MURDERBOT 1.10 "The Perimeter"
What a scene!
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MURDERBOT 1.10 "The Perimeter"
What a scene!

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holy fuck the clip for the murderbot final??? made me so uncomfortable like they really captured the humiliation and disrespect of dehumanising a construct/person
ALSO this is a regular occurrence for secunit it expected to b treated like that with the presaux team and it wasn't so it makes it all the more of a whiplash
AND if a human could b forced to do that to perform like a fucking baby against their will or else either be tortured or killed you would 1000% want to murder the ppl that made you do that
I've seen a criticism of the show that PresAux hasn't fully earned their right to MB's heart but I disagree for every reason you just pointed out OP!
Like at the bare minimum level, they were willing to leave it alone and let it do its own thing. Even Mensah's invitation to stay in the crew area came with "or you don't have to." No one has ever said that to murderbot before. It's literally do this or die. Do this dangerous thing or die, do this humiliating thing or die. In fact, we've even seen that before at the very beginning of the show when the miners held a blowtorch to its hand.
Then of course they rise above the bare minimum level. Mensah confides in it and asks for its input. She enters a dangerous location and kills for it. All of them work to bring it back online after it shoots itself to protect them. They try to help, in their own shitty way, when it is attacked by another secunit. They keep trying to talk to it how it's feeling which is annoying and mortifying, but those miners who forced it to burn its hand sure didn't care about how it was feeling. Yes, they have arguments and get into conflict with it, but that is what people do in relationships, and being able to do that like a person is a positive change. If it didn't feel safe enough to argue with them then it wouldn't be a true relationship. There certainly was no arguing with the people who made it cry like a baby, or kill without question, or hurt itself for their amusement.
The contrast is huge. I don't know how anyone could could go through all that with these people and not have their heart melt.
Incoherent screams, sound of breaking glass, alarms blaring
and while i'm on the murderbot tv kick
one of my favorite bits is that presaux team did so believably well! i'm a sucker for the 'civilians in danger' tropes, and the show ticked them off perfectly. nobody aside from gurathin even was off their planet before, and while they were all prepared for field work, they were most definitely not prepared for field work with hostile fauna AND murderous corporate goons. add in a curveball of learning that their security robot is neither robot nor obligated to be their security (and i love murderbot to bits, but if you don't have access to its inner narraiton, it's completely shit at communicating anything to anybody ever, actively resents doing so, and from the outside is objectively terrified to be stuck with, at least for a while.)
(actually, the aside here is - personhood doesn't mean, y'know, pacifism or good intentions. murderbot turned out to be a kind of person who would rather nerd out about its soap operas and huddle quietly in the corner, but it's not a secunit thing, it's a murderbot thing. its personality might have just as well turned out to be unhinged, sadistic, vengeful or completely disinterested in their welfare, and there would've been fuck-all presaux could've done about it. it DOES consider murdering them all, even! so there's that.)
and despite all of that - they don't lose their head, they don't turn on each other, the talk through various panic-filled situations, and they keep doing their jobs when there's a call to do their jobs. they might squabble, but they never let it grow into violence or complete splintering; and when murderbot needs them to do things - even terrifying things - and they agree with it, they do them things (up to and including some judicious murder, which i really want to see the fallout of.) they're scared and they're unprepared and they're uncertain, and yet they rally and they do so, so well.
(on the sidenote i just adore that they never let gurathin get away with self-isolating, but they don't force him to be positive or to change his entire personality either. he's clearly Eeyore of the group, depression and snappishness and all, and they love him as it is. and, given some time to catch their breath and to work through some of their assumptions and preconceptions, it's very demonstrably obvious they'll be able to deal with murderbot as it is as well. yesss.)
All of this! I love what an obvious community and friend group they truly are. Iâve seen the complaints that they were âstupidâ or âincompetentâ, which clearly expected them to be flawlessly cool and clever Star Trek People (an opinion which is subtly lampshaded and deconstructed by the inclusion of Star-Trek-Days-of-Our-Lives âSanctuary Moonâ). But looking at this from a realistic lens, which the show was clearly interested in doing, they have an established cultural and group dynamic. They have training in academia (and one has corporate espionage training). They took a one-day course in weapons.
They are 100% prepared for a field expedition. Take out MBâs narration in the first episode, and they are obviously THRIVING on that expedition. But they are normal academics, and are NOT prepared for dangerous megafauna or a rival group trying to murder them all! Gurathin is probably the only one in the group who has ever seen someone die violently before.
