mensah/murderbot enjoyer @mensahbots - Tumblr Blog

notifications are turned off due to sock puppet harassment.

i love writing rarepairs, especially bookverse mensah/murderbot, mensah/pin-lee, bharadwaj/pin-lee, and indah/mensah (tv-verse, i'm mostly just invested in mensah/pin-lee). i like exploring most any interpretation of the dynamics, as long as i can convince myself it's plausible (eg, teammates, partners, pining, separated, "i wish i knew").

my favorite human character is mensah, my favorite bot character is miki, and my favorite murderbot is murderbot. every scene with indah is inexplicably one of the highlights of the series for me. perihelion and i have similar media consumption habits, and i'm on team redemption arc for leonide. i'm also manifesting bharadwaj and pin-lee casually getting married in book 8.

while in the fandom, i wrote quite a bit about undefined relationships, polyamory, and trauma recovery. murderbot and mensah's love for each other was what brought me to the fandom. i think their dynamic in the books is sublimely beautiful, and they will always be my otp.

fics - fanart - meta - tunes - funnies - otp-related reblogs

futuresurvey inspo - tv gifs - tv fanart - reference

internet harassment has put me in the hospital before, which i have always been open about as the reason to why i block liberally. due to block evasion, cyberstalking, and vitriolic sock puppet harassment, i have turned notifications off entirely here. but i'll leave my original statement about the fandom culture, inspired by nearly a decade of being insulted and harassed in fandom for writing rarepair ships of adult friends:

i am aroace and am not oppressing myself, you, or fictional characters by writing fanfiction. please, stop pretending you speak for all of us when you bully fan creators over creative expression and police what non-normative relationships in fiction "should" look like. stop calling innocuous queer fiction “immoral” in the name of activism. (stop gatekeeping and harassing aspec shipfic writers out of the fandom, for that matter. i think i'm the fourth, just of the ex-tmbd writers i know of...) misogynoir and demonizing woc in the name of ship bashing is not activism, either.

mocking survivors and telling them how problematic they are for writing ships of consenting adult friends is pretty fucked up, too. in this fandom and my last, people called me (a real survivor) an abuse, rape, incest, and pedophilia apologist for shipping unrelated adult friends. trivializing the real horrors survivors went through, treating our traumas as meaningless buzzwords to leverage against us while you bash innocuous hobby writing is repugnant. murderbot fans showed me that this was not an issue specific to my prior fandom; the average person apparently has no sense of integrity or basic decency, especially when it comes to interacting with real human survivors of abuse and sexual violence.

i am severely depressed, and being open about that also only incentivized harassers. and the culture of this fandom showed me that people apparently jump at the opportunity to insult and bully anyone they know they can get away with treating that way: anyone on the margins, or anyone they know has already been bullied, harassed, and ostracized, has unpopular interests, and will make an easy target. the longer i stayed in this fandom, the more depressed it made me, but the harassment i experienced in recent weeks was disturbing and crossed the line. i’m done with fandoms entirely.

to reiterate, i am not affiliated with any communities, events, or vocal people in the fandom, nor am i in any murderbot fandom spaces on tumblr or other sites. and wow, this fandom hates that murderbot loves mensah. depicting graphic assault framed lightly or shipping it with minor male characters, random constructs, or any bot, that's all great, but shipping it with its favorite human... that's where the whole fandom draws the line: the most important human character, a black woman, being loved by the protagonist.

even with other ships involving mensah, people always made up nonsense reasons why it was morally wrong for me to write and love them. the bashing towards mensah/murderbot was similarly illogical, puritanical, and often bigoted, even from so-called “shipping friendly” people in the fandom. “shipping friendly” apparently only applies to non-female characters. as in my last fandom, murderbot fans near-unanimously decided certain marginalized characters are unloveable, unshippable. it boggles the mind given how progressive the source material is.

i still love these characters, but i will not miss this fandom or the people in it who love to demonize, dehumanize, censor, and torment fans who explore fandom-unpopular subject matter in fanworks.

