Why Murder Drones isn’t badly written - Uzi, Khan & N Partial Deep Dive
Edit: No one is forced to read through everything. But even if you aren’t a murder drones fan at all, please just read the first 3 paragraphs at random. Even if you never comment, I will still greatly appreciated anyone willing to read the tiniest snippet of this. I’m sorry if this is all massively unorganized. I just started had too many thoughts all at once.
I really dislike how the entire fandom calls Uzi as badly written in the sense that she has 0 development, great or arc. This just simply isn’t true, nor do any of the other main characters lack it. In this essay, I will be discussing:
Why Murder Droned is well written
(Mainly) Uzi, Khan, & (some of) N’s character development arcs
How Nuzi (platonic or romantic) plays into their development / arcs
Uzi & Khan, & their ties to representation of abuse victims
Uzi’s development / arcs, the solver, & how it ties into mental illness (partial analysis)
Why Nuzi boosting eachother isn’t objectively bad writing.
In order to prove that Murder Drones isn’t comparable to say, the game of thrones’s finale (in the sense that “none of the characters have any development / growth / arcs”).
N helped her to know that it’s okay to be vulnerable, in which uzi opens up to him and let her emotions out. Uzi has been extreme isolated by her peers (an example of this being Rebecca’s statement before she’s “super unpopular”) because she’s been outcasted due to being “weird,” her father neglected her and with emotional abuse, ranging from her mothers “death,” and experiencing so much trauma. Even from the pilot, she says she’s doing Khan a favor by outcasting herself with the assumption that Khan was going to do it to her. Uzi had no one but herself & she has been taking care of her own self while growing up with no support system.
(In episode 3, Lizzy believes that no one would notice Uzi’s missing if something happens to her, which really highlights how Uzi had no one to rely on)
Due to this, she have huge self-esteem issues due to how she’s not taken seriously by anyone, in which this affects the way she treats & view herself. She dismisses her own feelings as her just being an “angsty teen” & thus scared of being vulnerable. Since she doesn’t want anyone to take advantage of her weaknesses through being vulnerable, she brushes her feelings off thinking it’ll go away when she ignores it.
That is, until N showed up which I’ll explain in part 2. I’ve seen people state that Uzi & N’s development / characters arcs gets completely diminished & is therefore “objectively” bad writing since Uzi still had Thad as a support system due to them being “best friends”, but this is completely fanon. When they talk, Uzi (even if she has a small crush on him) didn’t even expect Thad to know about her name or bother talking to her, & Thad only knew about Uzi due to her being Kahn’s daughter. Speaking of which, in this exact scene, Uzi makes a whole plan to kill a disassembly drones just to earn her father’s respect, which clearly shows how bad her self-esteem issues are to the point of not even caring about her own life as much as she should. Even in her blueprints for the railgun, she writes notes like “other things it can do: not judge me & I can say I killed a murder drone with sci fi nonsense”.
Now, let’s briefly talk about Khan:
Khan prioritized his precious doors over his own daughter. One part where Uzi gives up is when Khan left her to die. As we know, Khan has trauma from Nori’s “death” and is terrified to take action to save his own daughter, but it still doesn’t justify him leaving her for dead, which Uzi even points out multiple times across several episodes later on. But at the ending of episode 2, Khan came to figure out what was going on & saw Uzi, but the first thing she did was hug him after being traumatized of what eldritch-solver J did (make a hologram of Khan & eating it in front of her to make it look like her father actually died). This shows how Uzi still cares about Khan, & I think this is very realistic to how victims of abuse tend to feel about their parents. Despite all the pain your parents have brought to you (despite being the ones responsible of protecting & loving you), you still deep down love them & it takes a lot to cut context. Even then, it causes you to at-least wonder how things could’ve been.
However, we see that Khan starts to slowly change & repair their relationship. In episode 2 while Uzi was stopping eldritch-solver J, Khan went to Uzi’s teacher conference & actually began to realize how “weird” Uzi acts while in class & her isolation. The teacher points out that Uzi might be “damaged” & Khan steps up for her. Uzi of course never saw this happen, so when Khan takes Nori’s kooky notes from her room in the start of episode 3 & finally starts acting like a real parent (“personal space under a very alarming coping mechanism isn’t covered under a… non-optimal family support structure”), she lashes out (if you want to help now, stay distant). Yet, Khan keeps trying as he tries to read family support books & gets classmates for prom to potentially be Uzi’s friends.
Even when Uzi’s missing, he looks around concerned that she’s late & worried due to the recent disappearances. Khan also doesn’t leave once the doors open during Uzi & Doll confrontation scene despite Doll throwing knives through telekinesis & overall being a very dangerous threat, & even tries to save her (again, Uzi didn’t see Khan try in this moment) when Doll was about to stab her.
Due to Uzi also not seeing Khan’s recent (major) attempt at caring for her, she clearly doesn’t want much to do with him & only reaches out again to find more information about her mother, which we see in episode 4. But his words to Uzi (After the core collapse, I didn’t notice her collar… she was always all- ‘BUILD DOORS AGAINST THE COMING SKY DEMONS! THE SINGULARITY AWAKENS’… Turns out, I’m not who either of you needed. Just, be safe, okay?”) do cause a shift in her views.