I love that they all have very understandable, human reactions to the situation, but they are strong and they are smart, so they donât lose what makes them themselves. They stick together. They put themselves in danger to save one another. They squabble, but they never split.
They can talk about this. And they do. Consistently, they show what makes Preservation a good and kind society. They care for one another even when itâs dangerous or scary or just inconvenient. They include people in their culture who struggle with it. They let them be themselves, but never let them isolate, because part of being in a communal culture is that you need to stay connected to the community. And itâs good for Gurathin to stay connected. Isolating would worsen his paranoia and his worst tendencies, but by persistently making him a part of the group activities, by even pushing him outside of his comfort zone, he is integrated further with them.
And when it counts, that community mindset pays off. They work together so well in episode 9. When Ratthi canât do something alone, Arada and Bharadwaj are there to support him, to reach consensus, and to do it together. When Gurathin is (once again, poor designated damsel) imperiled, Pin-Lee is there with a wrench. I hope they struggle with the choice they made, but also understand that choice a little more having made it. They made the same decision MB made, to take out a threat immediately rather than wait to see if it could be talked through, because that person pointed a gun at Gurathin, and there wasnât time to come up with a more elegant solution. Itâs a great mirror that they can start to see the world through MBâs eyes. And it makes me wonder if the two big hold-outs to including it (Gurathin and Pin-Lee) are going to turn around and become some of its biggest advocates (obviously Mensah is #1), both having mirrored it in different ways.
I just love how human theyâve been throughout. Their strengths are human, their weaknesses are very human. They all have room to grow, but they are also a strong community, good friends, solid academics, and theyâre coming out of a traumatic experience even closer than they were before.
So everyone is free to disagree, but my personal opinion is that it's kinda lame to shit on the casting of MurderBot bc it's supposed to be agender and so it should be an androgynous actor who isn't obviously one sex or another. Uhhh I have a body that is unmistakably a certain way but that in no way changes the fact that i am agender.
My entire life I have been told I have the wrong interests and I speak the wrong way and I have been sorted in with men or in with women depending on who's looking at me and in what context, and you don't get to tell me that I'm actually this or that because you think someone with a body that looks like mine couldn't possibly be agender. Because I am.
Agender people can appear to be stereotypically masculine or feminine. They can be any race or ethnicity. It may shock you to learn that a masc presenting individual with a beard may not think of themself as "a man", and a femme presenting person may not identify as "a woman". There is no reason why MB's internal gender (or lack thereof) is invalid because it doesn't adhere to the standards you want agender individuals to perform.
Also we don't know Skarsgard's gender. He uses he/him but is that because he identifies as a man or because he has a masculine appearance so everyone just assumes? Idk. We would have to ask. Maybe Skarsgard is agender, too. It's just weird to me that on a website where people say they're very concerned with being open minded there is a surprising amount of hostility to the idea that someone could be agender if they look Like That. Which is depressing to me, as someone who also looks A Certain Way.
Whether I wear a skirt or a tuxedo, I am still agender. What you think when you look at me has nothing to do with my internal orientation. It's your business and none of mine. but don't tell me my gender is invalid. Don't tell me I couldn't possibly be what I am.
That shit is, as they say, for the goddamn birds.
Thank you for articulating this. These complaints always rubbed me the wrong way for the same reason, even if Iâm not agender myself. But I have known agender and nonbinary folks who have very gendered traits and very gendered presentation. One nonbinary person I know styles themself in 1950s high femme, but that doesnât make them any less non-binary.
It goes the same for folks who, through either the reality of their bodies or deliberate choice, are very masculine. Their body and their presentation has nothing to do with their gender. And it was why, after some consideration, I really liked the casting choice, even before I saw Alex Skarsgard in action. Because the actor looks like the typical Action Man protagonist, but the character is anything but. And the show is very true to it being agender, but still facing the struggles of having a body that is perceived in ways it cannot control. These are struggles real agender people can and do have, so to see it play out on screen was really nice.
I like seeing shows finally embracing that nonbinary, agender, and trans folks can look more than one stereotypical way. I like have an ultra-masc agender person, because I havenât gotten to see that represented yet, particularly in a loving and fun way.