I’m leaving this blog up as an archive because i love mensah/murderbot and always will. i’m not ashamed of the fanworks i made while participating in the fandom. i’m saddened that these dynamics are so underexplored in the wider fandom despite how great the characters are in the source material, and i’m devastated that i’ll no longer be able to publicly express my love for them without fearing for my safety. despite the fandom, i was hoping to write and draw these characters for many more years. i love them so much, and i love drawing and writing about them more than anything.

but because harassment in my prior fandom involved suicide baiting, having my fanworks publicly mocked, and being tormented to the point of needing hospitalization, i’m tapping out now that things have escalated so much in this one. my blog’s notifications are off thanks to the sock puppet harassment in reblogs. leaving fandom spaces, having dms and asks off, and blocking liberally in this fandom was not enough. i will no longer be participating in fandom. bullies win like always.

here's a segue. this was already in my pinned post but is more relevant than ever:

Sometimes it's about power and control. Stop doing what you're doing and do what I want you to do. Stop writing what you're writing and write what I want you to write. Or else.

There are a lot of reasons for this and sometimes even if you know the person very well, you can't tell what their reason is. But sometimes there's only one thing you can do about it. Don't stop. (via Martha Wells' blog)

#pinned/intro

#one for the road #it hurts a lot. i'll love them forever

puremode

louise glück!!!!

akajustmerry

friend sent me an Instagram reel yesterday with 1000s of likes that was basically like "pride and prejudice is timeless actually because it's about an autism4autism romance 🥰" and then the creator proceeded to cite moments in the book and film where Lizzie and Darcy are "socially awkward" and....listen. I'm far from an Austen scholar, but I have taught Austen novels as an educator and this kind of psycho-pop analysis that views characters as individuals with autonomy over their actions, rather than tools in a story written at a particular time to say something about that time, pisses me off more than I can say without sounding like an asshole. I'm sorry but Darcy isn't rude and awkward and even cruel to Lizzie because he has autism, he says and does those things because he's a wealthy upper class land owning man raised to see a middle class woman from a large family with no male heirs like Elizabeth as inherently beneath him which he expresses to her multiple times because it is socially acceptable for him to do so in a society where someone like him is privileged above almost all others. He is "socially awkward" around her because of misogyny and classism (PREJUDICE) and she is "socially awkward" around him because a woman of her standing at that time simply wouldn't have had much to do with the gentry but to actually push back against the shit that Darcy says would be social suicide for her whole family so she protests the only way she can which is refusing his advances (PRIDE). not to be the "context collapse is the death of media literacy" guy. But this is the problem with the kind of head empty, let people enjoy things, if I can't relate to it what's the point type crowd. Youse think you're being so quirky justifying incoherent and anachronistic interpretations with your rampant individualism, ensuring that other people never confront anything that challenges them in these stories like patriarchal misogyny and classism. Pride and Prejudice becomes an "autism4autism romance", completely undermining the historical context of its status as one of the great social satires about the class and gender politics that Austen so expertly observed around her. This attitude is why we have nonsensical historical dramas that actively hate history like fucking edgy bdsm "Wuthering Heights", Bridgerton, The Buccaneers, and even a 2025 Frankenstein movie where the monster is just misunderstood and does no wrong uwu etc. because individual relatability and catharsis is king over anything actually saying anything about anything now. Everything is relatable and nothing is meaningful.

#reblogs here in a polite way #fandom meta #well while we’re in the tags: wells herself has said murderbot diaries is a story about slavery and trauma #she’s also explicitly tied its feelings about sex & touch to fear & horror about loss of autonomy & how the world treats/views constructs #which is such an interesting and meaningful kind of thing to explore... at least in my opinion

me @ me

#seriously when my depression is like “it's over” i'm like ... okay let's go make indah cry over and on mensah it will help. and it does.#murderbot diaries #m

i think murderbot has months if not years worth of mensah footage saved to permanent storage. mensah smiling to herself after it makes a joke in the feed, mensah's pointy eyebrow that isn't actually pointed (you had to see it), mensah not upset but not not upset, mensah's polite planetary leader “i am listening and receptive to your ideas” smile, mensah's— her...

wait.