I think Khan’s arc truly gets shown in-your-face when he recreates Uzi’s railgun to save her & the planet on his own (with Lizzy & Thad only going along with him because they were also outside). People still think his arc isn’t completed since him dying to Cyn in order to save Uzi from a tendril stab would’ve been the “objectively better written choice to make death treated more seriously”, but this would’ve erased his entire arc since Uzi has only seen half of his attempts at improving their relationship. In the end of episode 8, she slams the door with her solver when Khan cheers into the classroom, but moreso of a half- annoyed half-jokey way, & in the end credits she’s playing cards with Khan & the WDF so we know their realtionship is stronger now, but there’s still more that Khan needs to do.
I also think that Khan dying to Cyn specifically to save Uzi from a tendril stab wouldn’t exactly work. Cyn can move at speeds fast enough to where time appears heavily slowed down, while Khan is just a normal worker drone so him somehow moving faster than Cyn in order to shield Uzi wouldn’t make much sense.
Now let’s talk about N, & Uzi’s attachment issues:
I feel like not enough people give Uzi credit. If it wasn’t for uzi, N would’ve still be murdering while being treated as a doormat as she was the only one who respected him. Throughout the series, N has been the only one who Uzi had for a looooong time that didn’t treat her like a freak, who didn’t insulted her or threatened her. Due to Uzi’s bad life (as we established prior) she has self-esteem issues, issues being vulnerable & of course would have a fear of being abandoned after her classmates (who isolated & bullied her) start to get along with N (despite him being a disassembly drone) which is where most of the “pick me” claims arise. She doesn’t want to lose her only friend & support system.
This manifests in jealousy when V confronts her (“I’m just SO glad you guys fit right in. Suuuupee cool.”). Then, all her feelings she’s been repressing over EVERYTHING combined with her panicking from overheating builds up to her losing control.
Although there are other, smaller moments like Uzi telling N that she isn’t okay (episode 2). nervously admitting to N that she wants him to go to prom (episode 3), & asking V for N’s help (episode 4), when she’s finally fully back to normal, the episode 4 falling scene fully displays Uzi’s insecurities & her truly starting to open up to N. She immediately disregards herself as gross & expresses her fear of being abandoned. But at the same time, Uzi tries to push N away to be locked inside her own shell (literally, as she covers her whole body using her wings). In response, N reassures Uzi that they will stick together because he can relate- he’s been abused by J, isolated by J & V, & doesn’t remember most of his life. Just like Uzi, survival & trying to appease others is all he’s known. Him showing this patience & understanding made Uzi open up her shell (as in, he literally causes her to willingly open her wings out).
Going a little off topic & shifting solely to talk about N here- the fandom tends to regard N as a uwu soft golden retriever kind boi stereotype that makes him have 0 complexity. While I think he is less in depth than V or Uzi for example, his character absolutely still has complexity. We see N has a very understanding side to him, & also a side where he starts to learn when to put his foot down. An example of this being when N makes it clear to V that they don’t need to kill everyone at prom for no reason, & expresses his frustration at her multiple times for not telling him anything about his past. Yet, he tries to get V to open up to him despite everything she’s done to him until he finally snaps due to V going way too far.
Another example is in episodes 6 & 7 (…HAHA 67!!!! SIX-SEVEN!) where despite Tessa acting suspicious & manipulative, he glosses over it twice in less dangerous situations before giving her a single chance to explain, & slashes out out of instinct when she tries to manipulate him again.
I also really view it as disappointing to see so many people in the fandom people chalk him up as “objectively” poorly written because of the lack of “N crashout scenes”, or his personality not changing (you can have a complex character without making their main personality change), or Nuzi being reduce to “fanservice” (when Envy was the most popular ship for half of the series which disproves this claim anyways), or because he “doesn’t show any emotions besides being happy because he was nerfed for fanservice” (he snaps at V, he’s shocked & terrified when Cyn traps him, he kills “Tessa” out of pure instinct before nearly collapsing after realizing what he did, he’s determined to stop Cyn, etc).
The truth is that Uzi, Khan & N all have development / growth / arcs, Nuzi is a key factor in this because they boost each other. N is like a healing pill to Uzi, to the point Uzi thanks N for everything he did for her, before sacrificing herself. Now, is N & Uzi boosting eachother as characters “objectively bad writing” simply because they boost eachother? No! We have scenes of N growing on his own, & Uzi never orders him to change his mentality (besides convincing him to switch sides)- he learns to stand up for himself, his loves ones & his new life against his tormentor’s manipulation all on his own. In media two characters talking, both coming to a realization, & growing as a result is also extremely common within media like anime, ATLA (avatar the last airbender), Gravity Falls, etc. Why should we label it bad writing in this case?
I feel like there’s so much more I could talk about- more on Khan’s arc in regards to Nori or how he parallells N, Uzi’s arc in regards to the solver throughout episodes 5 - 8 which I didn’t even cover, disproving Uzi’s “plot armor”, Uzi’s implied BPD, Uzi N & V’s sacrifice tendencies, the anti-self-harm messages within the series, how PTSD is portrayed, N’s impulsiveness, potentially way more about N’s arc in regards to V’s or J’s, disproving the claims that murder drones has 0 worldbuilding, etc. I just didn’t want this to be so long & way too cluttered as it is now.
And the more I think about it, the more disappointed & scared I become of even posting this knowing I will continue to receive hate over “overthinking an indie show” or “glazing” or “it’s not that deep” or “trying to make “real” fans who know the writing’s objectively bad seem stupid” But regardless, I hope atleast one person enjoyed this other than myself lol.
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