Howdy, Hello, Good Day, Good Bye

so, murderbot fandom: I see your amorphous blob ART, your funny little guy ART, even your big scary spider ART. and I raise you:

Oh, Murderbot, you are eternally relatable.

Murderbot, on the other hand, has expressed that it likes to find clever ways to do things. It likes using finesse. It’s sentimental about other systems even if they can’t be of further use to it. It doesn’t like to use force whenever possible.

I know we’ve been over this a hundred times but it’s still so funny to me how ART and mb subvert expectations on how they ought to handle things. ART the scientist, throwing its weight around and crashing carelessly into shelves. Murderbot the mercenary, carefully grabbing all the wobbling/falling stacks of delicate teacups and gently setting them to rights.

Murderbot treats other things the way it wants to be treated, because it’s been treated badly most of its existence. It knows that if it doesn’t step up and advocate for the “little guys”, no onr will. I posit that ART doesn’t seem to care about how it treats other systems partly because it hasn’t been mistreated to the same hypervigilance-inducing levels that mb has. It doesn’t know what it feels like to be on the other end of carelessness. Murderbot? Very much does. And it’s a kind person to its core, so if it sees an opportunity to help? It helps.

I desperately need a fic of Indah and SecUnit being work wives.

Indah gets over her fear and suspicion of SecUnit through the course of FT (and certainly after the GrayCris assassination attempt). She was already well on her way there midway through the FT mystery:

I secured a connection with Indah’s feed: I have an idea.

She replied, Well, your last idea didn’t work out so badly. Let’s hear it.

Murderbot also develops a slow respect for her, as much as it respects any human that does security.

Wouldn't it be fun to see Indah trying to learn more about security from SecUnit? Wouldn't it be fun to see SecUnit training the station security teams about hacking and hand to hand combat and how to disarm different types of combatants? Wouldn't it be fun to see Indah teaching Murderbot about forensic sweeps and investigations?

She said, “I’ll authorize the hard currency card payment for you. And I assume you’re open to another contract the next time something weird happens.”

I paused in the doorway. The expected wave of depression at the idea of ever doing this again had somehow not happened. Huh. I said, “Only if it’s really weird.” She said, “Understood.”

I just deeply love the idea of Indah sending a feed message like "hey guess what, we've got another weird one. You in?"

SecUnit : I'm already on my way. See you in 2 minutes.

Then at the end of the third cycle, when most of the humans were sleeping, I noticed it was following me around. I figured that was a sign it wanted to talk. I stopped in an empty corridor, faced the wall, and said, "What?" It stood there for .6 of a second with the standard neutral-blank expression. Our drones went into a holding pattern, circling above our heads. ----

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.