She did the lifted eyebrow look which I had on file as meaning: I know you’re trying to be funny but you’re not funny.

...does murderbot literally have a catalogue of mensah expressions?

#i was just going to end this post by saying and i think it reviews the footage a lot #and i think art lightly roasts it about that #but i got derailed... it's so sweet how it describes her + that she knows it likes observing her expressions so closely #and apparently saves them with notes.. cries......#murderbot diaries #mensahbot

mensahbots

#i earnestly think pin-lee is horny about mensah's integrity #she lies in bed thinking about mensah's values and moral compass and how dedicated she is to doing good in the world etc #mensah puts her foot down firmly/tactfully/intimidatingly in a steering committee meeting and that night pl perhaps fantasizes about it

lilyblisslys

there should be a cool, chill way to say things like “I’m struggling” or “I’m having a hard time” that doesn’t imply you might have needs

#t #both of them #but i especially love that network effect moment when it's worried she's being held against her will in a flashback when she asks for #it to come get her at the festival and she says she's just tired. and mb is like something is really wrong.#i know she gets tired sometimes -- but she hates to admit it #god i love them so much

the-music-dealer

Visit Original Link

(Ginger’s Song of the Day: June 3rd, 2020)

“If you’ll be my star I’ll be your sky You can hide underneath me and come out at night When I turn jet black And you show off your light I live to let you shine I live to let you shine But you can skyrocket away from me And never come back if you find another galaxy Far from here with more room to fly Just leave me your stardust to remember you by If you’ll be my boat I’ll be your sea A depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity Ebbing and flowing And pushed by a breeze I live to make you free I live to make you free But you can set sail to the west if you want to And pass the horizon, ‘til I can’t even see you Far from here Where the beaches are wide Just leave me your wake to remember you by.”

#music #i will always love it for them

apoemaday

To Drink

by Jane Hirshfield

I want to gather your darkness in my hands, to cup it like water and drink. I want this in the same way as I want to touch your cheek — it is the same — the way a moth will come to the bedroom window in late September, beating and beating its wings against cold glass, the way a horse will lower his long head to water, and drink, and pause to lift his head and look, and drink again, taking everything in with the water, everything.

#it continues to be their poem

i keep going round and round on the same old circuit a wire travels underground to a vacant lot where something i can't see interrupts the current and shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot and from behind the screen it can look so perfect but it's not so here i'm sitting in my car at the same old stop light i keep waiting for a change but i don't know what so red turns into green turning into yellow but i'm just frozen here on the same old spot and all i have to do is to press the pedal but i'm not no, i'm not

people are tricky you can't afford to show anything risky anything they don't know the moment you try well, kiss it goodbye

so baby, kiss me like a drug, like a respirator and let me fall into the dream of the astronaut where i get lost in space that goes on forever and you make all the rest just an afterthought and i believe it's you who could make it better though it's not no, it's not no, it's not

#music #post-exit strategy mensahbot ..

