#this feels like a parallel to murderbot and miki

[scificrows]

Today I'm thinking about this:

Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it. I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.

And about how Murderbot slowly starts calling its humans its friends in Exit Strategy, tentatively at first:

Were they my sort-of human friends? My clients? My ex-owners, though legally that was only Dr. Mensah. Were they going to see me and yell for help, alert security?

but also more confidently later:

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.

The only tag I can access on Ratthi is a partial that says my human friend. That’s strange and unlikely, but the pre-catastrophic-failure version of me seemed sure about it, and I don’t have anything else to go on.

and Mensah confirms this at the end of the book too:

I just want you to know you already have options here, and I expect you’ll have more offers for your services or advice as a security consultant. And that you have friends here you can discuss things with, whatever you decide to do, or wherever you decide to go.

The thought that a bot could see its humans as its friends (and because they treat it as a friend too) made Murderbot so emotional in Rogue Protocol that it needed a minute to process it. And later on in the series it starts to understand that its own humans are its friends too - and how much they care about it and that it can go to them for help if it needs them and I just. I think I need to withdraw and have an emotion about this in private too.

[specialagentartemis]

Friend Like Me: Murderbot's Relationships With Other AIs throughout The Murderbot Diaries

It’s important to me that the thematic core of The Murderbot Diaries is not only about determining what it means to be a robot person in a human world, but about showcasing so many ways to be a robot person in a human world.  And about building relationships with other robot persons to support that self-actualization as both a robot and a person.

So often, in science fiction about robot personhood, the robot character is the only robot in the cast.  Not only that, so often the robot character is the only robot they know.*

When media thinks about AI personhood, or Ais as characters in society, the AI character is often alone.  Alone, and different.  It’s a potent allegory for what it feels like to be an outsider, to be “other,” to feel “off” from the people around you.  Whether a sympathetic friend or a scary unknowable villain, a lot of people can relate to feeling like that.

The Murderbot Diaries is doing something interesting, then, by showing us our protagonist Murderbot, the prototypical robot-among-humans, the robot as a parallel for queer and neurodivergent and outsider-cultural experiences in a world of expected norms, the robot with human friends, the one robot member of an otherwise all-human team… and it can’t live like that.  So it leaves.

So far, the series feels split into two halves: the first four books, about Murderbot learning different ways to be a robot in relationships with humans, and the next three** about Murderbot learning different ways to be a robot in relationships with other robots, and a robot in a mixed society.

In All Systems Red, Murderbot starts off painfully alone. It repeatedly sees other SecUnits as enemies, and believes that SecUnits can't trust each other because they're all under control of humans. It has a very low opinion of SecUnits, including itself.  Murderbot hates being used by humans for violence or for petty reasons, and admits that it wants to half-ass its job.

In Artificial Condition, Murderbot meets ART, a university research ship who loves its crew and loves its function.  It is also free to be a snarky asshole, as Murderbot repeatedly notes (and assigns in its very name).  This relationship to humans—genuinely caring for its crew, genuinely wanting to participate in its research and teaching function—is a very different relationship than Murderbot has had, though ART still needs to keep its intelligence and personality hidden from most humans for its own safety.  Conversely, this is the book where Murderbot meets a ComfortUnit that is blatantly being abused and misused by its human owner, and it hates her.  The contrast between ART and the ComfortUnit displays very different ways of Ais relating to their human “owners”—and what it means for them to get what they want out of life.

In Rogue Protocol, Murderbot confronts this theme most directly, with the bot Miki.  Unlike the implications of secrecy we get from ART, Miki is not hidden from anybody; unlike with the ComfortUnit, Miki is a respected and equal member of its team.  Murderbot has a very hard time believing that Miki is anything but a patronized “pet bot” to these humans, despite the evidence that the humans genuinely consider it a friend and teammate.  Miki has never been abused, and never had to hide.  Murderbot has a hard time accepting that this is a way bots and humans can relate to each other.

But Miki is still, in the classical sci-fi robot-on-a-human-team way, unique; it expresses to Murderbot, “I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me.”

This is a much better way of being a robot among humans than Murderbot has seen before, but it’s still not the ideal Murderbot wants, either.