So much thisâŚ

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Letâs talk about THAT SCENE, shall we? The big scene of episode 8, when both Alexander Skarsgard and David Dastmalchian acted their fucking asses off in a mess of mutual vulnerability, mutual aggression and betrayal, and mutual destruction.Â
First off, I have to acknowledge the double-entendres absolutely littering this scene. The mutual vulnerability! The physical link-up, plugging into one another. Digging into their most private (mental) places. The request for fucking restraint followed by an electronic blindfolding. Shit, man, if there arenât 18000 buck-wild Murderathin fics coming out of this one episode, the fandom is seriously dropping the very kinky ball that is this absolute shit-show of a relationship.
Anyway! Onto more serious discussions.Â
First off, we learn so much in such a short time. This show has been a masterclass at utilizing a limited run-time well, demanding that everything on screen pull double or triple duty, layered with meanings and implications, and this scene is no different. Through their mutual accusations, we get mutual confessions. Murderbot uses an instance of mutual vulnerability to dig into Gurathinâs mind to try to find dirt on him, only to get lost in his thoughts. It exposes Gurathinâs most closely-guarded secretâhis unrequited love for Mensahâbut also Gurathinâs belief that he is fundamentally unloveable. And the accusation is read out in first-person, transforming it into a confession. Because Murderbot very much sees itself as unloveable too.
And Gurathin has simultaneously dug into Murderbot, uncovering the fragmented memories of the massacre, and its actual name. And much like Murderbot, what we see is equal parts accusation and a horrified confession. Gurathin is in tears as he watches through the massacre footage (and kudos to the special effects folks for playing the footage over both Dastmalchianâs and Skarsgardâs eyes during the scene, showing both of them trapped in the same instant together), blurting out the revelation in third person rather than first, but following it up immediately with his accusations about being defective. A danger to everyone around him. One thought from something terrible.
Sounds a lot like self-loathing, doesnât it? And thatâs what this scene is all about. Two people who canât help but dig and pry and hurt one another because they see themselves in the other. And they hate themselves. They are both terrified of being defective, of being somehow involved in terrible acts that led to deaths. We donât know if Gurathin killed people directly, but he almost certainly had the information he gathered used to kill people. He was responsible, maybe. Just like Murderbot.
And they are both terrified of falling back into that place. Itâs why theyâre both terrified, more than anything, of being controlled. Murderbot broke free of its governor module, but still works for the Company. It still isnât a fully independent being and never will be so long as itâs a part of this organization. Its small pieces of full independence are its thoughts and its name, and Gurathin exposed both of those.Â
Gurathin is terrified of falling back into substance abuse. Realizing that it was medical painkillers that were the first step to getting him thoroughly addicted and compliant was awful, because it implies either a past physical trauma orâI think more likelyâpain medications as part of the augmenting procedures. You have to imagine having cybernetics laced into your brain and replacing your eyes has to be incredibly painful. And from there it was a slide downward into addiction, likely deliberately by Gurathinâs employers.
But I also find it interesting that, despite the compulsive need to dig at one another and hurt one another, there is also another impulse at play in this scene: some degree of caregiving and weird trust. Murderbot did NOT have to consent to plugging itself into Gurathin to try to bypass his pain receptors and act as a non-drug alternative to pain management during the surgery. It may say that it did this because it would find Gurathin screaming to be irritating, but that seems flimsy. And Gurathin DEFINITELY didnât have to ask Murderbot to restrain him, or accept when it blanked out his vision as well.Â
There is a weird, almost unconscious trust and care there. I feel like this is something that is going to be more explored, and is the basis for something less destructive between them. I also think it speaks to the impulse on both their parts to want forgiveness, care, trust, and love. They donât forgive themselves. They donât care about themselves as they should. They donât trust or love themselves.
But deep down, they both still want that for themselves, even if they are both completely incapable of articulating that outside of accusations at the moment.
This whole scene was just working on so many levels, and they werenât pleasant or comfortable levels. And I love how the show digs into that through these characters, their dumpster-fire relationship, and all the cracks in their psyches they keep exposing because of one another.
What this scene is really exposing is this mutual desperation for connection. They are afraid of loss of control, they are deeply self-loathing, but the seed of their personal growth lies in this craving for connection.
I love the writing on this show, itâs amazing how much they get in there. All shows should be written this well.
One thing I loved about this not mentioned here, though, was that when Murderbot realized what happened (it had spoken Guraâs secret pain aloud), it didnât expose Gurathin, despite the fact Gura had already exposed Murderbotâs secret hack of its governor module. Would Murderbot have still covered for Gurathin if it knew he was about to expose its name and its maybe-murder of 57 clients? I think Murderbot would.