polkadotmotmot

Kathy McCarty - Crepe Myrtle, 2024 - Oil on canvas

#t #mensah farm vibes to me

johnnycrass

i always look back in anger but its important to look forward with it also

#pin-lee

mensahbots

there's a new q&a on youtube with martha wells at vbz books in croatia (a publishing company) that is great. they asked some really thoughtful questions, and it was awesome how much ground was covered. but i am here of course to relay the mensahbot-relevant bits ^^

according to wells, murderbot is now its human friends' equal, but it took time to get to that point. i interpreted this as meaning that the humans and murderbot see each other as equals And that circumstances around their dynamics have changed such that things are more equitable between them, since we see suggestions of that in the text. it was nice to hear that either way, wells sees them as equals, because i think there are some doubts in fanon. i think a lot of its "accepting/embracing my own personhood" arc, how its humans accommodate and fight for it, and its ever-evolving relationships with them in book canon illustrate this in a lovely way, personally

she also mentioned that initially, the preservation humans (mensah included) were afraid of it and had to overcome that (i think we see implication mensah feels some lingering guilt about that in "home," which i think is a nice element to their dynamic, especially for the post-exit strategy era). specifically, she said they were afraid at first but "built so much trust," which is just so lovely. at another point, wells described how murderbot and humans have to make more effort to understand and connect with each each other than, say, murderbot and art, who have more innate ability to connect. i really like this element of the story, because i think it makes murderbot's closeness with its preservation human friends that much more meaningful! especially mensah's ability to make it feel understood and cared for, which i think the narrative paints as a big deal for murderbot and for her. likewise, i think how attuned it is to mensah is that much more meaningful with this framing

wells also said amena sees murderbot as "her mom's dumb friend" and "this person her mom loves" :3

mensahbots

i listened to the q&a again, and ... i'm embarrassed. i think i spread misinformation here ^^'

initially i took notes while watching with a (non-mensahbot fan) friend, and we both heard "this person her mom loves." but i just rewatched to transcribe a different section for a meta writeup, and i'm 99% sure wells says "knows," not "loves." not that mensah doesn't seem to love mb a lot in canon, but i feel badly for misquoting mw here!

in case anyone was wondering, the parts i transcribed are more relevant to what wells said more directly about their perception of each other. she presents murderbot as its human friends' equal, and mentions that there's lingering discomfort with humans in general related to its history of enslavement and the possibility of humans having power over it:

Humans do have, could have, [or] possibly have power over it. So it didn’t start out as an equal relationship, even though it might be more equal with its friends now—or be equal with its friends now—there’s still that history of it, so there’s discomfort there.

she then later highlighted that with murderbot's positive relationships with humans, including that there's a range there. she contrasted amena with the preservationaux team, where murderbot and the humans have worked to develop a more equitable and trusting relationship. amena was never afraid of it and never thought of it as a thing or a threat, only as her mother's friend. meanwhile preservationaux, mensah included, had to move past fear:

Even if people like Mensah and Ratthi and Pin-Lee and them were afraid of it at first, they built so much trust.

i think the "built so much trust" part is important (and part of why wells positions murderbot's human friends as equal to murderbot). it trusts them and knows they do not want to own or control it. not only are they as dissatisfied with the guardianship system as murderbot is, they oppose slavery and actively work to combat construct oppression. any concerns murderbot has about its relationship with mensah have little to do with the idea that she wants to control or abuse it. in the post-exit strategy era there is a lot of trust and fondness between them, plus a sense that they are on equal footing interpersonally.

i think the network effect exchange with farai illustrates that really nicely:

She added, “I wanted to ask what your relationship to her is.” Uh. In the Corporation Rim, Mensah was my owner. On Preservation, she was my guardian. (That’s like an owner, but Preservation law requires they be nice to you.) But Mensah and Pin-Lee were trying to get my status listed as “refugee working as employee/security consultant.” But I knew Farai knew all that, and I knew she was asking for an answer that was closer to objective reality. And wow, I did not have that answer.

and this idea does not come out of nowhere:

I said, “It’s part of my job, not to listen to the System feeds when they . . . make mistakes.” That’s why you need constructs, SecUnits with organic components. But she should know that. Before she accepted delivery of me, she had logged about ten protests, trying to get out of having to have me. I didn’t hold it against her. I wouldn’t have wanted me either. (all systems red)

