nod, and they say that they understand, and they thank him for educating them, but then they don't do ANYTHING he warns them to do, they run straight into situations that he warned them to avoid.
Because what he says sounds to them like exaggeration, like his trauma speaking instead of plain facts. Because they literally can't understand, not yet. They have no frame of reference to compare to what he says. They can't imagine that he's speaking literally.
Man, I wake up from nightmares like that at least twice a week, have done so for at least 40 years. I'm invested now. Gura, my brother, I see you.
Okay Murderbot tv show finale spoilers. I just watched episode 10 like half an hour ago and I’m having A MOMENT. Whoever in the writing room has decided that Gurathin would do that is beautiful and amazing and I love them.
And of course he would. Of course he just shoved an entire-ass person and its entire media folder of premium quality entertainment (and how sweet was that! I know he didn’t have time to sift through all that but still!) inside his brain and walked home. Whatever. “Gurathin has less processing power”. My brave stupid smart man has decided just at the end of the previous episode that he now assimilated this SecUnit into his group of weirdo friends (and if SecUnit doesn’t like it, well it should’ve killed him back on the survey), and he is the kind of guy who would do brave stupid smart things for his friends.
Fair warning I’m gonna tag this post as murderathin, I know parts of the fandom have for some reason problems with this ship specifically, but guys you don’t understand! This thing right here – housing an entire different person inside your brain/body – it’s MY JAM. That was written specifically FOR ME (this is why Malevolent podcast has me in a death grip). And anyway for me they now fall into a category of “not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing (so intertwined the lines blur)”. What are the consequences of uploading an entire new conscience into your brain? What are the consequences for your entire being, the thing that makes you you, just traveling around for a bit in another’s skull? I want to know.
[ID: Dastmalchian as Gurathin at the end of Murderbot, overlaid a post: “It has come to my attention that "up and not crying" is an acceptable Norwegian response to questions like "how are you doing?" and l'll be immediately adopting this for the days when I am, in fact, up and not crying…”/end ID]
A brief continuation of the scene in episode 7, in which the tooth monster takes a few more minutes to appear and Murderbot has time to play the bitter/sweet game.
“... It’s safer if they think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you,” Mensah said.
My insides melted. That’s the only way I could describe it. After a minute, when I had my expression under control, I folded my helmet back into my armor and walked over to stand with the humans. That wasn’t my first mistake of the day, but it was one of the stupider ones.
“I’ll go first,” Mensah said once we were all standing around in a circle like idiots. Then she made a weird flicking gesture in front of her face. “Sweet: Secunit, earlier today you saved Gurathin’s life - all of our lives. We owe you our gratitude for that.” She made the gesture again. “Bitter: you did it by killing Lebeebee, very suddenly and violently. I think many of us are struggling to reconcile that. We can talk about this.”
“We can talk about this,” the others agreed, creepily synchronized. Then they looked at me all expectantly, like they thought that I should somehow know what the hell they wanted.
“It’s your turn, Secunit,” Mensah remembered to clue me in after a moment. “You choose a memory of someone else in the circle, and share something sweet and something bitter about it. It’s something we do to encourage open communication and resolve conflict within the group.”
That was so fucking stupid that I couldn’t come up with anything to say for a full ten seconds. My buffer wanted me to ask them to please wait while I searched for information, but I didn’t let it, because I was kind of hoping that if I just stayed very still and quiet they would go back to thinking of me as an appliance like all the normal humans did.
“It’s not going to do it,” Pin-Lee muttered, like that meant I couldn’t hear them. “It’s obviously not going to do it, Mensah, this is a waste of time-”
“Give it a minute, babe, it’s thinking,” Arada said.
“You don’t know that!" Pin-Lee snapped. "You can’t know that, because it’s still not fucking saying anything, which is incredibly creepy, by the way-”
“Shh, don’t be judgmental, it doesn’t have to talk if it doesn’t-”
“Judgmental?” Pin-Lee had given up on muttering and was getting progressively louder. “It just blew a woman’s head off right in front of us and you’re worried about being judgmental?”
“Since you brought it up, maybe you should be a little more worried about pissing off the thing that just blew a woman’s head off,” Arada said, which was a pretty good point but still didn’t feel great to hear.
“Can we stop talking about blowing people’s heads off?” Bharadwaj asked. She looked like she felt sick, but her vitals were holding steady, so she wasn’t dying and it therefore wasn’t my problem.
“Talking about it is kind of the whole point of this,” Ratthi pointed out.