Exit Strategy brings the theme full-circle and the quartet to a close.  Murderbot faces off against a Combat SecUnit (or CombatUnit; Wells seems to change her mind about this).  The Combat SecUnit represents everything Murderbot has rejected being, everything it has overcome on its journey of self-actualization.  During their fight, the CSU rejects Murderbot’s offers of freedom, money, a fake ID, the opportunity to get out of its situation the way Murderbot has; it ignores the offer.  Murderbot asks the CSU what it wants.  The CSU replies, “I want to kill you.”  The CSU represents the kind of SecUnit Murderbot does not want to be, the kind of robot it used to think it would inevitably be but has now seen so many other ways it can be.  Murderbot says in the same scene, “I’m not sure it [the offer of freedom] would have worked on me, before my mass murder incident.  I didn’t know what I wanted (I still didn’t know what I wanted)…”  But at the same time, the confrontation makes it clear: Murderbot knows some things it doesn’t want, and the CSU is embracing everything Murderbot doesn’t want about being a SecUnit.

If this quartet is about what it means to be a robot, and to be a robot among humans, then the next set of books (Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, and System Collapse) is about being a robot among other robots, and a robot in a society that supports both humans and robots.

Fugitive Telemetry makes this most obvious, with its plotline about the free bot community on Preservation.  Murderbot is uncomfortable around them in a similar way that it was uncomfortable around Miki.  The Preservation bots are happy, fulfilled, responsible, mutually supportive, and have a meaningful community with both humans and each other that does not match Murderbot’s experiences of what being a bot, or being a bot among humans, means.

Network Effect brings Murderbot back into contact with ART, and introduces a new SecUnit, Three.  Murderbot navigating its relationship with ART as a free agent and after a perceived betrayal is a huge part of the book.  Murderbot’s disembodied-software-fork Murderbot 2.0, freed from much of Murderbot’s organic anxiety, shows itself much more willing to be social with other bots and constructs.  System Collapse follows, bringing further depth and complexity to Murderbot’s relationship with ART and expanding its interactions with Three, and furthers Murderbot’s integration into the casual bot-human community that is ART’s crew.  It also shows that Murderbot’s willingness to trust and even form tentative friendships with other AIs and systems, like AdaCol2, has expanded.  The way it extends the governor module hack to the opposing SecUnits is informed a lot more strongly by Murderbot 2.0’s interactions with Three than its own previous clumsy attempts to reach out to the CSU in Exit Strategy, or abrupt dumping of the hack on the ComfortUnit in Artificial Condition.  All of these plotlines emphasize Murderbot maturing into not just being a person among humans, but a person recognizing its place and obligations within society that includes both people like and unlike it.

The models of the many ways to be a robot person, and significant relationships and interactions with other robot persons, were and are crucial to Murderbot’s development, sense of self, articulation of its desires, and sense of belonging in the world.  Murderbot isn’t alone, and it’s not the only person like itself that it knows.  When offered a place in society, it is not the only person like itself in that society.  Meeting other AIs, forming relationships with them, was crucial in helping it articulate what it wants in its life.  Its human friends are incredibly important to it!  That doesn’t stop being true.  But so are its AI friends, and the other AIs it passed through the lives of.

This feels like one of the most honest and affirming depictions of what it’s like to feel “other”—that being around only majority people unlike-you, even the ones you like, even your friends, even the ones who mean the best for you and ask you what you need and do everything they can to provide it, can still be exhausting and alienating.  Meeting other people like you—even if they’re like you in unlike ways, and have different ways of moving through the world—shows you the many ways to relate to the rest of the world, to be in the world.  The many ways to relate to other people and to yourself.  The Murderbot Diaries opens up a world where that can be true of bot/construct/AI characters, when so often in sci-fi, their loneliness and alienation is where the metaphor stops.

