#rereading rogue protocol. miki.....

[unloneliest]

that murderbot sure can have ptsd

[anonforlackofabettername]

Miki is so interesting after both ART and the ComfortUnit from last novella. We’ve spent so much time with basic bots and bots with intelligence that is greater than or equal to adult humans and now here’s a bot that has human-like intelligence but that intelligence is childlike or lesser than adult standard.

[paging-possum]

Need to buy a cookbook for school and allowing myself a single murderbot everyone cast ur votes

Artificial condition: you KNOWWWWW I love ART. Character of all time

Exit strategy: I like it and I’d like to draw a lot of the scenes from it. Would be useful to have on hand AND the bits with the PresAux crew make me lose it

Rogue protocol: my least favorite (I don’t hate it it’s just not my favorite) so it isn’t an option xo sorry miki

Fugitive telemetry: honestly a classic. Being a standalone story gives it good reread potential AND I just like it.

System collapse: YOU GUYS KNOW I LOVE HOLISM 🫶🫶🫶🫶 HOLISM FOR BEST CHARACTER EVER 2K24 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

[cultivating-wildflowers]

for the reverse unpopular opinion game:

easy mode: the book you’re rereading now

hard mode: the last book you gave a scathing review on.

Well, I'm rereading Murderbot right now, so naturally I'm having a great deal of fun. I'm currently on Rogue Protocol, which features the adorable Miki as the sidekick of the day. Miki isn't as fun as ART, but I love all of the internal conflicts that it sets off in this book. Also, the humans Murderbot sets out to adopt and protect are largely sensible people for once (outside of Mensah's team).

As for the hard mode, ughhhhhh that's gonna be really hard lol. The last book I hated so much that I left it a harsh review was A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. I didn't even finish it (got about halfway) and I still had stuff to say.

Despite the fumble with the "twist", it had some good points. Entertainment Weekly calls it "atmospheric" and it really is. I love stories set on islands, and I love stories that are in settings we would recognize but, due to time and circumstances, are unrecognizable to the point-of-view characters. That part of the story was what kept me reading for as long as I did.

There's also an A Canticle for Leibowitz mention, which made me excited because I hadn't seen that in a book yet; and, despite everything, the characters largely get a happy ending and they get their dogs back.

(ask game here)

[penna-nomen]

From my latest reread -- I wonder if someone got that impression from Rogue Protocol. Murderbot first introduces itself to Miki as Security Consultant Rin. When it's outed as a SecUnit, it claims to be there there on behalf of Rin.

Then Don Abene has this line: Miki, are you sure about this Consultant Rin? When did she contact you?

So while I'm sure Murderbot would have done its usual gender = indeterminate for the Rin identity, Don Abene seems to think Rin is a woman. Maybe Rin is considered a feminine name?

Maybe that's where the confusion came from? Because yeah, I haven't found an instance of Murderbot using pronouns other than it/its.

honestly bless martha wells for getting as irritated by people using the wrong pronouns for murderbot as I was when I read the whole "oh but it used she/her pronouns once" (it did not) argument on reddit.

[readingbooksinisrael]

I finished my reread of Rogue Protocol. The first time I read this I missed out on a lot of what was happening on the action scenes, but this time I think that I got the full understanding: a combination of allowing myself to read it slower and the emotional scenes not being so new to me.

I really enjoyed the reread. In my head I had combined a lot of Artificial Condition together with Rogue Patrol so it was nice to get them apart again, but besides all that I still love everything with Miki and the action scenes were really cool, especially the one with the diggers.

spoilers below here

I don't get why Murderbot decided to go back to Mensah personally now and I don't understand if that's something we're supposed to get at this point.

[nonbinary-octopus]

okay so when I was reading Rogue Protocol, my brain took "human-form bot" and Miki's general personality and decided that it looked like an anime girl

so that was the mental image I had for Miki for the entire book. (also this one I read with my eyes instead of listening to the audiobook, so I pronounced Miki as "Mee-kee" instead of "Micky". It's a little more "Micky" in my head now, as I reread it via audiobook and that's how Kevin R. Free pronounced it)

And then I saw Miki fanart, and nope, all of those arts are of a robot robot. Then on reread, yeah, Murderbot did use the adjective "metal" in describing Miki, so I guess "human-form" is just in terms of general shape. As opposed to, say, a drone or something. And doesn't mean human-form bots actually look like humans.

Tho there was also that line about human-form bots being used to play secunits in shows? So either people who only know about secunits from tv think secunits look like bots, or human-form bots look at least somewhat human.

in any case

my brain does not want to let go of its initial mental image, so Miki is still an anime girl in my head.

[lexicals]

Rereading rogue protocol and realising that in my head miki Looks like K2SO (but with big dinner plate eyes) but Sounds like baymax

[anonforlackofabettername]

It’s interesting how Martha Wells writes the Murderbot books with dual or paired heroes and villains.

All Systems Red has good survey (PreservationAux) and evil survey (GreyCris). It’s also got good SecUnit (Murderbot) and evil SecUnits (GreyCris’s contracted units).

Artificial Condition has the heroic ComfortUnits from Murderbot’s reconstruction of the events at Ganaka Pit and it’s got Tlacey’s villainous ComfortUnit. You could also argue that the actual good unit is ART.

Rogue Protocol has Miki the (good) human-form bot and the incredibly dangerous combat bots. It’s also got good security (Murderbot) and bad security (Gerth and Wilken).

Exit Strategy (though I am not there in my reread so I may misremember some things) has Murderbot itself vs the ever terrifying CombatSecUnit.

It’s all about dualities. Dualities and increasing stakes. Touching on the increasing stakes thing first because it’s simpler; we start with our villain being other SecUnits, and then ComfortUnits, then the dreaded CombatBot and finally the thing Murderbot has been terrified since day 1; a CombatSecUnit. Each threat is tangibly bigger than the last. Maybe not the ComfortUnit, but that was reseting stakes while also building out the world. Murderbot couldn’t fight another SecUnit its first fight as a free agent—the stakes wouldn’t have made sense—so it starts with humans and then the ComfortUnit and the stakes and villains increase from there.

Going back to dualities it really is all about contrasts. The villainous/evil SecUnits are a contrast to Murderbot. Freedom vs being controlled (literally with the Deltfall units). (Side note: that’s why I’m using evil interchangeably with villainous. Not everything is actively evil since a lot of them are following governor modules, but they are filling the role of villain in the story).

The ComfortUnits are about choice (saving or harming humans) but it’s also about the choice to love or hate humanity. Unlike Tlacey’s ComfortUnit who hates Tlacey and humanity, ART loves its purpose and its crew. It’s the two directions Murderbot can take in its journey to find itself. Becoming more jaded and hiding or finding humans that are *its.*

Now mind you, I’m still in the middle of my RP reread (I’ve got an hour twenty left in the novella and the human security specialists reveal hasn’t happened yet) and I haven’t even started ES yet so this argument is unfinished cause I’m still formulating my thoughts. Miki is everything Murderbot never wanted to be (a pet bot) but can’t help but be jealous of it (and its innocence). The CombatBots are more threat than they are foil but again, not a full coherent argument (yet). Mostly I’m just thinking aloud (in text form lol).