In the deployment center, when I was standing there while Dr. Mensah explained why she didn’t want to rent me as part of the bond guarantee agreement, she had called the increase in intelligence [and use of the governor module to limit autonomy] a “hellish compromise.” (artificial condition)

“If people won’t be shooting at me what will I be doing?” Maybe I could be her bodyguard. “I think you can learn to do anything you want.” She smiled. “We’ll talk about that when we get you home.” (all systems red)

[Mensah:] "You can do anything you want.” (all systems red) I told it I was a free bot, trying to get back to its human guardian. (The “free bot” thing is deceptive. Bots are considered citizens in some non-corporate political entities like Preservation, but they still have appointed human guardians.) (artificial condition)

Was I jealous of a human-form bot? I didn’t want to be a pet robot, that’s why I’d left Dr. Mensah and the others. (Not that Mensah had said she wanted a pet SecUnit. I don’t think she wanted a SecUnit at all.) What did Miki have that I wanted? I had no idea. I didn’t know what I wanted. (rogue protocol)

What I did know was that Abene really had loved Miki. That hurt in all kinds of ways. Miki could never be my friend, but it had been her friend, and more importantly, she had been its friend. Her gut reaction in a moment of crisis was to tell Miki to save itself. (rogue protocol)

I just wasn’t sure I wanted to see her again. (Or more accurately, for her to see me again.) (exit strategy) She was looking at my face, and suddenly I couldn’t look at hers anymore. She said, “Yes. I handled the situation very badly. I apologize.” (exit strategy)

(There were “free” bots wandering around on Preservation, though they had guardians who were technically supposed to keep track of them.) (network effect)

Instead of Mensah having a pet bot like poor Miki, or a sad bot/human construct that needed someone to help it, she had me. (network effect)

I don’t need a critique from a “free” bot. (fugitive telemetry)

I said, “Contract slavery is illegal on Preservation. You have refugee status here and no one can send you back or make you do anything you don’t want to do." (fugitive telemetry)

mensah says as much, too, and i think hearing that from her is meaningful for it (also murderbot's thoughts and feelings in the lead up to the moment do a lot to flesh out its view of their relationship):

The words kept wanting to come out. It gave me context for the emotions I was feeling, I managed not to say. “It kept me company without…” “Without making you interact?” she suggested. That she understood even that much made me melt. I hate that this happens, it makes me feel vulnerable. Maybe that was why I had been nervous about meeting Mensah again, and not all the other dumb reasons I had come up with. I hadn’t been afraid that she wasn’t my friend, I had been afraid that she was, and what it did to me. I said, “The shuttle will take you and the others to the company gunship. I’m not going with you.” I hadn’t meant to tell her and I don’t know why I did. Did I secretly want her to talk me out of it? I hate having emotions about real humans instead of fake ones, it just leads to stupid moments like this. She almost stopped, but remembered at the last second not to. “I can protect you.” “Because you own me.” “That’s what they think, but we—” She cut herself off, and took a breath. “I wish you trusted me, but I understand why you don’t.” (exit strategy)

and it is clear that post-exit strategy, murderbot sees itself as mensah's equal:

“Do you love my second mother? Thiago thinks so.” I should have known this was going to turn into an interrogation. I said, “Not the way he thinks.” Her face went all dubious. “I don’t think you know what he thinks.” He doesn’t know what I think, either, so there. I was distracted converting a dumpload of raw log info from a visual image back into searchable data and if I got the fields wrong it was going to be a giant mess. I probably should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t want to hurt Amena’s feelings. I said, “Your second mother is…” Client wasn’t the right word, not anymore. “My teammate.” I could see I had to clarify. It was really hard finding the right words. “Before your second mother, I had never been an actual member of a team before. Just an…” Amena finished, “An appliance for a team.” (network effect)

but since this idea is sadly very contested in the fandom, here's more word of god on the subject:

