#murderwars extras

[katachresiswriting]

the state of murderbot's relationships with various machine intelligences in my fic right now, rip

[katachresiswriting]

O.O tell us more about mb & fibre crafts?

so. as you could probably tell from my fic. i fucking love any instance of mb taking up fiber arts!!! 👍 absolutely feral for it!!!! like! i like the headcanon that fiber arts are so important on preservation, and there must be family techniques for certain things that get passed down from parent to child as kids learn how to work with fiber and!!!! family!!!!!!! i dunno i am struck incoherent at the thought of mb's humans teaching it fiber arts like! they care it and it care them,,,,,🥹 i am just always so verklempt when mb participates in any preservation life/traditions not bc it needs to "fix" itself and blend in but to be part of a community, even if it's a human one

and smth smth ok maybe mb is a horrific killing machine murderbot of a thing only good for security and violence (as mb sees itself) but! this killing machine is learning how to make things!!! those hands are capable of spinning out more than just a long thread of hurt as its own life has been for so so long and now are weaving something different. smth it chose! smth smth imagery and symbolism of life and one's choices reflected in thread and fabric and smth smth mb taking the power into its own hands now to choose creation instead of destruction!!! and it's even the creation of smth beautiful! it's thread (spinning)/fabric (weaving, knitting, etc), these soft things that keep you warm, that clothe you (confer upon you dignity) and can be personalized! you can choose to use whatever colors and patterns and make anything you want and express yourself! and smth smth the care and love instilled in these hand made things! even just one item of clothing would require potentially hundreds of hours of labor poured into it. it's highly valued and it's treasured and seen as important. and things that get worn out and old get patched and fixed instead of thrown out. nothing is disposable! the fixes can be beautiful (via embroidery)!!!! like. fuck.

also it's a hobby mb can do that keeps its hands busy and isn't consuming media (not that there's anything wrong with consuming media; for so long it was the only thing it could get away with bc no one could see watching/reading stuff inside its head (the only place where it had any freedom and anything belonged to it; the company could still own mb's body but it could never own its thoughts again) and escaping from its vicious understimulated boredom and grim ass reality surrounded by all the worst the world had to offer). but i firmly believe that everyone needs a hobby that makes you create shit, rather than just passively consume shit, and fiber arts are really perfect for mb (and really any construct, i think). after all, weaving and knitting (and crochet?? not sure here) are just like,,,primitive methods of coding. it's math!!! a bunch of the first coders for computers were women bc they were knitters and they understood that shit!!! code and computers can claim lineage all the way back to the creation of textiles and there's just smth so fucking poetic to me for a construct, a machine intelligence, to touch its roots like that. (and it's also preservation's roots!!!) also mb can totally still consume media while doing it lmaoooooooooo

my specific mb & three fiber arts/crafts headcanons are:

mb being talented at hacking -> talented at coding -> talented at understanding knitting/crochet patterns, so i think mb is technically better at knitting & crochet (esp very elaborate things like lace) than three, but three is better at stuff like embroidery (freehand and requires better visualization or smth??), tho both of them are still very proficient in the opposing skills

or rather mb is theoretically proficient at embroidery but basically never does it unless it feels like it can't patch smth in an aesthetically pleasing way without embroidery. it's not that mb cares that much about aesthetics/visual appeal, but also it has realized with time that it doesn't enjoy when its things look banged up/bad bc things that look shitty are like,,,things it associates with its time spent as company property. it's people who are respected and have rights that have things (esp clothes) that look nice. mb will never have much of a sense for fashion and defaults to things like many pocketed cargo pants and hoodies, but those clothes could at least be clean and neat instead of dirty/ragged/scruffy

(oh, besides knitting and crocheting, lace can also be made by bobbin, tatting, and needle. mb is better at bobbin lace which is like coding, again, and three is better at needle lace. they're equally proficient at tatting lace? i don't think either of them would do tatting much since it's very limited in pattern. mb doesn't bother with bobbin lace as much as it does knit lace since it creates smaller scale decorative things whereas you could knit a very elaborate lace shawl, esp if you have super fine yarn, like with the orenburg goat down that goes into orenburg shawls, or uhhh shetland knit lace tho i dunno what kinda fiber they use for that off the top of my head)

oh yeah, they're both proficient in spinning as well but they're not huge on it? spinning is smth that is more commonly handled by (spinning) bots anyway, for plant based fibers like cotton and linen (produced by ag-bots). families with farms and livestock that produce wool like sheep and goats are more likely to spin those animal fibers by themselves since yarn is better for trade. i think maybe young children in families with fiber producing livestock tend to be taught and then tasked with a lot of spinning as a way of teaching them patience and stuff

i have already mentioned in my fic that arada does weaving and convinced mb to get a loom so she could have a weaving buddy. it's fine. mb doesn't dislike it and it can get very complicated, which is more interesting for it, but given how much of its time it spends off preservation and how not-portable looms are, it only ever does it when it's on preservation station.

