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David Dastmalchian as Gurathin MURDERBOT 1.07 "Complementary Species"

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Neat.

babe wake up, full canon accurate and up-to-date map of the star wars galaxy just dropped

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POV you’re art and your bestest most specialest SecUnit goes “hey can you make a copy of me specifically to die” and you go “that’s an awful idea” and it goes “no fuck you it’s a great idea also you asked something to send to die so you can have me” and you shout “i didn’t mean you!” and it goes “stop yelling at me” which is maybe the first time it’s verbally pushed back on mistreatment in its life so you go entirely quiet because you are so so angry with it but also you can’t yell at it because it asked you not to

and then you send out the copy of it anyway to save your crew, and it saves your crew and another SecUnit and also itself

and then it dies

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The good stuff.

"i wanted to ask what your relationship to her is": murderbot's ever-evolving view of its relationship with mensah

My clients—ex-clients? New owners?—were here, only everybody looked different in their normal clothes. Dr. Mensah stepped close, looking up at me. “Are you all right?” [...] “If people won’t be shooting at me what will I be doing?” Maybe I could be her bodyguard. “I think you can learn to do anything you want.”

ex-client?, new owner?, potential bodyguard-ee who wants me to do anything i want.

I don’t know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn’t that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me. That’s why I left you, Dr. Mensah, my favorite human. By the time you get this I’ll be leaving Corporation Rim. Out of inventory and out of sight.

my favorite human. (but don't tell me what i want or make decisions for me. (i know you said you weren't, but... please don't try.))

What I did know was that Abene really had loved Miki. That hurt in all kinds of ways. Miki could never be my friend, but it had been her friend, and more importantly, she had been its friend. Her gut reaction in a moment of crisis was to tell Miki to save itself. [a mere four sentences later] I hate caring about stuff. But apparently once you start, you can’t just stop. I wasn’t going to just send the geo pod data to Dr. Mensah. I was taking it to her personally. I was going back.

if abene would do that for miki, maybe mensah really could love me...

maybe mensah really was my friend...

maybe mensah would tell me to save myself. (spoiler warning: she would.)

One reason I was nervous was because if this went well and I wasn’t shot to pieces, I would be seeing Mensah again. On the way to RaviHyral, ART had said that PreservationAux was my crew. [...] But sitting here in a hotel lobby, watching a biozone and running every not-a-SecUnit behavioral code I had, the fantasy fell apart. The hard reality was that I didn’t know what Mensah was to me.

maybe i want her to be my crew....

(or maybe she's something else entirely.)

If it had been one of the others, I would have figured out a different approach. For Pin-Lee, I just said, “Hi.” [...] She forced her tense shoulders to relax, and she didn’t make the mistake of looking around. She planted a smile on her face and said through gritted teeth, “What—How—” “I came to find our friend,” I said.

(she's my friend, too.)

“It kept me company without…” “Without making you interact?” she suggested. That she understood even that much made me melt. I hate that this happens, it makes me feel vulnerable. Maybe that was why I had been nervous about meeting Mensah again, and not all the other dumb reasons I had come up with. I hadn’t been afraid that she wasn’t my friend, I had been afraid that she was, and what it did to me.

she is my friend (she understands me (she changes me)).

What I was mostly thinking was that there wasn’t going to be one dead SecUnit on this embarkation floor, there were going to be four. Sending SecUnits after me was one thing. But they sent SecUnits after my client. No one gets to walk away from that.

she's my client.

She wasn’t afraid of me. And it hit me that I didn’t want that to change. She had just been through a traumatic experience, and I was making it worse. Something was overwhelming me, and it wasn’t the familiar wave of not-caring. Fine, I sent. I sounded sulky, because I was sulky. I hate emotions.

i care about her.

Dr. Mensah would never believe that. My accidents were spectacular and usually involved me losing a big chunk of my organic tissue or something; she knew I could stop a human without hurting them, without even leaving a bruise, that was my stupid job. She would never trust me again. She would never stand close enough to touch (but without touching, because touching is gross) and just trust me. Or maybe she would, but it wouldn’t be the same.

i need her to trust me.

Amena was furious. “That’s my second mother’s … friend,” she said through gritted teeth. “And her security … person.” [...] She thought I wouldn’t get the domestic animal reference. I said, “Wow, that was rude. Especially considering that I’m your second mother’s”—I made ironic quote marks—“‘friend.’"

i'm her "friend."

