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A thing I've been chewing on for a couple days about System Collapse is MB's perspective on Three.

Like, full disclosure here too, I don't trust MB's analysis of Three any farther than I can throw MB. We were in Three's head in Network Effect, we know that some of the ways MB is interpreting it in this book just don't jive with how Three perceives itself and the world around it, but I do think it's a really interesting look at the bias of MB's narrative that we don't get to see highlighted very often, since most of the series is from its perspective. This is hitting full force as I re-read (re-listen?) to the series with the lens of System Collapse.

I think the best way I can boil this down is the part where MB brings up Three guiding it to where it had put its armor and staring MB down while pointing at it. MB jumped straight to: "It was confused about property. It had no concept of its sense of self. It doesn't know what it wants." and all I can think of is this quote from all the way back in Artificial Condition:

"I had intended to just stand there and stare at her, which is what SecUnits do to clients who have just performed an act of stupidity so profound it approaches suicide which they ordered us not to stop them from doing."

Not saying that's what Three was doing, exactly, but MB totally failing to interpret itself as being the one making poor decisions for its personal safety and being judged by other SecUnits for it is hilarious. It's also to point out that MB doesn't...really seem to view Three as a person capable of judging it, even though it 100% is.

Like. It had to save your ass two books ago, MB. You weren't wearing armor. Are you not making a connection here?

Three: If you're going to go into dangerous circumstances, wear the fucking armor. MB: Poor little bot. Aww, look at it. It's Confused.

Like, imagine what the POV would be like from MB's perspective if this were All Systems Red and it was trying to show its clients the safety gear after they had already almost been eaten and they just stared at it in confusion and walked away. And then didn't use it the next time they were almost eaten. Imagine. Imagine the commentary. Not Three though, of course. Three can't possibly be judging MB's personal security choices.

Okay, but, giggles aside: When it brings up Three in the book, it swings wildly between uncomfortably hovering over this ~poor, overwhelmed, confused SecUnit who doesn't know how to be free~ (it just watches its shows studies whatever interests it and doesn't want to talk to people keeps to itself) and...treating it like a bomb that could go off at any second.

Sort of reminds you of MB's bitter frustrations in earlier books about hating being treated like it didn't know its own mind and also hating being treated like a dangerous weapon, don't it. Sure seems reasonable when it's from its own perspective, huh. And it is, to an extent, but we also know what it feels like to be on the other side of this rationale. MB doesn't get to slide just because it's our favorite SecUnit.

And it's really not that its concerns aren't valid. Mostly. "We don't know how it will behave under pressure" is pretty reasonable, especially when you're an embodied security system who wants to keep its charges safe. MB isn't wrong that rogue SecUnits are very, very dangerous, and if it's wrong about Three then it's not going to be the one paying for it. Its concerns aren't invalid.

It's just that I also have to wonder at what arbitrary point MB would decide that it's seen Three under enough pressure to trust it? It's just that it's set a very foggy bar for Three to clear, is all. When does it stop? When has it seen enough? Because, being fair to Three as well, it's already seen how Three operates under pressure, honestly, or ART has at least, and so did 2.0, and that data was shared with MB.

To recap: Three had itself and its clients at the mercy of alien-infected hostiles, hostiles who had already gotten past two other SecUnits (killed them, but Three didn't know that at the time), had killware in its head offering to make it rogue, and its reaction to that incredibly stressful and overwhelming situation was "Okay" and to then save everyone it could. It then proceeded almost immediately to face down ART, and even argued ART down, all because ART was probably going to get some unknown not-its-problem not-client killed and Three had a better way. It didn't matter that Three was scared and having the worst, weirdest day of its existence, probably. It prioritized saving lives.

And, sure, wanting to be cautious isn't wrong. I just have to wonder if there'd ever be a point where MB would stop moving the goalposts. Where it's at right now, even by the end of the book, I'm not sure it would. Two reasons:

One, MB has a major problem with its own internalized fear and distrust of other constructs, especially other SecUnits, something that hasn't really ever come to a head until we had another SecUnit character for it to have to interact with. In the past, MB would go, "Well, obviously rogue SecUnits are The Absolute Worst" and we'd have to just kind of nod along. Of course all SecUnits it encountered would fear it as much as it feared other SecUnits. Of course a rogue SecUnit should be alerted on and run down and killed if discovered. Rogue SecUnits are terrible! Nightmares! Ignore the fact that I am one!