which reminds me, if there's one fiber arts related thing i could go back and change in my fic, it's making it sound like mb has never carried its fiber crafts projects aboard ART. it has. let's just say that it's not in the habit of traveling around with them bc ART got kinda weird about its fiber crafts stuff

[katachresiswriting]

i love implying that mb is maybe a bit more manipulative than you’d think based on the impression it gives with its canon narration. i was just thinking about the nature of written work, especially edited writing, the ways you can manipulate someone’s perception of events by cutting things out or making certain word choices. i keep thinking about the fact that the books we get are “mb’s edited stories.” (well, i guess this isn’t confirmed but i get the strong impression that they are, in-universe.)

if you’d gotten the (“edited”) version of chapter 20 where the paragraph where mb talked about how “i forgot” sounds better had been deleted, then all you’d be left with would be

Oh yeah. I forgot about that. I said, “Oh, oops. I forgot.” 

and everyone would just be like “oh mb, you’re so silly teehee” and anyway, i accidentally made myself a bit sick in the head thinking about what kinda editorializing mb might or might not be doing in-universe

[katachresiswriting]

SecUnit Meets the Hatchlings

credit for volescu's first name being raresh goes to ArtemisTheHuntress, i believe, and the reference to a "leaf-year" being part of preservation's education system comes from BWizard's fic, grew up together

“We’ll be giving two to a neighbor,” Raresh explains as he opens the door. “She’s old enough now to keep pets, and she’s always wanted birds.” He can’t see or hear SecUnit behind him, but he knows that it’s following and listening. Sometimes their friends have a hard time figuring out exactly how much attention SecUnit is actively paying at any given time—it used to be easier before Ratthi had accidentally told SecUnit about some of its tells, which it’d then coded out of its behavior—but Raresh has found that he’s never really struggled with that.

He’s not sure how, exactly. He’d say it’s something about the weight of its regard, having that superhuman attention on you, except even Ayda can struggle to tell sometimes, and she’s not only one of the sharpest, most observant people he knows, but the human closest to SecUnit. And certainly, he can’t say a single other person on the original team for The Survey is lacking in wit or discernment.

What about the other one? asks SecUnit.

Raresh pauses in the doorway. “How did you know there are three?” He’s not concerned; he knows there could be nothing malicious about this. He trusts SecUnit not to invade his privacy without good reason. He’s just curious. Over the years, he’s gotten used to SecUnit knowing many things well before a human in its place could’ve figured anything out. It’s a machine intelligence who can think at much quicker speeds than any human ever could. But sometimes he has to wonder what clues tipped it off about this or that. Any insight into its thought processes is always fascinating.

Is it just Raresh’s imagination or is there the slightest, most minuscule hesitation before SecUnit explains, You said you’re giving two, so there are more. But you said four in a clutch is weird.

Raresh says, “Ah, yes, that’s true,” as he enters the room. One of SecUnit’s drones floats in and creeps curiously towards the cage. “The last hatchling will be staying with me.” He reaches out and touches the cage. “Hey, Mitty.” She looks up at Raresh, then to SecUnit looming behind him, and coos gently. Raresh half-turns to SecUnit. “SecUnit, this is Committee Head of Friendliness, Mitty for short. You haven’t met her yet. She’s new.”

Weird name, says SecUnit. It’s said that about all of Raresh’s doves. It has different ways of saying the same thing though, so Raresh knows it’s genuinely impressed by how weird this one is and wondering who’s responsible.

So he explains, “Nafisa named her.”

Ah.

Raresh just knows Nafisa’s going to be getting her hands on some piece of media she’s been trawling the feed for desperately by this time tomorrow. He’s not sure how SecUnit always finds the stuff or how it knows what to download at what places, but it does. Perhaps his children just tell it what they’re hoping for most and SecUnit’s soft spot for children makes it tolerate their requests, but they swear up and down they never do.

