#rogue secunits

[mokulule]

Currently thinking about how rogue SecUnits are known to leave a swathe of destruction and dead humans behind, but the actual instances we know of where SecUnits end up killing a bunch of people like Ganaka Pit which was due to a malware attack, and in All Systems Red which had a combination of that hostile software update and combat overrides which were meant to be mistaken for a case of Rogue SecUnits are all human fabricated.

Meanwhile the actual in text examples of SecUnits whose governor modules have them disabled are for the most part nonviolent and rather overwhelmed with their sudden freedom.

There was that one CombatUnit that said it wanted to kill Murderbot when it offered to hack its governor module, but that seems more the outlier at this point, maybe CombatUnits are different or maybe that one was just an asshole.

Anyways my point was that in text it’s looking more and more as if those well known rogue SecUnit events are more likely to have been caused by the fact they have governor modules that malfunctioned or was taken over than that any governor modules had been disabled.

[rosewind2007]

Ooh, thinking about the company—

In Exit Strategy they let an unsecured SecUnit (which means rogue “Unsecured” is what they call rogue SecUnits when they want humans to listen and not just start screaming) onto a company gunship! I mean yes they demand a bond—but WOW! Are these guys living dangerously or what?

This is breaking ALL THE RULES!

Even secured (non-rogue, governor modded) SecUnits aren’t allowed on gunships, it’s TOO DANGEROUS!

“Active SecUnits are never carried on gunships because they’re right, it’s too dangerous; we’re shipped on unarmed transports as cargo. ”

But the company is letting a rogue SecUnit on board…okay so it’s for a price, but frankly it makes me think then know rogues aren’t actually “kill all the humans” dangerous at all

(okay, so MB ends up merging with the gunship and it’s probably not something the company wants publicised afterwards but OMG if you’re a construct scientists how exciting is this data going to be? Scientists almost as excited as the gunship…)

Anyway my headcanon is that shipbots love Murderbot so gunship is the envy of the fleet/everyshipbot

[rosewind2007]

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