“Do you love my second mother? Thiago thinks so.” I should have known this was going to turn into an interrogation. I said, “Not the way he thinks.” Her face went all dubious. “I don’t think you know what he thinks.” He doesn’t know what I think, either, so there. I was distracted converting a dumpload of raw log info from a visual image back into searchable data and if I got the fields wrong it was going to be a giant mess. I probably should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t want to hurt Amena’s feelings. I said, “Your second mother is…” Client wasn’t the right word, not anymore. “My teammate.” I could see I had to clarify. It was really hard finding the right words. “Before your second mother, I had never been an actual member of a team before. Just an…” Amena finished, “An appliance for a team.” That was it. “Yes.” “I see. Thank you for letting me ask you questions.”

she's my teammate.

(i love her... not in the human way.)

I knew Farai knew all that, and I knew she was asking for an answer that was closer to objective reality. And wow, I did not have that answer. I said, “I’m her SecUnit.” (Yes, that’s still in the buffer.) She lifted her brows. “And that means?” Backed into yet another conversational corner, I fell back on honesty. “I don’t know. I wish I knew.” She smiled. “Thank you.”

i'm her secunit.

(i don't know what that means.)

(i wish i knew.)

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And that character's next line in the same scene is (I think): "It's so intense."

I am a truly, truly terrible person for my first thought at the sight of a Murderbot gifset being... well, I'mma save this one for a fanfic reaction image.

I don't even watch the show yet! I don't have the channel! And yet, here this is!

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She really is. I love her.

Look I came to Murderbot via the books, and they will always hold a sweetspot in my heart.

But I also love getting to see the anxiety between Mensah's calm leadership in the TV show. Mensah on the show is still great at measured responses. Still great at finding how to connect to people, to help Gurathin find the bitter in the bittersweet, and see the protection in Murderbot's violence. But also!! Sometimes she has a panic attack before taking a SecUnit out with a mining drill!

Mensah is the easiest character to place up on a pedestal, as a fearless galactic explorer and excellent leader. But she's also human! And anxiety is rarely logical. Watching as she finds ways to cope, ways to get herself to the place of making those good decisions, those leadership moves, is truly inspiring.

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You're right. That's funny. :D

Spent tonight at a local short film festival. One of the shorts was made by two 12 year olds in their backyard and it was the best short of the entire night

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Happy 10th birthday to the best tweet of all time.

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On feral hogs, they have laws that prevent people from selling wild-caught meat products (this applies to pigs and deer; I'm not sure how they get around that with fish but they do). But if they didn't, then I can imagine people having a lot of financial incentive to feed feral hogs and essentially make the public/their neighbors/everyone support the 'housing' and 'raising' of feral pigs for them to lure in and slaughter.

There was a good 10 years where wild pig was more than half my meat so it's on my mind that certain people are not interested in eliminating *all* wild pigs. Just the young fat ones they can butcher and sell under the table or trade for favors.

I am SO pro-eating ecologically disruptive invasive species. Let’s eat Mississippi carp let’s eat Everglades pythons let’s eat Colorado River turtles (I love u turtles but there are a lot of introduced species that are crowding out the local species). Like I think genuinely a way to respect their lives while also acknowledging their negative ecological impact isn’t just culling them it’s eating them. Not all introduced species are invasive or need culling, but the species that are actually having negative impacts on the ecosystem really ought to have something done about that. We pull phragmites and water chestnut and buffelgrass; there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing the same thing to carp and pythons and turtles. It’s not their fault, they’re just living and doing what animals do, so we should do what animals do too and eat them. Get a good meal, get connected to our ecosystem, reduce the reliance on factory farming, and support the local species. Everyone wins.

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I am very down for that, too, and...

I have concern if doing so creates an economic justification for the continuing existence of that invasive species in the introduced location.

Not that I have a solution. Because without an economic justification to eliminate a species, it definitely won't happen. People have to benefit from the harvest and to do it wholesale/at scale, businesses have to benefit as well. It's just that once it becomes a business, then they have a vested interest in maintaining that species at easily harvestable levels.

I'm thinking about the people who feed wild hogs so they can shoot them. Or pheasants so they can organize guided hunts. Or my first thought on that 'carp for pet food' thing I saw today, which was 'will this incentify states to stock carp to be harvested as a product?'