SecUnit’s drone sidles down closer, and Mitty looks up at the new, unfamiliar thing making itself known to her, then at Raresh as if asking, “What is that?” One would think that a new rescue like her would have more objections about a strange bit of technology getting so close. Sofiane would probably say something about Raresh and SecUnit (and its drones, apparently, which makes some strange kind of sense given it treats them like extensions of its body) having the same ‘good vibes’ that makes animals just tend to trust them more. SecUnit had looked at Sofiane like they’d lost their mind a bit when they’d said it had ‘good vibes like dad.’ And then it’d looked to him with this expression that just about screamed, Help, I think your child is broken.

Raresh snaps out of that line of thought when SecUnit says out loud, tone dubious, “They look diseased.” It’s also said that about every squab it’s seen, but for this it sounds the same way each time: worried.

It says it hates flora and still pays so much attention to Raresh’s garden whenever it visits. It says it hates fauna and pretends badly not to care while it worries whether they’re ill. SecUnit says a lot of things.

“They’re perfectly healthy,” he reassures it, opening the cage and putting a hand in for Mitty to inspect. She’s off to the side away from the nest. She hasn’t been handling the loss of her mate and single parenthood well so Raresh has had to switch off with her on feeding them, which means she’s more than used to him handling them, but it’s still good to check when it comes to these things. She has no objections, so Raresh goes ahead and scoops one of the squabs up. This is one of the two unnamed girls who’ll be going home with Kanza soon.

People complain about having a hard time telling pigeons apart unless they’re different breeds. Raresh has never had a hard time with this. SecUnit hasn’t either. Sometimes he wonders if it’s because of some strange organic instinct, like it is with Raresh, or if it can tell via minuscule visual differences apparent to its inhuman perception. Considering its ability to see ultraviolet—and what a wondrous shock that had been when Raresh had realized—it’s most likely the latter.

He asks, “Would you like to hold them?” not because he expects it to say yes, but because he doesn’t want to deny it the chance to make the choice. He can’t say he’s not shocked when it nods—and he knows SecUnit notices because it is in many ways very sensitive to other people’s emotions, likely as a survival mechanism—but he does his best not to miss a beat and carefully places the squab in SecUnit’s open hand without touching it.

SecUnit has large, long-fingered hands proportional to its imposing height. The little chick is positively wee sitting in the center of its palm. Out the corner of his eye, Raresh sees SecUnit make a face. He thinks it’s combined interest and disgust, as well as a little bit of fear. It still has no real faith in its ability to be gentle for all that it and Three have repeatedly demonstrated just how gentle they can be when they indulge the children by playing with them. Okay, I’m done holding it, it says quickly, and Raresh can almost feel the anxiety suffusing its voice prickling at him.

When it returns her to Raresh’s palm, it asks, Do you think she’ll remember them? Raresh glances at Mitty and the unnamed boy who’ll be staying. Do you think they ever miss each other?

Raresh is pretty sure it’s not just referring to the upcoming separation between parent and child, sibling and sibling. He can’t presume to know what it really means to talk about, however. “I think,” he considers carefully, hoping that whatever he says next will be the right thing, or at least not harmful, “that they might find each other familiar, if they run into each other again. But I expect that they’ll have good, fulfilled lives separate from each other, so they won’t be languishing away from yearning.”

He can’t see its face to try to figure out if that was what it wanted to hear, but he thinks maybe its silence only feels thoughtful. The chick peeps softly, her eyes closing, and Raresh returns her to the nest. The other two squint at him with bleary expressions on their scraggly little faces. The boy totters to his feet, his naked wings flapping clumsily with the movement. “That’s the one who’ll be staying with me,” Raresh says, letting the chick stumble up to his hand and peck at it. He’s such a curious little thing. Already shaping up to be a bit of trouble though, where his sisters aren’t. An idea occurs, and Raresh offers, “Would you like to name him?”

“Me?” SecUnit asks, taken aback, maybe even a bit aghast. Raresh can picture its eyes going huge and round, its expression reminiscent of nothing so much as a startled doe. It’d dislike knowing he’s making that comparison, and the fact that he thinks in these moments, it looks younger than his eldest, who hasn’t even finished her leaf-year of school. It warns him with a tinge of embarrassment, I’m not good at naming things.

