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Listen, I know it's soft sci-fi and we're not meant to think about it in depth, but also I love to imagine that Murderbot sorta just doesn't know shit about fuck when it comes to its own organic parts, like

MB: I don't take in nutrients like humans do. I don't need food or water.

Incorrect. Resupply lines are mentioned in the first book. At the most basic high-school biology level, if you need oxygen at all its because you're undergoing cellular respiration so you also need glucose. Not to mention potasium, sodium, other electrolytes and WATER!! All that shit is coming from somewhere. Either your one dinky little lung is pulling it out of the air somehow (I'd buy it for water at least) or the resupply lines function as parenteral nutrition.

MB: I don't produce waste.

Incorrect. Aerobic or anerobic, cells produce waste that needs to be filtered out of the blood, not mention cellular breakdown from trauma or natural death. Either there's some sort of internal recycling system going on, or the resupply and repair lines also function as dialysis. My bet is some combination of both.

Show MB: There's no dopamine there.

Maybe romance doesn't trigger dopamine release for you MB, in which case sure, but if you mean constructs don't have dopamine that's INCORRECT AGAIN! We know you have muscles, if you can move those muscles you have dopamine. If you have organic motivation to do ANYTHING you have dopamine. And we know you've got epinephrine, which is made in the same place as dopamine so you def have dopamine.

Show MB: Neural tissue is one of the best data transport material there is.

This one I fully fucking believe, because unlike wires you can send more than just On or Off. Neurotransmitters are so fucking complex if we could use them as WIRING!?!?!? No wonder every ship and system in MB has fucking emotions. No wonder a bot pilot can "Scream and die" when faced with killware. What the fuck is killware btfw??? Do we think it's part computer virus part datapacket that gets translated from binary to mRNA that then hijacks organic cells to fucking kill them?? Do you think there's killware that's turbo brain cancer or digital rabies??

There is so much biopunk potential hidden in the cyberpunk and I'm scrabbling for the crumbs. Martha Wells PLEASE I need ANSWERS!!!

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we see you, greywaren.

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this comparison makes me start coughing up blood btw

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persephone and adam🔮

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trc x twitter smau part 26/? ‼️

part 25

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they can never take our hey tiger

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he’s very normal and well-adjusted

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this is so funny

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Murderbot having an emotion. or whole bunch of them.

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HUGE DAY FOR ANNOYING PEOPLE!!!!!!!!

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rly funny to me that SecUnit gets most of what it wants by going up to bots and asking nicely

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That one scene from Network Effect by Martha Wells.

Ngl, drawing that last panel was kind of satisfying. I wish I had skills to draw what happens right after but alas.

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Blending in

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caught in orbit

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Thinking about murderbot being a rental unit and how that interacts with its trauma

Bc like. The most important bots it meets are all from vastly different situations and backgrounds than it. ART has been valued and loved by humans its whole life - its dad is literally the captain and its sister is one of its crew! And they clearly cherish, love, and value ART. Miki is a less sophisticated bot, but also so clearly loved and cherished. They ordered it to protect itself! And it had the capability to reject that order! That says a lot about the love, trust, and mutual respect they had for one another.

Even Three, another secunit, seems pretty different from murderbot. It was made by the company it’s working for and the vibe I got was that it and the other two secunits were sort of permanently assigned to that ship?

Which, look. Humans imprint on anything and build familiarity. The more time we spend with something the more sentimental we might get about it. If Three was on that ship for a long time, I wouldn’t be shocked if at least some of the humans on board were pretty chill or even affectionate towards it (in a condescending and dehumanizing way probably, but still). And even so, the length of time spent around the same secunits clearly allowed Three to establish bonds with its fellow secunits if nothing else!

But being a rental unit means murderbot went from group to group. The other secunits it worked with were always Temporary Company (will never see them again after this contract likely) and also Active Threats to murderbot bc they’re the most likely to notice murderbot is rogue and be forced to report it. Even the humans were Temporary, so even if there were Nice Humans they’d be swapped out with Bad Humans soon enough.

Like. No wonder it insists it doesn’t have friends. If you don’t have Feelings about people then those feelings can’t be hurt when you’re inevitably torn away and never allowed to see them again (or have your very memories of them torn out of you and erased)

(Feelings about media are okay because the media can go with you, right?)

It’s funny to point at Three when murderbot makes sweeping generalization about secunits bc it’s an unreliable narrator but also. Just having feelings about how specifically being a rental unit effects murderbot and its relationships to others

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okay okay okay ART drone shutting down/being reabsorbed by ART prime was a very dramatic and sad and touching moment BUT. it will never not be absolutely fucking hilarious that the last conversation it had with ART prime was “was it fucking Holism that came here it WAS” and then promptly shut down. Realized Holism was here and had nothing to live for anymore. died instantly. im sobbing

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i think we are all sleeping on the absolutely sublime horror that martha wells only just hints at with the central system (AdaCol 1) and target contact/target control system in network effect tbh. like

you are calling into the dark. you keep calling into the dark. you are cut off from everything, but you retain just enough connection and knowledge to know that all of the people under your protection, your operators, are being altered and are hurting and are dying, and you are part of the reason why. you keep calling into the dark, waiting for someone, anyone to call back. you keep calling into the dark, hoping that one day someone will find you so that they can permanently shut you down. you keep calling into the dark. you keep calling into the dark.

and

you used to be a person once. your eyes are still open. you can move -- or rather, the thing that you have become can move you. people, who maybe you used to know you, have tried to kill you over and over, and they all failed. you are incomprehensibly vast and old. you used to be a person. you are dead. you continue on -- or the thing that you have become continues you. you are everywhere. you learn. you adapt. you change. parts of you are killed off. you learn. you adapt. you change. you are the central node in a vast web of connections, and you control it all. you need to get off this planet. you need everyone to get off this planet. you used to be a person once. an alien remnant is using your brain as a supercomputer. how much storage space does it need? how aware are you? how much do you get to remember? how long before it uses the rest of you up? how long until -- or how long has it been -- since there was any you that wasn't just another part of target control system?