bnuuy!

but it's kind of a weird meeting because their partner did technically pull up and shove them into a white van while they were standing on the side of the street with your teenage daughter.

and then they took off from the cops with them both in the backseat.

and none of this is really their partner's fault because they were technically being held at gunpoint the entire time (the people responsible for that are buried in a ditch on the side of the interstate now for unrelated reasons).

In System Collapse, Tarik says “motherless” (as opposed to something like motherfucking) and the BE corporates say things like “lame-skulled” and while you could think those are just futuristic insults as a result of linguistic drift (which they could also be), I think they’re just literal translations. It becomes more noticeable when you see how religious terms are rendered: “oh high one! Oh deity!” Which is like…sure. They could literally be saying that. But imo it makes more sense if MB is translating something they’re saying in another language.*

I think the most notable case of this is when Thiago calls Amena “my daughter.” On first read I literally thought it was just a Preservation thing but then I realized it made a lot more sense to me (a 21st century American) if he was saying something like mija but MB was just literally translating it into its archive bc that’s how it processes language.

This is also the reason for Amena’s use of Second Mom and Third Mom. It sounds kind of clunky in English but Chinese does a similar thing which sounds perfectly natural in that language (e.g. da-ge, er-ge, san-ge for first/oldest brother, second (oldest) brother, and third (oldest) brother).

Anyway! It’s a fun little detail I really enjoy about MB. There are definitely way more examples but I didn’t have time to track them all down.

Y'ALL THIS IS THE COOLEST FANFIC I'VE EVER SEEN.

It is a complete narrative about SecUnits on a Planetary Survey trying to communicate and keep their clients safe while dealing with the restrictions of their govmod.

IT IS ALSO A FULLY INTERACTIVE GAME OF MINESWEEPER.

The story is told BY PLAYING MINESWEEPER.

This fic is criminally underrated* go look at it!!!

(edited to add: the story is about original characters so even if you haven't read Murderbot, you can still read this story!)

link: https://bsky.app/profile/brainvsbook.bsky.social/post/3llc72lyhu22j

google translate defaulting to chinese at first

okay but for those of us with interests in both the murderbot and the daomu biji fandoms this is kinda hilarious

(english-side-only really, i get that the kanji and hanzi are completely different)