“That’s fine,” Raresh reassures it. “By all accounts, neither am I.”

It spends a couple of seconds that must be a long time for it considering the squab doing his best to hassle Raresh’s hand. Mischief, I guess, it decides, even more embarrassment and hesitance coloring its voice. Its blurry face twists in his peripheral vision.

Raresh tells it, “That’s a good name,” as he pulls his hand away and closes the cage door. The sharp smell of sanitizer fills the room, and SecUnit pointedly places the bottle on the table next to him. While he’s cleaning his hands, his husband yells, “Hey! Prema’s here!” Raresh can barely hear the words through the door.

Basim never likes wearing his feed interface when doing household chores, so Raresh has to open the door to shout back, “Okay, thanks!”

SecUnit practically radiates disgruntlement at their inefficient human communication. Smothering his amusement, Raresh coughs and gestures out the door. “Shall we?”

We’re all waiting on you, it tells him grumpily. It lets him go first instead of taking point as they head to the living room.

[katachresiswriting]

The Other Surveyors

i kinda didn’t really know if i wanted the other surveyors to be like,,,ok or not, and i kinda feel bad that they’re coming across as kind of stupid but like, i just thought about how secunits are seen in universe even in non-cr spaces, right? they’re portrayed in media as subsentient killing machines, typically with less of a face than a humanform bot. you could get newsbursts about the leader of an allied polity a system over where it’s shit like “political leader ayda mensah bought a secunit” blah blah and all that but if you have deeply set prejudices (that you're not aware are prejudices bc no one's ever really aware of their prejudice), how likely are you to click on shocking newsburst titles about how the allied planet leader went coocoo coconuts bringing a corporate surveillance machine home and was insisting it was a person? would you do deeper research into it or just look at headlines (not all of them kind or even objective) and then shake your head and be like “well preservation’s going down the shitter i guess. not my problem tho. glad i don’t live there"

would you look at the headshot of some surly angsty looking maybe 18-20 yo(?) whose name is listed as "secunit" and be like "shit that's a real secunit" or be like "wow that kid is fucking weird in the head"? i feel like it'd be like seeing a profile listed for someone you could assume to be one of the Actual Adults' baby cousin tagging along for an internship where the name is listed as "coffee machine" or "war machine" or i dunno fucking,,, "terminator" or something? (i feel secunits seem about as sentient as a coffee machine or as real as a "war machine" or the terminator to these guys)

and like even if you saw the insistence in the profile that they're really for realsies! a coffee machine/terminator/whatever, wouldn't your first thought be like "oh someone is VERY indulgent" and it's not remotely professional on their part (you assume, since you're convinced this isn't real, no way) but nothing worth making waves over. ok whatever, so one of the other surveyors has this edgy weird very indulged baby cousin who is coming along as an intern and playing "security" (which they don't need, surely) but everyone can play nice and just not make some kind of deal about it, right?

and then it turns out the "kid" really is a coffee machine/terminator and also it is a person.

[katachresiswriting]

on mb's opinions about the jedi order

i totally forgot to talk about the opinions mb's been throwing around about the jedi so far in its narration, with chapter 23 having one of the most negative comments made yet

to be very clear here, i, the author, do not think the jedi are actually a bunch of horrible hypocritical people who did bad things and claimed to be good people anyway. the various depictions of the jedi order in various canon and extended universe pieces of media have been very varied and as with all things and especially complicated things, there is nuance. i don't think i wanna get into this whole rant about the morality/correctness/whatever of the jedi order (however much debate over that is even worth because i feel like a lot of the arguments about how the jedi were close-minded discriminatory fools have this undercurrent of "therefore they deserved what they got" to them?) so i'm not gonna subject you to all those Thoughts lmao

murderbot has been getting muddled dreams about the past, a lot of them biased, and it currently (as in the present, narrating mb) does NOT have any reason to like the jedi and a whole lot of reason to dislike them. (haha, i wonder what people will make of that.) therefore its stated opinions and chosen portrayal of them are at best neutral. mostly it's unflattering about them. sometimes, it'll be downright derogatory. it is not being charitable about/towards them and it has its reasons for that. (it will never think that the jedi got what they deserved though.)

i just wanted to make it clear that the murderwars fusion au is NOT here to jedi-bash, actually! i am not secretly burning to write the kind of star wars fic where i'd tag for stuff like "fuck the jedi order" or "jedi order is a cult" or "jedi order bashing."

