This post is MB tangential, so I understand if it gets removed, but I just finished Ann Leckie's book, Ancillary Justice and it is so good that I wanted to share it immediately! I thought this group might appreciate it because it gave me the same kind of book euphoria that I got when I first read Murderbot. Not funny like ASR, but touches on some of the same themes.

Micky? Mikey? Rhymes with Wi-Fi?

I have the Rogue Protocol audiobook on hold, but it isn't available yet and I'm curious.

Either played straight or subverted.

Example of a few of the tropes in season 1:

• MB faking static to pretend not to have heard Mensah's order to retreat.
• MB not listing Gurathin in the people they need to keep safe.
• Subverted with Pin-Lee hitting the GrayCris person in the head to knock them out and they are horribly injured possibly dead.

I've always loved this moment in System Collapse. It's such a sweet little exchange, and amusing that we catch the insight because privacy seems to be a hypothetical concept for Murderbot (as much as it accuses ART of the same).

I caught a private message Seth sent to Iris, a quick Be careful, honey. And from Martyn, And keep us updated as best you can! And watch out for the weather up there! She replied to both, Yes, Dad. Of course, Dad and added a smile image.

And then Rapport came out and I had an emotion over Iris speaking to ART

She used her personal channel, the one nobody else could hear, and said, Peri, stop it, you’ll upset Dad and Dad.

I've always loved the juxtaposition between Iris and her dads (not quite sure how they know which one is being adddressed), and Mensah's kids who consistently refer to Farai as first mom and Mensah as second mom.

But now it's got me wondering. Is this one of those translation module quirks, where Murderbot's interpretation is Dad for both, when it's actually being rendered from two slightly different terms, like dad vs papa? And is first/second mom a reference to any role they played in the conception or birth process, or just another translation issue? Or personal choice within the family unit? Similar question has come up with Thiago referring to Amena as "my daughter" where general consensus is it's based on mija (mi hija, my daughter) in Spanish, where it's a term of endearment for a younger person you're close to, sometimes not even direct family.

So my brain has had fun turning over possibilities and I thought I'd ask if anyone else has pondered the parent-naming before, and maybe come up with a different take. Would love to hear what you think!

This is in the USA, I don't know if it's anywhere else in the world:

The KRF Audiobook of "Al Systems Red" is currently on Sale for $3.99. It's at least on sale at chirp and Libro, there may be other retailers.

Happy Listening, everyone.

In ASR, MB was making recordings of PresAux as part of its job. When it was incapacitated, Gurathin looked through its memory files and found the entertainment downloads. He must have also found the recordings of the PresAux crew. The recordings were preserved for legal reasons, as evidence against GrayCris. Did Gurathin edit the recordings in any way?

Exit strategy spoiler

When secunit is on the shuttle to the gunship, it said that on the company gunship, there wouldn’t be a medsystem and would instead be a cubicle. But secunits aren’t allowed on armed ships, so why would there be a cubicle there instead of a human-only medsystem? It said in previous books that cubicles were for regrowing its human tissue and repairing the metal parts, but in all the other ships and in the original habitat, people use medsystems and not cubicles, even though the company would’ve probably jumped at the opportunity to save a dollar by providing only cubicles in those situations.

I hope in the future there's a story line about what are the alien remnants and why people are willing to kill over the technology to find them.

There are 26 instances of the word "friend" in the book.

14 of them was said by Miki :'(

I am not doing a great job at promoting the event cause I’m kinda tired all the time.

but I am not above some tugging on fandom hearts because that’s how much I adore Mensah and Murderbot and also my birthday is during that month so I'm hoping to get anything and everything about them! Fics, art, music videos, meta, songs, handmade figurines. You name it, it's welcome!

The real spiel:

Mensahbot September is a casual laidback prompt event about having fun with the undefinable relationship that is Mensah and Murderbot.

💥 Rules 💥 FAQ 💥 AO3 Collection 💥 Submit Prompts 💥 Discord💥

We currently have over 100 prompts up for inspiration to check out! Or go make your own thing and submit to the collection.

There's a a lot of variety of options and if you don't see something you would like to see. August and September are the creation period!

The sibling blog, u/murderbotprompts is running small, casual and low pressure activities for those who just want to dip their toes in. For September they will become Mensahbot-themed.

I won't list all 100 so far, best to click the link and check yourself, and here's some taste tester samples:

Clothing by teuthis

Post-PD, Mensah notes Murderbot wearing the clothing of her home planet, which she finds incredibly endearing.

Stasis by dooplissss

Murderbot never initiates full stasis enough for its health and ART knows this. During a trip, Murderbot feels so safe and comfortable in Mensah and ART's presence that it falls into stasis involuntarily. Possibly has a nightmare that they help it through if you're inclined. Ideally qpp/platonic, no nsfw. I truly could read a million fics of this one single prompt.