[In All Systems Red Mensah thought:] I want to save this person, I know what’s, I know what’s right for them, and she grew out of that pretty quickly. That was one of the reasons why Murderbot had to leave at the end of the first book, because if Murderbot had stayed, the relationships would not have been the same. It would have been more dependent, and they would have seen it as more dependent. It wouldn’t have had as much of a chance to grow, and I don’t think the relationships would have flowered like the way they did. It would have been like trading up to a nicer captor, basically, and not the equal thing they have going back and forth now. And I think that her realizing that it was a much more complex identity than she had thought [in ASR], and that’s what’s pushed her to get to know it better. And also the fact that it came to the — when she was captured in Exit Strategy and it comes to get her, that’s a real strong emotional bond there, the fact that someone was — I mean, it was free and clear. It could have left. It could have, you know, it didn’t have any obligation to her, and the fact that it came back and, and did this to rescue her, that helped them form a really strong bond. And just the fact that she realizes she had the savior complex thing and it forgave her for that? Or didn’t blame her for it? That’s part of it, too. But I think it’s just the fact that in a lot of ways, they have that really close, kind of intimate relationship of people who have gone through life and death together, and that’s let them — it’s been a good foundation for a friendship of getting to know each other.

[Mensah does the] thing that sets off the whole series [in the cubicle scene in ASR]; she makes that decision to go in and say, well, there really is a person under there. She kind of knew it intellectually, because she knew how SecUnits were made, but she hadn’t really nerved herself up to make the connection, try to make a connection with it, and possibly because it’s like, she couldn’t tell, did it want to make a connection with her? And when she sees it talk to Volescu like this, she’s like, I’m going to treat it as basically another member of the team; that’s the only thing I can do. That’s the right thing to do, and that’s what [the cubicle scene in ASR] is about.

When she’s back in the Preservation territory, Murderbot — and to a lesser extent the other people who were with her, the rest of her team — are the only ones who really understand what she went through. (sbtb podcast, 2020)

there was another good interview where wells discusses her intent with mensah more:

I made Mensah a very empathetic person who tries to understand everyone even when things … you know, she can’t. She’s a very moral person. She sees the whole — basically, the horrificness of what the Company does to SecUnits, but she’s kinda trapped in this situation now. And again, it was the two characters talking to each other and she makes mistakes, too, and I wanted to show that Preservation is a place that’s trying to be better, and in a lot of respects it is much, much better. It’s trying to be equitable and a place that cares for everyone, and it’s still working toward that, it still has progress to make. I don’t think any human in society is perfect, but some of them are actually trying to be better, and [Mensah]’s one of them. So she makes mistakes dealing with SecUnit of assuming she knows what it wants, and at that point it doesn’t even know what it wants, but it has to go and figure that out. So I didn’t see her as a perfect character, a perfect person, but again, someone who is trying to do good and who knew that a large part of that was going to be listening to the other person to find out what they need. (erin underwood youtube interview with martha wells, 2025)

and on the subject of reciprocity in the mensah-murderbot dynamic (though there's a lot more to be said about it), while poking through interviews for mensah discussion, i also found this moment of martha wells talking about which comes first for her, the characters or the world. she was discussing writing the cubicle scene and developing these things simultaneously as questions arose for her:

What is the kind of world that would create this situation for both of them? What is Mensah's background that allows her to kind of be outside enough of Murderbot’s situation that she it doesn't totally understand it? What's Murderbot’s situation that it can see Mensah and try to relate to Mensah? (new scientist, 2024)

#meta #murderbot diaries #long post

d3monl0ver

yeah that’s a common mistake actually, a dusty periwinkle hanky means you like receiving butterfly kisses but that shade of morning mist means you wanna get killed with a pipe wrench

#bharadwaj and pin-lee respectively.. to me

freak-motion

really liked this conversation from exit strategy so i drew it...yay

#so good #;__; <33

rneliflua

#fandom meta #quite literally.#this is not what art is about. but internet bullies hate art and they hate marginalized people making art that they don’t relate to.

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