while i'm at it i think i should address my vs mb's opinions on anakin skywalker. my personal opinion is that he's sooooooo fucked up and i have to admit to being sympathetic to him. i'm not one of those "he never did anything wrong! it was everyone else who ruined his life!" anakin fans though. actually i'm not even sure i qualify as an anakin fan. i just keep thinking about him being born and raised a slave and canon's total refusal to explore the effects that had on him. fandom's gleeful exploration of it. his horrible introduction/transition to the temple. again canon's refusal to explore it vs fandom's gut-punching explorations of it. the absolute insanity of him going to war and becoming a general at age, like, fucking 20. that's crazy young. that's insane. and then he was stuck in a war he didn't even believe in committing violence and watching people he cared about endlessly being put in danger and sometimes dying for years on end.

sometimes. i just think about it. the doomed-ness of him. his whole life a perfect storm to break and cleave him to sidious's purposes. (i DO NOT fuck with that canon about sidious having actually caused anakin's birth as an experiment. fuck that. that SUCKS.) in a way, from the moment our pal friendpatine set his sights on anakin skywalker, anakin had been doomed. (maybe not to becoming vader, in another life. but doomed in some way.) which isn't to say he's not responsible for the choices he's made. i think he should absolutely be held accountable. but. he was also nine. (i keep cradling it all in my hands. oh anakin skywalker, you are so. [shaking my head with him clutched between my teeth like a dog] he's so fucking compelling, in my opinion.)

uh, sorry i didn't mean to go on a big rant about anakin lmaoooooo.

anyway, mb's opinion on anakin? actually pretty complicated. obviously there are reasons why it'd feel some sympathy for him. but also it's pretty much like "this child murderer fucker did not do his FUCKING JOB!" (again, i wonder what people will make of that lmao)

[katachresiswriting]

Mensah POV side story posted

what’s worse than a murderer? a CHILD (2898 words) by katachresis Part of the murderwars fusion (TMBD/Star Wars fusion) series

Murderbot in its narrative: “Yeah, I managed to be totally normal and I made a great excuse when I had to run away from the Mensahlings like I had an apex predator fauna chasing me.” Murderbot in reality: [did this shit instead]

Ayda smiles when she sees the new message that pops up in her feed.

On the other side of her desk, Amanpreet asks, “Good news?”

“Yes,” she replies. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get distracted. What was your question again?” Ayda firmly keeps her attention on helping Amanpreet until she leaves Ayda’s office with a shy smile and wave, and Ayda can finally turn her attention to the message that’d distracted her.

The Survey of ’87 Ratthi: @everyone heard from tifany who heard from indah who heard from gamila that PA received a request to dock from the perihelion! [🎉 reacted by Arada, Overse, and 3 others] Gurathin: Oh, great Arada: !!! Thanks Ratthi!! 💖 Overse: what would we do w/o ratthi and his thumb on the beating pulse of this station’s gossip mill Ratthi: way to sound passive aggressive gurathin 😂

Continue reading on AO3.

[katachresiswriting]

mb & the comfortunit from ravihyral

i considered and reconsidered mb & “rin” (more permanent name still pending) having this kinda relationship i've written where it’s not the open construct-on-construct hostility i’ve seen in some fics, exactly, and “rin” has hangups about mb (whereas in a lot of other fics i feel like it tends to kinda let go easier?)

but i thought it would be interesting to talk about mb struggling with someone’s hopes and expectations, specifically in the aspect of like...it perhaps having a bunch of constructs place meaning and importance on it that it does not fucking want? and also the messiness of both of them having wanted smth & deserving to get it (mb wanted and got to leave without having to give continual support and guidance to "rin" while "rin" wanted and did not get the support and guidance fae deserved), but only one of them being able to get what they want from the reality they live in, which is the one where mb was just not in the sort of place where it could’ve given “rin” any support or even more than maybe the bare minimum of consideration, immediately after tlacey’s death

(also i thought it'd be kinda funny to give them deadbeat parent and angsty teen vibes fjdgkjhhkjhhfg)

stuff for AC did change slightly with mb being force-sensitive btw, but i could only kinda mention some of it in chapter 23. the references to "rin" having once been tlacey the second are bc "rin" took tlacey's currency and id cards before absconding from ravihyral