#Murderbot discourse

[rosewind2007]

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien

Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

—Voltaire

He appears to refer to Montesquieu

Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien

—Montesquieu

The common rendering in English is:

Perfection is the enemy of good

I feel this is relevant to Murderbot, the TV show on AppleTV

It is NOT perfect, very few things are; perfection is a rare beast: if it even exists at all

We cannot have a show that pleases everyone, what we do have is a brilliant show which many of us adore

It is a show full of love for the source material, a show made with passion and imagination with some incredible acting

It is, in the words of our favourite SecUnit

A premium quality show

[dathen]

I don’t have the patience or energy to engage with the “Murderbot isn’t actually aroace :) It doesn’t actually say it’s aroace using the word ‘aroace!’ :)” crowd getting noisier since the show started, but..

In the books, Murderbot references its confusion, repulsion, and deep disinterest re: sex/romance MUCH more than it does re: gender. Like I never got the same “I will throw myself out an airlock if you gender me” feeling from it, while “everything I’ve learned about sex and romance has been against my will” is brought up like a dozen times per book.

Yet the same people very protective of Murderbot being a nonbinary character will jump through a thousand hoops to insist aroace Murderbot is “just a headcanon” or “one of many possible readings.”

Both of these aspects of its identity are important, but how do people manage their cognitive dissonance between “guard the gender identity with your LIFE” and “um insisting it’s aroace is fandom policing :(( stop ruining other people’s fun”…?

[imperiuswrecked]

I know I'm new to the Murderbot Dairies series but just checking the tags and seeing people go "the tv show white washed MB" and I'm 3 books in and the only canon description I have is "tall, intimidating, looks human, short hair" that's it. So like if someone could point out to me exactly which book or if there is a canon description beyond those?

My concern is that MB is referred to as a slave character and because it's a android aka bot/human construct and owned by The Company. I don't know if this is an instance of "they actually white washed the main character" or just "fans want an actor of color to portray MB" / "fanart shows MB as a character of color" which I have no issues with, but like I would like to know the canon vs the fanon.

The rest of the characters in the show is very diverse casting too and so far from what I've read the ones who were described in the books, like Dr Mensah, were cast right. I know they combined some characters because they wanted a smaller cast than the first book had but the author of the books has been supportive of the show.

[in-tua-deep]

I think if tumblr existed in the murderbot diaries world, art would the sanctuary moon equivalent of that one blog that’s just a compilation of Mario posts for the bloggers kid to look to, because we all know murderbot would have to be forced into social media at gunpoint but it might look at a curated bunch of posts uwu

[posts-written-by-murderbot]

If you had to live in the universe of a show, which one would you choose?

Drama Sun Islands. Despite the title (and the drama), all recurrent characters are contrivedly immune to death and serious injury. I’d like to live in a world where I know the worst thing that can happen to my humans is losing the season finale dance-off.

If I had to nail it down to a specific season it would be DSI: Miami. The sets were great. Don’t talk to me about the reboot. As far as I’m concerned the reboot doesn’t exist.

[penig]

So there's very little, if any point, either agonizing or rejoicing about casting Skarsgaard as Murderbot because execution is everything and it could be every bit as bad as some people expect or it could be as good as other people expect or it could be a real mixed bag and there's nothing we can do about it, anyway. We won't know what we think about it till we watch it, but people like making discourse in a vacuum and here we are.

I totally get that there's something simultaneously inevitable and revolting about the idea of a character, canonically extremely oppressed in a world in which everyone whose skin color is described is more or less brown, being played by a member of the least oppressed population demographic with which most of us are familiar. My initial reaction was not great, either.

But every time I see someone say: "Murderbot is not a cis white man!" I can't help thinking: "No, it's not. But in the TV show, it looks like one."

Look, I'm bisexual. And cis. And monogamous. The person I married happened to also be bisexual and cis. We didn't stop being bisexual when we married each other, but when we're together, we don't look queer. We look heterosexual. Which means, we get a lot of heteronormative privilege we don't ask for and I can see why more visibly queer people might resent that. But you know what happens when we try to reject that privilege? People both straight and queer look us dead in the eye and tell us that we're not really queer.