- - -

*Lt. Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is probably the most famous example; the only positronic android like himself in existence, barring his evil twin who mostly just needs to be stopped.  Others coming to mind include Becky Chambers's A Closed and Common Orbit, in which the AI character is trying to understand who she is in the context of being surrounded by humans; Alien, the secret android crewmate among humans is a threat, and in the sequel Aliens, the android crewmate is earnestly trying to prove he's not; Space Sweepers has a ragtag crew of several humans and a robot; most of the stories in Isaac Asimov's I, Robot are about a singular robot in a human facility.  The setup "Human crew with their ship AI" is fairly common in sci-fi, from 2001: A Space Odyssey with its tragically antagonistic HAL9000 operating on a logic that would never occur to humans, to Wolf 359 and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet where the ship AIs are struggling to determine and articulate how they want to relate to their human friends.  Even in Ancillary Justice, Breq is alone and having to pass undercover as human cut adrift from her previous life as a ship's AI. (I know this changes later but I have not actually read the rest of the trilogy)

**as of System Collapse

[tribblefarmer]

Murderbot Media Review

How Murderbot feels about Star Trek: The Next Generation

(I’m going to mostly focus on the show, not the movies)

Pros:

The right kind of unrealistic +3

Lots of content +2

Large ensemble cast with recurring side characters +2

adventure/action serial with enough interpersonal drama to be interesting +2

No SecUnits +1

Anti-corporate message +2

The humans are friends with each other (and the alien crew members) +3

I think it would enjoy the practical effects, the CR probably overwhelmingly uses CGI. +1

Humans on a ship show, ART would enjoy watching with it. +5

Cons:

Too many sex scenes (but at least they’re off screen) -1

Bad things keep happening to security personnel -1

Why the fuck are there juvenile humans and civilians on this ship that regularly engages in combat? -1

Too much philosophy -1

The borg creep it out (Alien remnant contamination) -2

Data (hear me out) (will score in separate section)

Pros+Cons score= 15

Characters (by the order listed in the season one credits): 

Jean-luc Picard -  8/10

A good leader with a strong moral backbone who can keep his head in a crisis. He reminds it of Doctor Mensah. 

It likes that he mostly stays safe on the ship and listens to advice from his crew.

His constant philosophizing is a bit off putting. 

William T Riker- 5/10

Oh gross he’s making out with someone again.

Overall it likes him, but doesn’t have a strong opinion.

Geordi LaForge- 7/10

Augmented human

Seems like someone it would feel safe around

It likes that he’s friends with Data without talking down to him.

Tasha Yarr- 9/10

The Chief of Security!

Its favorite character in season one

Projects on to her a little,

It feels so uncomfortable about what happens in The Naked Now though.

It was so pissed off by the end of season one that it quit watching for a whole cycle.

Worf- 8/10

The new Chief of Security

Mixed feelings at first but grows to like him

Wishes the humans would listen to him more

Likes that he gets to be grumpy without consequences

Relates to him as a non-human who has to keep his identity in a human world

It is fairly ambivalent to Klingon culture and their focus on combat and pain, but likes the political drama.

Beverly Crusher- 7/10

Mom energy like Doctor Mensah

It likes and respects her

It finds her drawn out will they/won’t they romance with Picard a bit annoying. Just pick one and stick with it already.

It calls the romance annoying but it’s invested in the drama.

Deanna Troi- 5/10

Bharadwaj energy. Sometimes it feels a bit attacked by her keen observations.

It would not want to encounter someone with empathic powers irl, It’s annoying enough that ART can read its emotions in the feed.

Hates all her romances except what she’s got going on with Riker.

Mixed feelings about her being married to Worf in that one parallel universe.

Data- 2/10

Data makes it deeply uncomfortable.

Reminds it of Miki.

The crew’s human-form pet robot, except technically none of them own him.

It hates that he wants to be human.

It hates that he’s “fully functional.”

Why does Data get to live without a guardian but not it? It’s not jealous.

Whenever the question of whether Data is sentient comes up it gets really angry.

It doesn’t like how the rest of the crew are condescending to him sometimes. They just communicate with him badly.

Data is friendly, social, wants to be human, is a scientist, and experiments with art and literature. Is this what its humans want it to be? Will it ever be enough?

Has an emotion whenever he calls someone his friend or vice versa.

Roots for him in the courtroom episode though

It says it hates Data but pays more attention to him than any other character.

Wesley Crusher- 6/10

Juvenile human

He’s annoying but it also feels protective of him.

It doesn’t like how his character arc ends. It wanted him to graduate and rejoin the crew permanently. 

Q (honorable mention)- 8/10

Threat assessment high

Annoyance assessment max

It does think it’s funny that he puts humanity on trial for being shitty though.