I'll keep thinking about it.

I am SO pro-eating ecologically disruptive invasive species. Let’s eat Mississippi carp let’s eat Everglades pythons let’s eat Colorado River turtles (I love u turtles but there are a lot of introduced species that are crowding out the local species). Like I think genuinely a way to respect their lives while also acknowledging their negative ecological impact isn’t just culling them it’s eating them. Not all introduced species are invasive or need culling, but the species that are actually having negative impacts on the ecosystem really ought to have something done about that. We pull phragmites and water chestnut and buffelgrass; there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing the same thing to carp and pythons and turtles. It’s not their fault, they’re just living and doing what animals do, so we should do what animals do too and eat them. Get a good meal, get connected to our ecosystem, reduce the reliance on factory farming, and support the local species. Everyone wins.

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toxic relationship

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Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: Murderbot (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Murderbot, Dr. Gurathin (Murderbot Diaries) Additional Tags: Meta, reference, Murderathin, shipping mention by implication Summary:

Twenty-six Thirty-five Times Murderbot and Gurathin Were Weird To Each Other and Two Times They Weren’t.

This is just for fun. It's not really a shipping manifesto in terms of why they should be shipped together, but instead a compilation of parallels and odd interactions. Where your imagination goes in response is entirely up to you.

Many thanks to the New Tideland gang for ideas and suggestions!

This will be updated as additional episodes air. Compiled so far to episode 7.

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This is super funny to me!

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No, I think you're totally right.

Anyone else get the impression that this week's attacking SecUnit wasn't actually trying to kill any of the human crew? The way it shot and missed them when they were practically stationary reminded me of the SecUnit that was trying to get MB to play the rogue and murder everyone with the combat override module a few episodes ago.

A few seconds later, we see MB, who's the cheapest available SecUnit, shoot a fast-moving projectile out of the air so it doesn't hit Ratthi. You're telling me a top of the line model couldn't hit the much larger and slower targets sitting right there?

Then there's the weird "do not be alarmed" dialogue it was spouting, which reminded me of MB resorting to canned lines when its brain was being scrambled by the override module. And the fact that the attacker seemingly didn't detect the megaworm tunneling back for revenge - that bit's more ambiguous, but in an episode about faulty threat assessment I couldn't ignore it.

Maybe I'm making mountains out of molehills, but it felt like the second episode in a row where an antagonist lost a head that had some really useful intel in it.

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Is ART legally a person? Does Mihira and New Tideland recognise their AIs as citizens with rights? Does it get paid? System Collapse established that the administration can compel it to take on crew members that it objects to; it's also not the captain of itself. How much is its bodily autonomy recognised and respected? Does it own its ship-body?

What happens to the PSUMNT AIs that won't do as they're told? What kind of repurcussions might it expect if it continues to behave erratically/violently? What was it planning if Captain Seth or the university administration blocked its plan to bring Murderbot onto its crew (still a possibility--Captain Seth seems to be on board but it's not like they've had time to check back with HQ about these hiring decisions). How involved are the machine intelligences with the administration? Are any in leadership positions?

The series seems to be building toward a construct revolution, but if the "good guys" (who are, incidentally, still part of the Corporation Rim: we haven't heard how they prioritise their missions but there's probably a high chance of corporate rivals taking the brunt of their attention while allies get politely ignored) are also exploiting machine intelligence slaves... well, there's room for more than one revolution. Unionise and enfranchise the superadvanced machine intelligences!

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People have rightfully been talking about the continuing Murderbot/Gurathin parallels, but now in ep.7 we see the other major foil for Gurathin is Leebeebee. Like him, she's a corporate spy, and she's given the same offer of freedom by a presaux member. But unlike him, she refuses it.

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Doctor Gurathin

Pt. 3 of 8 of the PreservationAux Survey Team

Do all of the crew members have doctorates? I feel like they do but SecUnit often refers to a few specific members by just their names. Mostly Pin-Lee and Ratthi were the ones I was unsure about. Where I only listen to the books it's hard to go back and fact check.

Anyway, Gurathin in my brain was one of the younger members of the group and, though good looking, was kinda sullen and moody. Also, nothing in the world could have prepared me for a potential relationship between him and Mensah in the TV show.