The fact that Murderbot uses a creative project (the documentary) to help process some of its trauma in System Collapse was so incredibly emotional to me, in a way I can't quite articulate. It doesn't even realize that that's what it's doing, I'm pretty sure, but I think being able to turn its archived footage of the awful things it's seen and experienced in the Corporation Rim into a tool for saving the colonist humans from similar fates must be incredibly therapeutic for it. Finally, all that pain has a purpose.
It definitely is therapeutic and there's actually a few forms of therapy it could be line with! one is art therapy (no pun intended) but the one i see the most is narrative therapy.
narrative therapy looks at the faulty beliefs someone has about themselves from trauma and the "story" they are telling themselves that has been keeping those beliefs in place. for murderbot its "I'm defective, I'm unlovable, I was built only to destroy, I'm the problem, etc." it works by helping people take steps to reframe what has happened to them (like MB deciding to use its pain to help the colonists) and by creating distance from that story so they start to see it from the outside instead of internalizing it. I have to suspect that murderbot being able to literally watch its story as an outsider through the documentary gave it this sense of distance. It also gave it also gave it a new thing to associate those memories with.
And that brings up the idea that someone can tell a new story about themselves. they don't have to live by the old story forever. Murderbot can go from replaying "I'm that secunit that murdered those 57 humans, i'm that secunit with something wrong with it, I'm that secunit that got contaminated by alien remnants and almost died, I'm that secunit that was completely helpless" to "I'm that secunit that protects Dr. Mensah, I'm that secunit that ART asked to join it's crew, I'm that secunit that Amena called her third mom, I'm that secunit that saved all those colonists."
And truly that's the thesis of the whole series. Trauma does not define you. You are still lovable and you do get to choose who you want to be. You can rewrite your story.
This definitely got away from me but it makes me emotional too, okay?
Incoherent screams, sound of breaking glass, alarms blaring
IRIS AND ART BONDING AND IN JOKES. OMFG YES
Here's the link to read it at 10 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, July 10th:
The new novelette will be released on Reactor immediately following the final episode of AppleTV+âs Murderbot
Episode 8... Okay so, obviously not in a million years would MB say or narrate or even think the words "Why can't you love me back?" on its own behalf, but. The show keeps emphasizing parallels between how it thinks/feels and how Gurathin thinks/feels, and where it came from and where Gurathin came from. And we know, especially from the books, that it does (non-romantically) love people in its way, and that its love takes the form of putting itself at risk to protect its people. And despite how hard it pushes back on anyone trying to reverse that dynamic, the moments that overwhelm it with emotion and win its undying loyalty are always when its people choose to protect it; when their actions prove that its life matters to them; when they refuse to leave it behind.
I just think it got stuck on that particular beat in Gurathin's psyche because it, too, wants to be loved in the way that it loves.
I love that part of the episode, for a couple of reasons.
1 - the parallel action Gura took, trying to see some of Murderbotâs secrets
&
2 - Murderbot keeping Gurathinâs secret, even after (or before) Gura having no problem exposing Murderbotâs.
And Mensah knew who was really talking there, but is she starting to suspect Murderbot feels the same way? It was an awesome moment for all three actors, so much packed into such a little spaceâŚ
boldness is all!
so murderbot 1.9 was just personally tailored emotional porn for yours truly, 10/10, no notes, those people are amazing and i hope they get to adapt all the books. i want to see what they do with art like burning.
the thing about the show overall i really loved is how deft, economic and intentional they're with their adaptation choices. ASR is a deceptively hard book to adapt, i think, given that it's delivered in a very detached narrative from a deeply unreliable narrator, and everything the show team chose to do with it was just - well-thought out in a deeply satisfying way.
giving gurathin his woobie corporate spy backstory? elevates him from the straight man description in the book (the humans in the books are deliberately sanded down and smushed together - it's murderbot's narration and it doesn't want to care too much and it doesn't want to pay attention; but we as independent viewers have to care, otherwise there's no show), gives him this beautiful kismesis rapport/understanding/tension with murderbot, and quickly and efficiently hammers in the 'under this form of predatory capitalism everybody is abused and exploited, but also there are levels to that' that takes the books some time to unfold. who knows if they get a second season? and it's already all here.
leebeebee? quick corprim entry point of view, nice thematic foil for both gurathin and murderbot, the quick demonstration of how presaux' way of communicating with corporation rim is both good and dangerous for them, and a sideside demonstration that yes, sometimes people will participate in their own exploitation and will choose the promise of being the boot over the freedom from the boot, and there's that.
