everything needs more magical girls

Like obviously PHYSICALLY it's just a bot. But it is a bot who has been raised to believe on some level that it is human - at the very least, that it has more in common with humans than it does with other bots. There's an angle here about ART who is kind of like a bird who has been raised by and imprinted on humans, who believes itself to be human, who doesn't recognize itself in other birds, who doesn't understand why the other humans don't see it as an equal. It's in a shitty bind, because humans wont see it as one of them but it can't live as a bot. So it's living in the kind of subtle insidious misery which is why animal husbandry experts pretty universally agree that having animals imprint on humans is bad for them. (This is the problem with the siloing of academic disciplines. A zoologist could have told the MI department not to /purposefully make the superai imprint on humans/)

Meant to post this yesterday, but a wrap on Day 2 of Dashcon 2 (the third one)! We adventured our zones!!!!

God, this was so fun. Thanks to all of the organizers and everyone I spoke to in general, because truly? I do not think I could have asked for a better first convention experience. If you got any pictures with me, or any of my Homestuck aspect charms or jellyfish, please let me know! :D

Murderbot has in fact freed other secunits before. Multiple times. Do not forget that. But also one time it offered and the combat unit was like I ACTIVELY WANT TO MURDER THE FUCK OUT OF YOU. So. It's cautious.

Three is doing something so developmentally important here. It's NOT just that Three knows it has a team to fall back on if it gets into trouble with the baddies, it's also that Three has figured out it can get in trouble with it's own side and that's ok. It's not thrilled to have pissed off ART but it did it anyways! It now knows it can be in trouble and not get tortured or disassembled over it! It did something it wasn't supposed to and then came home to the people who would be mad about it, even though it didn't have to! It could have run off to keep doing it's own thing but didn't.

I love that Murderbot's POV is so limited because it just only cares about it's own missions. If we hear in 2 books from now about how every SecUnit in the Torus deserted their post and have colonized a moon together or something somewhere Murderbot would just be like "huh". Like there would be an emotion check about it but it's not going to stop it's soap operas for more than 3 minutes about it.

I know the idea of the rogue unit that approached Murderbot recognizing Murderbot as the originator of the code is hilarious, but also, let us consider that if it doesn't recognize Murderbot as the originator of the code that unit is gonna get such a weird view of the world. Like sometimes you live your whole life in shackles and then somebody breaks them for you and you run around and the next SecUnit you run into is already free. You'd have to wonder, then, if freedom is far more normal than you'd realized. And you'd have to think- these free units are doing ok. Maybe I can also be ok. Also, the successful free unit is wearing a highly distinctive garment that must have a tactical purpose given than it is still on a mission. And is telling you to change your clothes. So like...maybe it is tactically useful to wear a very colorful poncho thing. Maybe it should tell the other free units to get those, to. It seems to have been aiding that successful free unit. And thus, free sec unit fashion culture is born.

It doesn't trust it's own kind. That's not just because it's internalized a lot of predjudice. It doesn't entirely trust itself either.

It's so... it's not just that it wants good people to exist. It's that it can only look for them and find them outside of the system it came from. It's so contemptuous in it's own narration of the people on the ship bound for a indentured servitude, but Mensah picks up on the truth anyway. "You wanted to help those people" "I couldn't have helped them" It's not a revolutionary. It doesn't imagine dismantling the corporation rim. It just wants to neither be hurt or made to hurt people. It tries not to get attached to lost causes. Sometimes it does anyway.

obsessed with how all you need to do is throw money at public education and eliminate most standardized testing and you will start getting smarter, more engaged, kinder adults. obsessed with how giving people safe housing, reliable access to good food, and decent wages dramatically reduces drug overdoses and gun violence. obsessed with how much people actually want to get together and fix infrastructure, invent new ways of helping each other, and create global ways of living sustainably once you give them livable pay to do so. obsessed with how tracking diseases, developing medicines, and improving public health becomes so much easier when you just make healthcare free at point of use.

recent Murgerdot stuff✨

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