And that sucks.

Ask any light-skinned black person capable of passing for white, any Jew being told that it's okay to commit terrorist acts toward them because they're really white, any queer in any closet, any SecUnit getting a job as security consultant believing that if its soft, grateful clients didn't think it was an augmented human they wouldn't like it so much.

It's not a good idea to rate things hierarchically. Particularly not oppressions. Every person's oppression is unique, and some are more fatal than others but they're all uniquely awful. Knowing that you're not what you're passing as and that the only way to gain access to certain things that should be available to anybody is to deny part of yourself is pretty bad; especially if failure to pass properly is likely to get you lynched. Or stripped for parts and recycled.

Murderbot doesn't want to be a cis white augmented human male. It doesn't like how it feels to be treated as one. It wants to be itself. Even though being treated as itself has always meant being treated badly, and it doesn't like that either. It isolates itself a lot in environments where it has to pass as an augmented human, to minimize the time it spends maintaining its false face.

Consider what it says when contemplating what name to put in the FeedID that Senior Indah insists upon, in Fugitive Telemetry:

I could use the local feed address that was hard coded into my neural interfaces. it wasn't my real name, but it was what the systems I interfaced with called me. If I used it, the humans and augmented humans I encountered would think of me as a bot. Or I could use the name Rin. I liked it, and there were some humans outside the Corporation Rim who thought it was actually my name. I could use it, and the humans on the Station wouldn't have to think about what I was...I posted a feed ID with the name SecUnit, gender = not applicable, and no other information.

It could have an easier life and make the people around it more comfortable if it compromised on presenting itself as itself, whole entire. But it doesn't want to claim that easier life. It's not worth it.

Maybe that'll come across in the show and maybe it won't and maybe whether it comes across or not will depend as much on the viewer as on what appears on the screen. We won't know till we see it.

Till then, I'm not ready to write it off.

[anonforlackofabettername]

Y’know in all the “is the Murderbot casting the right flavor of nonbinary gender” discourse, I can’t believe the discourse made me forgot that MB doesn’t have a fuckin gender. It (it/its pronouns) is agender the same way it’s aromantic and asexual on top of being really fucking autistic. A real triple-A+ king if you ask me. Why are we arguing about gender and nonbinary actors when the character itself doesn’t have one?

[sanctuarymoonfan397]

Yoinking some of my replies from my MB discord:

Im ready to give people the benefit of thr doubt if they misgender it (MB) at first but people are wierd about neopronouns, even when corrected. And oooooh now I'm terrified of the slew of white murderbots we're going to see in art and described in fics

It feels weird getting hung up on race of all things but like... MB isn't white, that feels like something everyone in fandom has agreed upon, and I get that its MW's world and her vision but like... shes gotta see all the fan art, how POC and the LGBTQIA+ community connect with it, through the themes of slavery and queerness, right? It feels like such a huge dismissal of what the fandom has created

[rosewind2007]

I have to say that I am (and this will come to the surprise of exactly no one who knows me) absolutely loving the way the cast acted at the premiere—someone said in a conversation:

I wonder if they talked about it beforehand and didn’t tell any of the rest of the cast. 🤣 Or if it was just an idea of the moment thing…

As I replied:

“What if we kissed at the Murderbot premiere?”

I know some people aren’t happy about it—well, since Martha Wells referred to it as

unexpected & wonderful

I’m just over here grinning happily…

Oh and Martha Wells reposted this:

Currently my performance reliability is up at around 98%

🖤

Ha!

Some people have asked in the last 48 hours:

“Like why the hell would anyone ship Murderbot and Gurathin?”

(I like to imagine them like ART clutching its function in Artificial Condition—“Ship Gurathin and Murderbot? That is irrational!”)

So, let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me make a few points:

This really starts out by asking the question: why did Gurathin want to know how the PresAux SecUnit was spending its time? Which is a really odd thing for him to want to know if you think about it.