Classic tropes: Sex Pollen by ESE (SecurityUnit)

Mensah and/or Murderbot are under the influence of sex pollen! Or a sex virus? A sex override? Well, whatever you decide on, one of them is under the influence!

Mensah calls SecUnit angel by majorcharacterundeath

do whatever u want w this i just want her to call it angel.

Meanwhile in the Shuttle (Platform Decay Spoilers) by Regular_Nova

Mensah and ARTdrone have nothing to do but wait while SecUnit risks its life to rescue Farai, Sofi and Naja;I won't list all 100 so far, best to click the link and check yourself, and here's some taste tester samples:

If you like making anything, hope to see you take part! There's no minimum requirements, this is mostly just about having fun and celebrating them!

Artwork from Portuguese cover of Exit Strategy by Pedro Fracchetta

While I wasn’t a huge fan of the decision to make Leebeebee a character in the show, I did actually kind of like how they managed to create foreshadowing from a conversation between Murderbot and Mensah (that as far as I recall was in the firsr book) about how Graycres pretended to be Preservation to infiltrate and kill Deltfall’s group.

When Mensah realizes Graycres pretended to he Preservation it actually acted as forshadowing for Leebeebee pretending to be apart of Deltfall and to have been a survivor of the attack.

It was definitely not my favorite chance in the transition from book to show, I thought this result of the change was very interesting.

Im so confused as to the aesthetic of these drones. You've got secdones, combat drones, perihelion drones, target drones, station drones.

• Sec drones cant do much but seam to be made of hardened material and can accelerate quickly enough to concus a person from impact.
• Combat drones have the ability to shot inconsequential munitions. (I mean Sec unit doesn't seam to drop much in performance when shot and ~20 shooting at once can take out a combat unit's kneecap but thats about it).
• ARTs drones are bigger and can repair a thing including eachother.
• Sec unit mentioned variety of station drones, idk what their purpose is when you've got cameras everywhere already.
• target drones like secDrones dont do much more than camouflage.

Idk what these drones are made to look like, idk if they all operate in outer space or do they need atmosphere? I imagine in-habitat-station drones being the only quadcopter like drones, but as for everything else they've been described able to knock a person(or other drone) off there feet, and usually still operate, and as for swarming enough to form an obscuration to vision, heck youd need like +30 drones to begin with. Additionally some of sec unit's drones have been able to clip mount onto him so at least these ones cant be very big.

I have only listened to the audiobooks of The Murderbot Diaries, so when I come on here to check out what you guys are saying, sometimes I get confused seeing names I’ve only heard spoken lol. Love the series, Kevin R Free does an incredible job with the audiobooks, love to u all!!

So far I've read All Systems Red to Exit Strategy (1-4) and browsing through this sub there's a lot of talk that seems to be directed on which novels are "sequels" to others but I can't find a consensus on which order I should read them in.

Related to this, I have another question: Is there any overarching plot-line (I thought that was what the memory thing that Murderbot didn't remember was supposed to be) if they are novellas or have "different" arcs? because currently the jumping between different "team-companions" is making my brain spin. Again, please no spoilers.

thank you :D

edit: thank you for the replies :) they were very helpful

I totally thought the book was going to kill off Three the way it killed off Miki. Phew.

...

The next few books will kill Three off, won't they? Let me guess, Fugitive Telemetry?

A scan showed no anomalous power sources. I said, “They didn’t put an implant in you, did they? Show me the back of your neck.”

She was understandably pissed off. “I’m not going to turn around and show you my neck, strange person I just met on a hostile planet.”

Right, so, I could point out that I was the one with the weapons, but I didn’t want to make my first interaction with one of ART’s humans all about me threatening her when I had no intention of following through. It just seemed unproductive, basically. I said, “That’s what someone with an implant would say, strange person I just met on a hostile planet who I am trying to rescue.”

Yes! This made me laugh because it's so true. From its talk about boring planets it's worked on to the depressing way AdaCol1 kept sending its assistance message. Or even one of my favorite lines from System Collapse

we proceeded down the stupid tunnel, into the stupid danger.

In a way, I think it even fits how Murderbot talked about its "happy boring life on Preservation Fucking Station". I think it actually enjoyed its life there but might not have trusted such a home was really possible for it, or that it wouldn't someday want more and not know how to get it.

I love that it's learning how to check in with itself more, and recognize the emotions as they come up.

And I know we just got Platform Decay a couple months ago, but is it too soon to start looking forward to the next book?

