#Network Effect

[lostsometime]

SecUnit 3 worrying about its first-ever retrieval mission done as a free agent like “I want to get a good grade in Rogue SecUnit retrieval, which might be normal to want but I don’t know because there’s no protocol for that”

[jack-the-fool]

Amena in the first half of Network Effect: Escaping Targets with Third Mom

[andreai04]

"But I think you're emotionally compromised right now."

That was... that was so completely not true. Stupid humans. Sure, I'd had an emotional breakdown with the whole evisceration thing, but I was fine now, despite the drop in performance reliability. Absolutely fine. And I had to kill the rest of the Targets in the extremely painful ways I'd been visualizing…. I said, "I am not. You're emotionally compromised."

(I know, but at the time it seemed like a relevant comeback.)

This was incredibly weird and awkward. "I don't want to not see you again."

She took a moment to sort out my verbs. "I don't want to not see you again, either."

[chaos-has-theories]

I love the scene in Network Effect where Secunit spends a full paragraph explaining that ART doesn't fight fair it goes right for the eyes it doesn't know what a minimum level of response is which it, Secunit, does know, because as a Secunit you have to make sure you don't accidentally murder a client,

and it just goes on forever with the "fight" looming in the background until you're like oh nooooo what did ART do

and then you find out. That Secunit's idea of a disproportionate response. Is tattling to the humans.

[waestlandbaby]

ART yelling at its crew to do their laundry because Murderbot's important person Dr Mensah is going to be onboard and it needs to make a good impression because it wants Mensah to approve of their 'relationship' and be okay with them 'moving in together', and then being so nice to Dr Mensah when it's been an overbearing, domineering, sarcastic nightmare the whole book is something that is so special to me

[pseudomonaslisa]

POV: you're trying to have a private conversation on a spaceship

[fearless-seagull]

Pushing my ART is a giant scary spider agenda

[rosenkranz-isnt-dead]

murderbot, for three and a half books: I miss my friend ART. my bestie ART. I wish my buddy ART were here. if something happened to my best friend ART I would kill everyone on this ship and then myself.

murderbot, when asked if ART is its friend: ugh no?? obviously not?? you silly humans and your relationships. I'm going to go sulk in the corner now.

[tadpole-art]

"Is it the logos? You've mentioned them before. I did think at the time, that you wouldn't have known they were impossible to remove if you hadn't already tried."

[hellofriendhawke]

The expressions you give murderbot are top-tier, its face is doing things all the time and I love it

MB: That's it, I'm writing a code to freeze any facial expressions before they happen.

(@i-can-kazoo 1 million years later ... Sorry it took so long to answer your ask, I had to re-learn to draw almost entirely lmao but I was glad to get an excuse to draw my favorite construct again.)

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Murderbot Diaries series (All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, System Collapse, and other stories) by Martha Wells

Endorsement from submitter: "Asexual and agender main character. In later books side characters are revealed to be in poly relationship."

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.

Science fiction, novella, series, adult

Hunger Pangs series (True Love Bites) by Joy Demorra

In a world of dwindling hope, love has never mattered more...

Captain Nathan J. Northland had no idea what to expect when he returned home to Lorehaven injured from war, but it certainly wasn't to find himself posted on an island full of vampires. An island whose local vampire dandy lord causes Nathan to feel strange things he'd never felt before. Particularly about fangs.

When Vlad Blutstein agreed to hire Nathan as Captain of the Eyrie Guard, he hadn't been sure what to expect either, but it certainly hadn't been to fall in love with a disabled werewolf. However Vlad has fallen and fallen hard, and that's the problem.

Torn by their allegiances--to family, to duty, and the age-old enmity between vampires and werewolves--the pair find themselves in a difficult situation: to love where the heart wants or to follow where expectation demands.

The situation is complicated further when a mysterious and beguiling figure known only as Lady Ursula crashes into their lives, bringing with her dark omens of death, doom, and destruction in her wake.

And a desperate plea for help neither of them can ignore.

Thrown together in uncertain times and struggling to find their place amidst the rising human empire, the unlikely trio must decide how to face the coming darkness: united as one or divided and alone. One thing is for certain, none of them will ever be the same.

Fantasy, romance, paranormal, series, adult

[desultorydenouement]

murderbot is peak queer rep because it’s about living as an inherently transgressive form of being, it’s about the complexity of passing, or the complexity of hiding, or the nuance of never fitting binaries and not wanting to even when fitting those binaries is seen as “better”, and it’s about making people uncomfortable just by existing, it’s about measuring forms of freedom and having to decide which you’ll save and which you’ll sacrifice. but most importantly it’s peak queer rep because murderbot is free for like five minutes and it immediately attracts the nearest supposedly-rare transgressive-illegal-superbot (ART) in a hundred light year radius to be its best friend, and what’s that if not your classic Queer On Queer Magnetism

[casenjoys]

murderbot putting “no hugging” in it’s security contracts canonically (network effect - pg 21) is one of the most relatable things i’ve ever read and i’ve read A LOT of relatable shit; especially in tmbd

[kagekanecavi]

I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this but I just got hit by a huge parallel in Network Effect

Early on, ART tells Murderbot, regarding Amena, "tell her you care for her. Human juveniles need to hear that from their caregivers" (paraphrasing here, i don't have the text in front of me)

Later, Ratthi insists that they show Murderbot the video surrounding its retrieval. Murderbot is absolutely astounded by all the effort gone into getting it back

Clearly juvenile humans aren't the only ones who need it spelled out

[cooking-with-hailstones]

Observation:

At no point does murderbot ever describe secunit three.

Every other person, human or bot, is described. We get hair colour, skin colour, clothing, gender marker from their feed, approximate age (as best as MB is able to guess, anyways.)

Bots are described by their shape, sometimes by colour, number of limbs, etc. Even the ComfortUnit on Ravihyral is described. Blue hair, light brown skin.

But no sec unit is ever described. We have no idea what murderbot looks like. We have no idea what secunit3 looks like. Or any of the other units MB interacts with. And I just think that's a fascinating writing choice on Martha Wells's part.

[maomonium]