...I'm just saying, here, that I think MB has some issues to work through before it can really be judged as a good, reliable perspective on other SecUnits. Any other SecUnits. At all. Ever.

Two, MB is extremely judgemental of bots in a way it isn't even of humans. It has a major problem with withholding respect based on whether or not it views someone as "smart enough" for it, and MB's criteria for what makes a bot/construct smart enough to be warranted respect is much stricter than its criteria for humans. It basically boils down to "Are you an asshole? Are you bitter? Are you angry? Are you like me?" and if it doesn't find that, it...kind of writes them off. It looks at them somewhere between disdain and pity and anger. If Murderbot can't see the scars, it decides they aren't there. And if you don't have scars you are worth inherently less respect.

It's a trauma olympics snob, basically.

Let Constructs Have Flaws.

Point is, is that Three...isn't really like that. And since MB knows what Three's been through, knows that Three as another SecUnit must have similar experiences, knows that the scars have to be there, it seems to decide that because Three isn't being snapping and sniping and sarcastic and mean about it must be because Three doesn't understand its situation yet. It must not know its own mind. It must be confused.

Actually, look at Gurathin in the first book, being pretty horrible to MB because he decided MB wasn't behaving the way he thought an angry, enslaved being with the power to hurt people should be behaving. MB isn't being mean to Three to test its limits, sure. It defaults instead to what it tends to default to when a bot isn't behaving the way MB thinks it should be behaving: Judgemental. Condescending, a bit. Not taking Three at face value as a fully realized person on the same level as MB.

Because MB hates catching even a whiff of bot-infantalization, sure, but it's not news at this point that MB will turn right around and infantalize bots all day, every day. It doesn't mean to, but it will judge them because they're happy or friendly or give themselves silly names or something, without making the connection that it's the one deciding they must be less intelligent/capable because they choose to be happy or kind or enjoy themselves. MB's an asshole. That's a fact, not just a cute personality quirk.

If Three were a human-form bot, MB would already be sarcastically insulting its intelligence and dismissing it entirely for not saying no to things and being sincerely polite or something, is what I'm getting at. See: Miki. Jollybaby. Because Three's a SecUnit though, MB can't view it as less capable (that interferes with its other internalized prejudice against rogue SecUnits as being Almost Certainly Bad and also Terrifying, maybe) (that might be going a bit too far, but I'm not sure: I think my rambling fingers might be on to something here), so it settles into a sort of confused monitoring, hopping from "baby deer" to "if I take my eyes off it for a second it will kill everyone over a loud noise" with zero stops in-between. Waiting for Three to become a Real Person or something, by which MB means, a sarcastic asshole.

Which isn't to say the things it's noticing about Three are necessarily wrong, but I think the point of this whole rambling deal is to articulate one of my favorite things about System Collapse, which is that sometimes to figure out what's going on you have to take the facts of what's happening and just straight up ignore all of MB's commentary about it. System Collapse felt like it was primarily there to gently knock you on the forehead and go, "Hey. Hey there. Hi. Did you forget that Murderbot is a highly biased and not entirely trustworthy narrator? Did you forget? Because I'm about to give you an entire book all about it." and I love that.

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different language editions of All Systems Red

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a page for me, a page for ash0, a page for griseldagimpel

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I just wanted to draw Murderbot in my PJs and it got out of control.

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Everyone Go Read The Murderbot Diaries Right Now

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just got finished reading the murderbot diaries and now im depressed because i have no more murderbot diaries to read. anyways heres mx.murderbot itself 

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tough crowd

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MB: 'Hmm I wonder if ART could stab someone with those'

ARTdrone: 😈

(Close up under the cut)

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I probably should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t want to hurt Amena’s feelings.

Network Effect, pg. 182-183

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"Except it wasn’t entirely awful. It was like when Tapan had slept next to me in the room at the hostel, or when Abene had leaned on me after I saved her; strange, but not as horrific as I would have thought." - Murderbot, Exit Strategy

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constructs

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spent my day off drawing scenes from network effect

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artificial condition aka: let someone perform surgery on you after knowing them for 2 weeks

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read murderbot in a fevered haze so i could take a break from my irl obligations. here have these.

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I wanted to draw this:

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2.0 whispered, That’s targetControlSystem.