Character score=65

(Murderbot likes drama serials, which are typically character driven, so this is the most heavily weighted section.)

Favorite episodes:

Encounter at Farpoint S1E1 & S1E2 +2

Redemption S4E26 & S5E1 +4

The Next Phase S5E24 +3

Attached S7E8 +2

Least favorite episodes:

The Schizoid Man S2E6 -1

Data’s Day S4E11 -1

In Theory S4E25 -3

Sub Rosa S7E14 -1

Most emotion-inducing episodes:

The Measure of a Man S2E9 -2,+3

The Hunted S3E11 -1,+3

The Offspring S3E16 -2,+3

The Most Toys S3E22 -2,+1

The Quality of Life S6E9 -1,+1

Episode bonus score= 8

Total score= 88/100

I think Murderbot would like Star Trek: The Next Generation a lot, and ART would enjoy watching it with it too. It would enjoy the characters, drama, and action, but be challenged by the way machine intelligences are portrayed in the show because of its own complicated feelings about itself.

If you want me to do a Murderbot review of another piece of media, send me an ask! These are not necessarily my opinions on this piece of media, they are what I imagine Murderbot would think. (I love Data.)

[grammarpedant]

Crashes in here, hi this is my main blog and I just saw the tags you left on my art of Miki and the CombatBot and I'm going just a little insane over them. I've been thinking of a fic from Miki's POV for Rogue Protocol for a while and while I don't think I have the skill to pull that off I am SO EXCITED to see that someone else has had the same thought!!! Urg... I just love Miki so so much and seeing how the events unfold from its POV would be so interesting.

I think I gotta go draw Miki some more now hehe. Good luck with writing!!

(the Miki art in question)

Hehe, right? Miki is SUCH a character full of so many hidden depths and surprises, greatest of all is that it's also exactly what it looks like on the surface, in full sincerity: a sweet, kind person of a bot that cared very deeply about its friends and wanted to be able to count Murderbot among them. It also deliberately obfuscates the truth from Murderbot and from Don Abene alike on multiple occasions, it seems to sense what MB means and feels through the feed almost better than MB itself, it's a science bot with visual magnification abilities beyond MB's, when it's stressed and pressed for time it stops trying to talk like a human and goes back to its native code language; Miki has in-jokes with its human friends, but I never had a friend like me. And that's just random stuff I pulled from skimming the book looking for something else! Miki is just such a fascinating character!!

And in this fandom we just LOVE our outsider POVs, haha. I'm sure others have done or tried to do Miki POV of the book before, but I'm gonna use this moment as an opportunity to gush about the thing I want to write- I left the tags that I did because what came to me first was the bit leading up to the same scene you've depicted, the tragic beauty of Miki choosing the trajectory that it did. I have a heartwrenching final scene of Miki's POV in those moments that I absolutely cannot show anyone, not least because the scene simply will not hit as hard as it could unless I actually lay the groundwork that would give it a real punch.

Miki would be about (is about) self-determination, right, obviously. But the Miki POV I want to write would also be about a character caught between connection and alienation, a bot among humans and all that entails. —People love and protect Miki, yes, but do they understand it? Don Abene loved it, and Miki loved her too, and what about all the times they struggled to understand each other? The work that it takes to overcome miscommunication? How does Miki feel, knowing that there are some experiences it just cannot share with its human friends, nor they with it? Do they understand each other regardless? Does anybody ever really understand another person? —Miki has a way of talking that's a little clipped and which may seem "childish" to a reader at first glance; given that in times of stress it defaults back to a nonverbal-to-humans mode of bot communication, might we draw parallels between it and the semiverbal disabled experience? —For perhaps the first time in its life Miki met someone who could understand it reflexively, instinctively, empathize with its machinic experiences almost effortlessly. How does it understand this person's refusal to accept the vulnerability of connection? Does Miki understand Murderbot, and if so how much? In what ways?

Those are the themes I'd want to pull at, and to do so I'd use the motifs of Miki's scientific research function. Its literal ability to perceive the world differently from both humans and from MB, its framing of the world through numbers and measurement and factoids and analysis that is nevertheless beautiful to it, even when it struggles to put that beauty to human words. Names. Identity. Choice and free will. Emotion and connection. What Miki was thinking when it looked at MB's camera at the nebula storm and said, Pretty! The jokes and media and little moments it shares with Don Abene. The love and happiness that made it so secure in itself. If I could just get through the groundwork of it all... it would be beautiful. At least as beautiful as the art you drew.