sanctuary moon? aside from how much fun it is, it provides us with quick and dirty insight into murderbot feelings - something that it most definitely has in abundance AND something that it staunchly refuses to admit or embody all the way until, like, fifth or sixth book in the series - and also a beautiful demonstration of how a person will learn empathy from anywhere, even second-grade soap opera, because personhood is made of connections, and the urge to connect is just that strong. it IS a mediocre show, that is; this mediocre show allowed murderbot to invent and try out concepts completely integral to its sense of being and perceiving the world way ahead of time. (also makes me think of how the most enduring Ye Fandoms of Olde were slightly mediocre, long shows that had to be read very closely and sometimes against the text to read all the richness and joy into them.)
(and also for the horrendous, startling vulnerability and generosity of murderbot sharing its comfort episode with mensah AFTER she called it a mediocre show. i would never, i swear to god.)
the throuple? a) hilarious b) a quick and dirty crash course on how presaux navigates sex, relationships, sticky ethical situations, cringe and changes - by treating each other with maximum respect possible and knowing that they can talk about shit even when shit is deeply embarrassing for all parties involved.
it's not maybe the only correct way to do things - in some other universe it could've been done completely differently, and it's okay - but in our sad little world where adaptations usually go either with slapping a title on any tangentially related standard save the cat story, or with slavishly following word for word without understanding what those words do, i was incredibly surprised and pleased.
This is all.

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I would sell my entire arm, leg, liver, first born, 401k, etc. for the showrunners to have the opportunity to adapt the rest of the books. I truly believe they can do them justice. That episode (9) was so quintessentially murderbot. They know how to strike the delicate balance between humor and heart so well. One minute you're laughing over this mfer faceplanting directly into a pile of gravel and the next you're on the verge of tears because it thinks it's going to spend its last moments hugging the human it loves most in the world. It's exactly what it needs to be. I understand why martha is so happy with it.
why tv!Mensah is the best
So, in the last five-six years, I went through a divorce, a pandemic, a sudden life-threatening illness (I'm fine now!), the absolute chaos and terror of US politics, perimenopause (continuing, sigh), and a major work reorg (still in progress; academia is slow about everything). Oh, also I just got promoted to part-time management as a first-time manager and am desperately hoping not to fuck it up because the people I manage are terrific and deserve somebody far more ept than I am.
It's been a lot. Really truly a lot.
But a thing I learned from my father the tenured professor, because he was exquisitely bad about it and I did not want to be like him, is that educators cannot shove their shit off on their students. This is a thing that Cannot Happen. Must Not Happen. Educator persona must be shit-free. My colleagues, too, do not come to work to help me deal with my shit.
I don't always quite manage this. I'm human, and I actually have a filthy temper; keeping it in check has been the work of a lifetime. But I always try, and usually I succeed.
It's been a rough time for students too, the last five-six years. Consensus is that the pandemic messed students up pretty good, academically and socially, kindergarten to grad school. I've noticed. There's only so much I can do to fix it for them. And some of them don't hesitate to take their shit out on me. Not all by any means! But... enough. Enough to be grindingly hurtful and saddening and exhausting.
So trying to teach in higher ed becomes this awful tug-of-war between the endless abyss of student needs, the institution's needs, and the needs of the professions I train for -- if I pass someone despite them clearly not doing the damn work, I'm not doing anybody any favors, actually.
It's a lot. Really truly a lot. But, you say, what does this have to do with Mensah?
This.
I love tv!Mensah! Noma Dumezweni is fantastic.
An intrepid galactic explorer and her satellite đŞ
How could I leave Belfast? I wouldnât worry about it. The Irish were born for leaving; otherwise the rest of the world would have no pubs. BELFAST (2021), dir. Kenneth Branagh
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this film. Brilliant acting by all and the directing was fantastic. The stunning photography and gorgeous production design was just icing. Nearly perfect film.
1718 Michael Dahl - Arthur Vansittart
(Lyme Park)

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ab. 1690 Workshop of Hyacinthe Rigaud - Louis Philippe II, Duke of OrlĂŠans
(Galleria Sabauda, Turin)
Constance Wu (âCrazy Rich Asians,â âHustlersâ) and Sam Heughan (âOutlander,â âThe Spy Who Dumped Meâ) have joined the cast of romantic comed
Awesome.
Find the script here:
http://www.earwolf.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/MrMalcolmsList.pdf