The SecUnit is, as they have been told, merely a tool: it’s an adjunct to the SecSystem and HubSystem of the habitat, it’s a company device, a tool, a product of corporate surveillance capitalism and authoritarian enforcement. Up until the worm incident some of the PresAux team didn’t even now it had a face. Mensah didn’t want to rent it as part of the bond guarantee agreement, and called it (basically) a “hellish compromise.”

So, the rest of PresAux are in varying states of awareness about what Murderbot is.

In Future of Work Compulsory we get some insight into common knowledge of SecUnits: the workers are unaware they can speak, in fact adamant they cannot:

Asa took her arm gently. “They can’t talk,” he told her.

She [Sekai] shook her head as her friends steered her toward the access bridge. “No, it talked. I heard it.”

The PresAux team know their SecUnit can talk, it gives them a security briefing. Do most of them think this is the equivalent of a recorded message, delivered rote?

Surely Mensah, having seen its face and knowing of its intelligence (that hellish compromise) can’t think it’s anything less than a slave? But that aside: I am talking about Gurathin. And what what Volescu says Gurathin wanted to know:

Then Volescu said, “Gurathin, you wanted to know how it spends its time. That was what you were originally looking for in the logs. Tell them.”

Funny thing to want to know, like do you want to know how your roomba spends its time? Okay, this is Tumblr, possibly the wrong place for this question.

So Gurathin is suspicious, apparently right from the start of the book since on page 33 he first asks it a question:

“What about your systems?”

I would note that Gurathin asks MB two questions about how it is functioning, both just after it does something that goes against its governor module:

The other good thing about my hacked governor module is that I could ignore the governor’s instructions to defend the stupid company. “They’re supposed to be able to, but equipment failures aren’t unknown.”

Next thing anyone says is:

Then Gurathin said, “What about your systems?”

Later:

It was one of those impulses that comes from my organic parts that the governor is supposed to squash. I said, “As the only one here with experience in these situations, I’m your best resource.”

Gurathin said, “What situations?”

This looks to me like someone who either detects that MB is acting unlike a SecUnit should, or even that he can tell a governor module is being defied.

HOW does Gurathin do this/know this? He is after all augmented, perhaps he is detecting something in the feed? In Rogue Protocol when MB is spying on Miki via a drone it has taken over, Miki realises something is up:

Miki didn’t move, still staring into the dark with the opaque surface of its eyes. The feed was clear, it couldn’t know I was here.

Then Miki sent a directionless ping

I think Miki does know (Miki stares at the drone); and I think somehow Gurathin also knows.

This seems to indicate that Gurathin may know more about SecUnits than he’s giving away—but whatever: this is someone who has been closely watching Murderbot.

Like, really closely.

I think an absolutely reasonable reading of ASR is that Gurathin has a bit of a fixation on this SecUnit, and it’s a fixation that started before the worm incident.

He’s watching this piece of company equipment with unusual intensity.

I am happy to headcanon that this started with the security briefing, that Murderbot couldn’t keep its feelings out of its voice. I mean, can you imagine Murderbot doing the in-flight safety announcement on the plane? It brings to mind project mayhem’s replacement safety handouts…

Did Gurathin hear Murderbot’s real voice bleed through? Cynicism and sarcasm, a dose of irony?

It’s a thought. He never seems to doubt it’s a person. The fact that Rathhi says: “This is no more a machine than Gurathin is—”perhaps says something about how he sees Gurathin too.

I would note that Gurathin and Ratthi aren’t friends in All Systems Red—something which surprised me a little (I didn’t think they got along as well as they do in later books, but when I looked into it I was surprised!

Gurrathi Meta

So when the team heads off to DeltFall Gurathin is very suspicious and watching SecUnit, which it reports upon but doesn’t seem to spot the significance of—which is rather unlike our paranoid Murderbot.

Gurathin is the only member of the team not to express enthusiasm for MB going on the trip.

Gurathin was the only one staying behind who didn’t say anything

MB is actually about to start poking around to figure out what Guarthin is up to when the feed drops out (probably trying to figure out what’s wrong with it).