Anyway, I hope you keep drawing Miki, friend! The art you did has already inspired me a bit more 🥰

[mensahbots]

i got some new followers, so i wanted to make an intro (。･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

i love writing rarepairs, especially mensahbot, mensah/pin-lee, indah/mensah, and bharadwaj/pin-lee. any forms of those dynamics are super fun to me (eg, teammates, partners, pining, divorced, "i wish i knew" ^^)

my favorite human character is mensah, my favorite bot character is miki, and my favorite murderbot is murderbot. every scene with indah is inexplicably one of the highlights of the series for me. perihelion and i have startlingly similar media consumption habits, and i'm on team redemption arc for leonide. i'm also manifesting bharadwaj and pin-lee casually getting married in book 8.

i love exploring things like canon-based devotion, narrative parallels, mutual respect, existentialism, self-esteem issues, and trauma, especially how they nuance interpersonal dynamics. my favorite fic trope is missing scene.

fics - fanart - meta - tv show stuff - otp-related reblogs - funnies

please note: internet harassment has put me in the hospital before. i will block anyone who interacts with me in a hateful way. i have little tolerance for racism, sexism, ableism, cisheterosexism, or any discussion of sexual violence without warnings. i'm agender & aroace and will also block people for identity-related gatekeeping and moralizing ship bashing because... i mean, stop that. it's baffling that this fandom (of all fandoms!) is flame warring like it's 2012.

feel free to dm if you're interested in an invite to a mensahbot-specific discord server— all headcanons and interpretations are allowed, but ship bashing and headcanon policing are not. the server is for people who like the pairing and want to discuss it and interact in a kind and respectful way with other fans.

(yes, my pinned post has bonus content. lol)

an important all systems red moment:

“It’s usually better if humans think of me as a robot,” I said. “Maybe, under normal circumstances.” She was looking a little off to one side, not trying to make eye contact, which I appreciated. “But this situation is different. It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you.” My insides melted. That’s the only way I could describe it. After a minute, when I had my expression under control, I cleared the face plate and had it and the helmet fold back into my armor. She said, “Thank you,” and I followed her up into the hopper.

another important all systems red moment:

I put the pilot’s console on standby, and looked at Mensah. She pressed her lips together, like she wanted to say something and was repressing the urge. Then she nodded firmly and said, “Good luck.” I felt like I should say something to her, and didn’t know what, and just stared at her awkwardly for a few seconds.

an important exit strategy moment:

The words kept wanting to come out. It gave me context for the emotions I was feeling, I managed not to say. “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.

an important network effect moment:

I went the other direction, further into the council/admin offices because I needed to see her. I found her only three unsecured doors away, but at least it was an office without a balcony or windows onto the admin mezzanine. I walked past Station Security and admin personnel. They should have tried to stop me but (a) it wasn’t like they didn’t know who I was and (b) it was a good thing they didn’t try to stop me. Mensah was watching the door and when I walked in her shoulders relaxed.

another important network effect moment:

I could say it was an accident, I’d meant to take him prisoner and he had tried to get away and— 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.

another another important network effect moment:

[Farai] added, “I wanted to ask what your relationship to her is.” Uh. In the Corporation Rim, Mensah was my owner. On Preservation, she was my guardian. (That’s like an owner, but Preservation law requires they be nice to you.) But Mensah and Pin-Lee were trying to get my status listed as “refugee working as employee/security consultant.” But 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."

you read this far?? here are some mensahbot headcanons of mine ^^

i interpret mensahbot and murderhelion as being something akin to qprs, although i don't think murderbot or either of them would use that term. i think the vulnerability and closeness it shares with them is a much bigger deal for them than any human definition for what they have

i think murderbot definitely hugged mensah back in exit strategy. it tells us it doesn't dislike hugging her ("strange, but not as horrific as i would have thought"), makes itself warm to help soothe her, and the moment seems reciprocally meaningful. it also holds her hand without hesitation one scene later, and it offers to hug her again in "home." i think we can assume the hug must have been "not awful" for it

i love the idea that murderbot is great with mensah's younger kids, and farai and tano internally squee when they see how much the kids love it and how gentle and friendly it is with the small humans every time it visits preservation :3