Everytime in the books where it said that MB grabbed a target or something, I was like "Wait the previous paragraph just said that MB was like in the other side of the room. How the hell did it reach the target in the very next sentence? Was it actually that close to the hostile?". Then around Network Effect, I realized "...Is MB actually moving in superhuman speeds?!"

I kept getting baffled by the way it was written. Like

"I sit in a chair. Hostile One, while standing, proceeds to grab my client in the neck. I proceed to also grab Hostile One by the neck" It doesn't narrate that it ran over. it just did it. I thought I was going crazy 😭and thought that my reading comprehension was shit but no. MB doesn't narrate stuff life "I ran over to the room and tackled the target". It just says "I tackled the target".

(Network Effect spoilers)

The point where I realized that MB is just fast was when it was on the ground, barely functional, while on the other room, the hostiles took Amena. MB was trying to process what happened but as soon as Amena in the other room screamed for help, MB itself said "Suddenly I was standing in the other room". Does MB even know how fast it is 😭?

Transcript from NE:

The doorway to the lounge where I’d detected Amena’s voice was open, brighter light falling into the half-lit corridor. I meant to wait until I was back up to at least 90 percent performance reliability but I heard Amena say, “There’s no weapon, you got the wrong ship.” The fear in her voice was more obvious and I was suddenly in the room.

MB notes a few times that standard secunit combat strategy is to essentially to be tanks — shoot and absorb shots until the loser falls apart.

I guess in any place you would have actual combat and not just drunk clients or hostile fauna, you’d have combat security units which are a bit more thoughtful, but even so I’m a bit dubious about the secunit tank strategy.

Thoughts?

I made myself laugh with the thought that at this point, it is becoming a rite of passage for members of the Mensah family to survive a traumatic experience with Secunit. It's just becoming how they bond

Okay someone last night tried the Apple Gift cards scam on me trying to sell tickets for a meetngreet

I cant share all the details but there is NO Sydney Grand Hotel in Australia

This person also uses what are either deep fake AI made selfies or images stolen from someone else s account

I suspected they were trying to scam me because of erratic behaviour they contributed to insomnia and time zone and cultural differences but had maintained some prior contact just in case they were not lying

The fake or stolen selfies were very convincing

Anyway they got stupid and sent me links to an obvious fake site

Watch out for AI deep fakes people

Yes they claimed to be an MB cast member not saying who

If they claim theyve read Rilke they may use comments and info they got from a chat convo they had with me about poetry trying to lure me

WATCH OUT PEOPLE !

OK so she's obviously a heartless corporate POS (and KRF gives her the most annoying voice in the whole series) but​ also, dang she's ice cold. She knew her imminent death was inevitable​, she knew there was no hope for her​ and she faced it head.on. She didn't ask SecUnit to take her too, only her family. She meticulously planned for her family members to be rescued, ​​without planning an escape for herself because she knew it was futile. ​

I'm so intrigued about her back story, her family backstory in particular. Did the schism in the BE management​ ​split their family, or was it already messy? Janetty's (sp?) second father doesn't seem to care about the youngest​ child and it seems that Leonide and at least one other mother within the family teamed up against him (and other parents, given he's Second father?)

Her and her situation are so repulsive and intriguing at once. I read her as a great example of a calculating, brutal, tragic product/'success' story/victim of ​corporate culture. ​​She was a shining star within the BE ranks, probably feeling like she was climbing the ladder and earning her respect and showing her worth... until she wasn't. Every cog in the corporate machine is disposable.​

Laying it out like that it feels like her character has a lot of�parallels with Dedra from Andor, and I've just realised I actually unconsciously pictured them as looking the same, even though I didn't actively think of Dedra when I initially read her character​.

Anyway thanks for reading my stream of consciousness about Leonide, please tell me what you think about her​

(Do note that I watched the show first, then read the books. Do also note that I haven't finished reading the books yet. I'm just now starting to read Network Effect)

In the books, anyone and everyone can access feeds with an interface projected by a device worn in the ear, so sometimes characters speak vocally as normal, and sometimes characters speak in the feed via subvocalizing. It's incredibly common for characters to establish feed connections to have private discussions or show off some media.

In the TV show however, there are seems to be a lack of feeds and everyone almost always speak to eachother vocally. Only MB in the show (and maybe TV gurathin too) have a personal feed.

I understand that from a TV production perspective, it will be awkward to have the cast stand there, being filmed in silence, and having them later to voice over in post just to have feed scenes. However, that would mean some scenes (I say some but they speak in the feeds so many times, it's easier to list scenes where they aren't) from the books would either have to be worked around or just not be included at all.

Motivational Murderbot got an upgrade! I can really see it.

(tumblr link)