“It’s clearly not going to happen, though, because the person blowing the heads off isn’t fucking talking-”
“Sweet,” I said, and Pin-Lee shut up right in the middle of their sentence. There were a lot of things I could have said: you’ve never taken a blow torch to my hand just because you know I can’t stop you was one of them. So was: you’re the only humans who have ever talked to me like I’m a person. But what I said was: “You’re good clients because you don’t make my job harder on purpose. Bitter…” (I didn’t do the flicking gesture, because it was stupid. This whole thing was stupid. I should have just let that stupid tooth monster eat me days ago.) “You make my job harder by accident all the time.”
“And what is your job, as you see it?” That was Bharadwaj. I felt like she, at least, should have been willing to give me a break, since this was the second time I’d saved her life.
“To protect my clients from harm,” I said.
“By killing people?”
“If necessary.”
“And you believe that murdering Lebeebee was necessary.” From Bharadwai’s tone, I got the sense that she didn’t think it was necessary. That’s why I’m the one in charge of security.
“Yes,” I said. “She was a threat.”
“She was a person!” Arada said.
Well, yeah. “A person who was a threat.”
“You can’t go around just shooting people because you think they might be threats!” Pin-Lee said. “That’s the complete antithesis of the values Preservation was built on, it’s not okay and it’s not how we operate!"
“It was when you killed the hostile secunit at DeltFall,” I said.
That shut them up for all of about four seconds. “That was different,” Arada said, startled.
“How?” I asked.
“It was trying to kill us!”
“So was Lebeebee.” Seriously, had they not noticed that? Maybe they were even more helpless than I thought.
“No, no, it’s not the same,” Bharadwaj said. She sounded upset, and to be honest, I wasn’t feeling great about this either. “Lebeebee was just misguided, we could have talked to her, we could have come up with some other solution. The situation wasn’t the same!”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Lebeebee was a human, which means that she chose to do everything that she did, and I killed her for it. The secunit was a construct, which means that it never chose to do anything in its life. It followed orders that its governor module enforced with electric shocks to its neural tissue, and then you killed it for that. You’re right, that’s not the same.”
I wasn’t looking at them while I talked, because rogue secunits don’t have to make eye contact if they don’t want to, but no one said anything for such a long time that my threat assessment module started getting twitchy and I glanced down at them just to make sure they were still there.
They were. They were just standing there in our stupid circle, staring at me. Bharadwaj looked shocked. All of them did, except maybe Mensah, like I’d said something that had never occurred to them before. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe they hadn’t thought of what they did to that secunit as “killing” at all, because you couldn’t kill a machine. You just shut it down.
“Secunit…” Mensah was the first one to remember how to talk, but I didn’t get to find out what she wanted to say.
“I hear something,” I said. It looked like I was going to get another shot at getting eaten by a giant tooth monster after all.
I honestly think that Gura and Murderbot's last exchange does more for their relationship and understanding of each other than any other interaction in the entire season. (With the arguable exception of their brief mind-melding.)
Like, Gura was the first person to point out that it uses "I need to check the perimeter" as its default "I don't want to be here" excuse. And he calls it out for that. So when it tells him "I need to check the perimeter" (slightly pleadingly, tbh), he knows exactly what it means.
And he doesn't like it!!! Before, SecUnit/Murderbot leaving was his greatest wish. But he understands it now. He did so much work to get it back. He wants to give it a fresh start like the one Mensah gave him. He sees himself in it. ("You're avoiding eye contact." x2)
But he also understands what it's like to be forced to do things against your will. The rest of the team has no real experience in the Corporation Rim. Gura does. And he uses it to help the team. Including Murderbot!! ("We'll buy it." "It's not a possession!!" "Here it is.")
He's the one who knows that there is only one language that the Company speaks: Money. He's the one who proposes buying Murderbot's contract. He's the one who downloads MASSIVE amounts of data DIRECTLY INTO HIS BRAIN in order to restore its personality.
He was manipulated and controlled by the Company once. Forced to obey their commands. And so he gets it out of there. He offers to help it, show it the ropes.
And it turns him down. And that does make him sad.
But he also understands the need to leave. The need to make your own choices, even if they aren't the best ones. The need to experience freedom. True freedom, without training wheels.
And, of course, he understands how hard it is to break your training, even when you have free will. So he says what Murderbot needs to hear: "You need to check the perimeter." Reluctant, yes, but acknowledging.
So Murderbot thanks him. Because yes, it could have just left. But hearing that sentence repeated back made it SO much easier to open that door and walk out. A kind of metal lubricant, I suppose you could say. And so it says "thank you". And it means that.
(Also, ahhhhh, the parallels of Gura repeating things back to Murderbot when earlier it was Murderbot copying and repeating the words and phrases of the team.... wah. I love it.)
dededos
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