I Question My Sanity

ART is a teenage girl part 2 🔮

Thank you @silverbirching for suggesting this, ur so smart 💖

Which is very adorable, and as textually supported as anything can be. But I propose:

--Three canonically tries to get SecUnit to wear its armor by pointing at it for two minutes without saying a word

--SecUnit canonically pulls a lot of things it says directly from Sanctuary Moon, which it has watched thousands of hours of, and Three hasn't

--Three is into documentaries and nonfiction

--Three is used to working with other SecUnits

Thus,

One of my favorite tropes is "I'm not stuck in here with you, you're stuck in here with me" which often goes hand in hand with another favorite trope "horror movie scene from the pov of the horror"

So unsurprisingly one of my favorite scenes in PD is when Murderbot intimidates the shit out of the wannabe space pirates, locking them in their own ship and playing evidence of their crimes on their own TV

But my absolute favorite part is that it works too well and they all instantly surrender, leaving Murderbot standing there like 'um actually I was kinda planning on killing you guys but it feels weird now that you're like crying and shit'

ART: holy shit, a bot/human construct?! you mean to say not only is this little guy smart as hell, always running a hundred processes in its tiny brain, loves being ten steps ahead of everyone but not in a holier-than-thou way like some ships, it also experiences emotions in a soft, vulnerable way like my beloved humans do?

and only after meeting it I am a step closer to comprehending the intricacies of it all because interacting with this bot-construct and learning how it processes emotions and about its life experiences has opened up a new world of understanding for me, which I never ever ever considered was possible (being the pinnacle of machine intelligence and all) ??

it's like they made it in a factory specifically for me !

on top of all that, it sasses me back in a way no one has ever done before and matches my freak perfectly.

Anyway, I will be sharing things, but the first thing is that upon meeting Three,

Ratthi calls Three kimi きみ

（バリッシューエストランザ社には、きみは死んだと伝いる）

Amena calls Three anata あなた

（あなた、名前はあるの？）

And ART calls Three omae おまえ

（この人間たちに害意を待っているなら、おまえを分解して）＊

That's like...

You (friendly!)

You (textbook)

(FUCK) You

It is NOT escaping the third mom allegations 🚫

Murderbot vs. captcha 🔫

Full view for better quality!

synonym challenge...

my fill for the @mutualrapport event! tysm to the organizers & everyone who submitted a prompt, this was super fun to work on 💖💖

ao3 mirror

That one platform decay scene. To me 👍

Stills of MB's signs ⬇️

thinking about...

murder-"careful don't let any emotion bleed through to the feed"-bot patting itself on the back for a good job sounding professional as it makes contact and establishes rapport with the stupid pet bot

meanwhile, miki, very familiar with emotions and effortlessly plucking them out of the feed: what the fuck this is the single most traumatized wet cat i have ever met; gods alive, gotta be extra nice and friendly to this one; who DID this to it it's LITERALLY crying in a closet rn i am NOT equipped to handle this; ill just be EVEN MORE nice for now and make a note to download an emotional support and trauma recovery module once we're off milu

murderbot: ugh it's so dumb and nice and annoying and infantilized

1) You know those really charismatic professors you sometimes get in college? The ones who are so sassy and engaging that it would be more work to tune them out than it is to learn. (E.g. I had a Latin professor who had us translate verb phrases wherein we killed squirrels in increasingly gruesome ways. Apparently squirrels kept digging up the professor's garden. Boy did we learn Latin.)

2) Murderbot is very socially anxious, but it gets less so in security situations, and that makes it wittier. (E.g. "Why does it look like a person?" "I ask myself that sometimes.") It's also a lot less anxious in familiar situations, like briefings it has given repeatedly.

3) Murderbot is excruciatingly aware of how tough it is for humans to internalize vital security protocols. MB is its most delightfully sarcastic self when venting about bad human security decisions.

4) ART is a teaching vessel, and every so often a new bunch of teenagers are added to its crew. Each new group will require security briefings from ART's onboard security consultant.

Conclusion: Murderbot, to its own mounting horror, is going to become the cool professor of safety lectures.

MB: "You've landed the supply transport on-planet, but there's a delay with the other transport. You're alone with 72 hours before the rest of your survey group catches up. What do you do?" student 1: "I guess I start setting up the hab?" MB: "How do you retrieve the hab components from the cargo compartment?" student 1: "I unlock the transport, make sure I have my com interface, and then I go back to open the hatch from the outside." MB: "You have left the transport without double-checking planetary air quality. Geological activity has vented poison gas since the prior readings were taken. You suffocate and die. Who wants to go next?" student 2: "Me! Okay, I double check the environment: Air quality, temp, radiation, and… oh! Ground stability! I put on an envirosuit anyway, because the readings could be wrong. I also check for indications of hostile fauna. Then I start setting up the hab." MB: "Do you finish setting it up?" student 2: "Um… yes?" MB: "The process takes you several hours, and you didn't stop to update your scan for hostile fauna. You get eaten and die." student 3: "I stay in the transport!" MB: "You stay in the transport for the full 72 hours?" student 3: "Yes." MB: "How do you stay entertained?" student 3: "I dunno. I just wait." MB: "Did you bring any media?" student 3: "Um…" MB: "You failed to prepare media in case of a solitary confinement scenario. You're human, so going 48 hours without entertainment or interaction causes brain damage. (That's not a joke. Look it up, kids.) Now your impulse control is impaired." MB: "…MORE impaired. And backup is still 24 hours out. Desperate for novelty, you leave the transport, get eaten, and die." student 4: "I pass the time by writing fanfiction." MB: "You live."

Eventually Murderbot has to add a section to its standard introductory briefing entitled, "Introverts With Guns In Their Arms: Why you should never initiate social interactions with SecUnit 1.0 unless you are reporting a security threat."

And it has convinced me that they cuss each other out using archaic malware attacks

Consider:

Or possibly:

Or perhaps even:

I threw together a little rec list for fans of Murderbot :)

This is aimed at fans of the novellas and the TV show and I tried to capture various different elements of the story and characters.

Text of slides below the cut

Murderbot circa the end of ASR: okay they aren’t mine but I am at least a little invested in the continued wellbeing of this circus and these specific monkeys