#artificial condition art

[ghostcashewart]

guess who ended up drawing a comic of an entire scene from Artificial Condition

[everywaythatmatters]

ART about to meet its best friend in the whole wide universe: what if I started this conversation in the scariest way possible

[fearless-seagull]

Pushing my ART is a giant scary spider agenda

[bearmakesart]

This is so dumb i cant

^pov mb hacking everything within a five mile radius every time it gets the chance

[wiklm]

murderbot and ART first meeting u will always be famous 2 me..

[ueeyasu]

more murderbot doodlin

[johntherobotwanderer]

murderbot singlehandedly rekindling my love for drawing?? no way

[inkedinserendipity]

the "art doesn't lie actually" post

this post has been rotating in my head for weeks now, so i decided to actually write it out. thesis: despite what murderbot claims, art doesn't actually lie.*

this is gonna be long, so buckle up!

*obligatory disclaimer: we're cherry-picking a specific definition of "lie" here, because art actually lies by omission all the fucking time. but what's interesting to me is that art's words are factually true. so here we're taking lie to mean (shoutout merriam-webster, y'all i did homework for this), an untrue or inaccurate statement. in the real world lies of omission are still lies etc etc etc., but afaik english doesn't have a word for "factually true but missing backstory". so really this is a manifesto on how when art says something, its words are factually correct, you just might need to look a little further. (and how that ties into its interactions with murderbot in particular. our most funky and fabulous unreliable narrator.)

okay! so!

art doesn't lie, in the sense that the words it speaks are factually true. in a way it reminds me of the fae - it is very careful with its wording, and you have to be wary of double meanings or missing context, but it does not lie to you. art 100% means what it says.

examples that come to mind, in no particular order:

i have a debris deflection system, it says. murderbot says, you have a weapons system. it says, for debris deflection. rating: technically true! it has not lied. however. those are in fact guns. and guns by any other name can still kill you.

art says, my crew has the means to produce the original charters. murderbot, who knows art really well, goes so you mean forge. and art ignores it. because forgery is, technically, the means to produce. rating: true! wholly missing context.

arada goes, transport can you please explain what the fuck happened? art says, i am prioritizing the medical system. it could definitely respond! but it definitely does not want to! (it's fine, secunit will explain when it wakes up, right? right?) rating: probably true! most likely, it is prioritizing the medsystem!

and the most recent, from rapport: art says, completely truthfully, No intel drones have been aboard me. it is correct. (as far as i can remember,) secunit didn't have its drones with it during artificial condition. rating: true! technically! but leaves out the much more alarming fact that oh my god art you let a secunit aboard???

(sidebar: that last one convinced me of this theory. that is such a specific statement that is so clearly meant to cover up a bigger secret. art, you obfuscating ass, you haven't had drones aboard you but you have had a fucking secunit!! i am so full of affection for this absolute menace of a transport.)

there are probably more examples i'm not thinking of. but as far as i can remember, art does not lie. it omits, and it obfuscates, but when it tells you something, you can be pretty fucking sure it means what it says.

so, why does it lie? is it, like our beloved murderbot, completely devoid of self-esteem? or does it just enjoy lying? no! this is the Asshole Research Transport, the Perihelion, the machine intelligence who will demonstrably do absolutely anything to keep its people safe. no, art lies because it has something to protect.

in each of these examples, art is protecting something. its identity. its crew's mission. its prospective relationship with secunit's humans. secunit's entire existence.

(you know, the more i write about art, the more i become convinced that protectiveness is its #1 defining character trait. as a side note.)

so, when art says something, you can be pretty sure that art is telling the truth. but wait a second. murderbot calls it a liar. why could that be?

(theory over now, by the way. this is about to diverge into headcanon/make fun of murderbot time. shoutout @marvelousmawn for the idea, because her brain is so big and sexy!)

yeah, why would our funky little secunit decide that art is a liar? what could art possibly tell its favorite construct that would make it decide that art is lying through its metaphorical teeth? what has secunit consistently, constantly been wrong about throughout the entire series? any guesses? i've got one!

yeah, my bet's that art complimented it one too many times, and murderbot decided it was full of shit.

what a way to get a reputation for being a liar. by being too nice to your bestie.

seren end theory.

[apodemus-sylvaticus]

The beginning of Artificial Condition be like:

[as21-7]

[fascinatedfinch]

Let me in, said ART.

(fill for Whumptober "Spirit possession")

[ghostcashewart]

how many pings will it take for secunit to stop sulking?

[everywaythatmatters]

Shhhh they’re watching Worldhoppers

[chaoticats3]

Been working my way through tmbd and just finished artificial condition. I would kill and die for ART. Also crying everytime Murderbot starts Experiencing Emotions (trauma) and just is like. "Huh. This is illogical and dumb. I should not be doing this. The danger that I am making up in my mind is not real" like babygirl you are having a panic attack, you can't LOGIC your way out of emotions. and also stop acting like me I am being called out in every chapter.

[anonforlackofabettername]

Truly one of best parts of Artificial Condition is that ART embraces its new designation and introduces itself as Art to Tapan and the rest of the clients at the end of the book. There is no actual record of its official name in this book. To Murderbot it is only ART, the Asshole Research Transport. Perihelion who? No idea. Not important.

[stochastiz]

seeing the concept art Tommy Arnold did for Murderbot has made me so disappointed in the SecUnit we see in the show. i already had feelings about it's organic appearance from the start of the season, but seeing what we could've had just makes me sad

look at these examples of ways they could've created mechanical joints and 'blended' them with nearby organic materials:

imagine how much cooler it'd be to see those overlapping plates of organic material whenever Murderbot isn't in it's armor! to get to see bits of the inorganic machinery it's built from when it isn't grievously injured!

but also, think about how much of a difference it would make to the audience if the construct the PresAux team was trying to personify and befriend looked more like this:

i get that it's much easier to produce a nearly-human form on film than to reapply prosthetics every day of shooting and render graphical edits for every frame, but i feel like minimizing the inhuman elements of SecUnit's form has diminished such an important part of the story of The Murderbot Diaries

Murderbot isn't human. it doesn't want to be human, nor does it want to be treated like a human by those around it. but i feel like some viewers could entirely miss that aspect of it's personality because it's so much easier to just see it as a guy