I’ve written a pretty huge analysis of the use of the word “ROGUE” in The Murderbot Diaries! It’s on AO3 in two parts. The first part looks at the five novellas and the second part at Network Effect
Part I:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
And now part II
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The key finding is that Murderbot comes to see itself as embodying a rogue SecUnit, rather than:
the scary rogue SecUnits the entertainment media and the newsfeeds were so fond of
Instead the majority of references to rogues in Network Effect are rogues, like Murderbot which are helpful SecUnits which happen not to have an intact governor module
CRITICALLY in Network Effect this happens:
"Surely they won't suspect anything," Ratthi was saying to the others at the bulk dock. "Who runs around with a friendly rogue SecUnit?
Besides us, I mean."”
This seems to be a turning point, as after this no fewer than four times the words rogue SecUnit are associated closely with the word “friend”
Anyway: it’s interesting meta