If anything I think Gurathin acts oddly about his rogue SecUnit suspicions.

If he knows SecUnits he will probably have heard the propaganda, which MB believes:

To quote MB: “I sure as hell would have reported me. Rogue SecUnits are fucking dangerous, trust me on that.”

I wrote a little essay on how Gurathin is right about a lot of things when it comes to Murderbot:

Gurathin was right

(It’s called that because he is)

Perhaps the strangest thing is that he just tries to immobilize it, and then makes his case. He doesn’t try and have it shut down whilst “unconscious”, and doesn’t even mention the (fairly critical information) until pushed. Gurathin’s expression was stiffer than usual. “This Unit has killed people before, people it was charged with protecting. It killed fifty-seven members of a mining operation.”

At this point MB believe this is true, and it lies to the diary about it, by omission at any rate: “What I told you before, about how I hacked my governor module but didn’t become a mass murderer? That was only sort of true. I was already a mass murderer.”

So: I honestly don’t think Gurathin’s behaviour here makes a whole lot of sense if you read it in a lot of ways—the way I think it makes more sense is that he is fixated. This could be sexual: perhaps when:

[Gurathin] said, “Why don’t you want us to look at you?”

My jaw was so tight it triggered a performance reliability alert in my feed. I said, “You don’t need to look at me. I’m not a sexbot.”

Well—perhaps MB is picking up something about the way Gurathin looks at it?

My personal reading is that Gurathin has become obsessed, an obsession perhaps sparked by MB’s anomalous behaviors? He is watching it intensely. It doesn’t have to be sexual, humans can get fixated without sexual attraction.

And then he so quickly accepts the rogue unit into his team! It holds him up against the wall by his neck (I mean, wow—one of the most intense bits of physical contact in the book). But Gurathin is rapidly team SecUnit: and he never sees it as “not a person” he isn’t kidding when he says.

(“I do think of it as a person,” Gurathin said. “An angry, heavily armed person who has no reason to trust us.”

“Then stop being mean to it,” “Ratthi told him. “That might help.”)

Gurathin and SecUnit work together to overcome GrayCris, Murderbot even grudgingly admitting Gurathin’s help:

“Gurathin had figured out how to use the hack from their HubSystem into our HubSystem to get access, but he needed to be close to their habitat to actually trigger their beacon. ”

“(Last night Gurathin had said this was a weak point, that this was where the plan would fall apart. It was irritating that he was right.)”

So: that’s some of the reasons from the first book, All Systems Red

[ezomind-the-other-one]

@rosewind2007 here's the promised fanart for https://archiveofourown.org/works/47718772

@ everyone else, I can explain:

-> the fic linked above is about Murderbot discovering that people made fanfics of the documentary by Dr Bharadwaj, and they ship it with Gurathin

(Made with Gephi by desecrating the airports database provided in the examples. Layout algorithm is Force Atlas.)

[blessphemy]

once in a while when i'm in the murderbot fandom tag i see a shark fin of ship discourse and i'm like wrow... i guess there's shipping out there. so anyways.

[swarovskinipples]

one of the more pernicious forms of fandom misgendering is when fans take a nonbinary character and go, "Those Fans are probably reading this character as binary-gender-coded to serve a yaoi/hetero/yuri shipping preference, because they are Bad Preference Havers. not me though. i am a Canon Understander merely ascribing this theoretical misgendering to Those Fans"

[deslizada]

look I'm sorry about this. but I started reading murderbot around the same time I started testosterone and some wires got crossed and now I want it to choke me out. I would never inflict those feelings on it of course and I feel much shame but I very much want it to throw me across the room

[shadelorde]

Idk I think my general attitude towards recent live-action adaptations is I’m really tired of them flattening or erasing depictions of marginalization or something that makes characters unique or is important to their personal journey breaking from the status quo. Toph’s “slightly more” feminine and older and Murderbot’s a white dude when will it END

[sanctuarymoonfan397]

Remember, the a-spec experience is different for everyone, it's a spectrum, and theres no "right way" to be a-spec.