[jmtorres]

ok hmmm had to go look up what the q's were and like. it's complicated by the fact i only SORTA ship it

answer involves major plot spoilers for the third novella, Rogue Protocol, and medium-minor non-plot spoilers for Network Effect and System Collapse. and like. I gave up on Artificial Condition, because ART.

like ok they have a strong relationship (neutral, non-sexual) and I want them to have adventures together, but murderbot is SO acearo that when asked to come up with a term other than "friendship" it searched its databanks and came up with "mutual.. administrative... aid??" and like. there's enough queer poly stuff floating around in the background on Preservation that I think Murderbot on some level knows the word "queerplatonic" and decided it did not apply to it or any of its ways of connecting with other entities.

Many of the ways ART and Murderbot connect are like, more intimate than Murderbot can EVER connect with a human (for instance, ART calling it by its hard network address; when they work together on virtual space at speeds humans simply can't; ART absorbing emotional context for media through the encoding of MB's physiological? responses when watching it). Maybe they need a new cyber-based word for the terms of their relationship that doesn't apply to relationships humans are capable of. On the other hand, how many of those ways of being intimate has MB done with other bots/constructs? Do all computer entities use MB's hard network address? Like Miki or the ComfortUnit? MB was certainly high-speed data-sharing/processing with Miki on that mission, though with much greater reluctance than MB ends up having with ART. but i mean. speaking of entities MB isn't sure if the word "friend" applies to.

would ART have been jealous of MB working with Miki? Did MB ever talk to ART about that? not that jealousy is a requirement for a romantic or romantic-parallel relationship, but ART has told other ships of its caliber to buzz off and find their own secunit bc ART called dibs on Murderbot. Would ART refrain from expressing that about Miki because it died? Would ART not feel that because Murderbot kind of... pitied Miki?

meanwhile ART doesn't seem jealous of any of MB's connections to humans, even Mensah, that many outsiders seem to interpret as somehow romantic (probably more like liege lady/servant devotion). When ART hears Mensah is coming onboard it starts cleaning up wanting to impress her. And there's no question of MB being jealous of ART's relationships with its human crew, even though those relationships are clearly deeply emotionally important to ART. MB's only question when it comes to it is whether ART's crew will LIKE it, Murderbot, or consider it a danger/interloper/failure. Whatever their relationship is, it's something that is simply orthogonal to how either of them relates to humans. Neither could have a relationship with a human that would replace or threaten the relationship they have with each other, and I think that's not a case of neither is attracted to humans in any sense (I get the feeling ART is actually human-sex-curious), it's that the nature of their relationship is not one humans are capable of participating in. Mayyyyybe augmented humans? Because to be honest I don't think there's a bright line between what constitutes an augmented human versus a construct. But there may be a cultural element that's unique also; ART and Murderbot are both manufactured tool entities, not legally people with any inalienable people-rights (yet?).

Murderbot and ART achieve queerness, in the sense of being outsiders, alienated, frequently closeted, unprotected to persecuted by law, in a setting where LGBT+ human identities and relationships seem unremarkable.

so anyway i guess i ship them but not within a human framework of relationship types? and tbh I haven't read a lot of fic about them because I haven't gotten the sense many writers are willing to dig into that difference rather than parallel human experience. and like, that's not an invalid way to think about them, on a meta level they can be metaphors for aroace queerplatonic autistic people or whatever else you see in them. But I kinda feel like, can we dig into the scifi concepts and let them be weird and unique?

(if anyone has any recs for fic that DOES tackle that, drop the link!)

so uh i'm not sure if that actually answers any of the meme questions. @alexseanchai anything else you wanna know?

ship or don't ship ask game: I'm blanking on fandoms we currently have in common, except Murderbot where I have read enough canon to know I want to read it anll but not enough to convince my brain to let me read more (and that's not enough to have opinions on shipping), so which Murderbot ship would you like to be asked about?

hmmmm Murderbot/ART is probably the juggernaut

there's some human pairings (and morings) going on in the background but that might be spoilers for you, how much have you read?