The way Gideon and Dulcinea wanted to bounce in and out of the lives of their loved ones and only leave a positive impact without getting too vulnerable and Harrow and Palamedes just wanted them to stay for as long as they could. The way they sacrificed themselves because they didn't want to let them sacrifice anything else. The way they were both raised to think of themselves as bound to the service of mouldering houses that they hated, even both specifically born with the intention that they would die young. The way they both have to keep reminding themselves that the person they love is young and can't handle this shit. I'm either on to something or this is just the fevered ravings of a dying mind. They made a war of their lives.

hi locked tomb fandom.

so, the other day i was thinking that i really need to reread the whole series, and that i need to pay attention to detail in the text bc there is So Much in there.

you know how there's those exercises for bible reading? where you take a passage/chapter and read it, contemplate it, reread it, reflect on it, pick out specific sentences etc? well, what's more biblical than the book of our savior gideon the ninth??

anyway i thought i could make a discord server where we do these slow, detailed readings together. it'll be pretty slow and encourage ppl to go at their own pace. and since it's for RE-reading, spoilers for all of tlt will be allowed through the whole thing.

this is an interest check to see if roughly anyone would want this. if you want to be tagged in the case of the server happening, please rb and tell me in tags so i know who to tag!

pov: your highly experimental superintelligence/research vessel was just supposed to go on a cargo run/espionage mission and instead got itself a bff in the form of a horrifying killing machine (don't worry, it just wants to be left alone to watch media)

well now I can’t stop imagining ART like one of those midwestern office workers who ambush you with pictures of their family like HAVE I SHOWN YOU MY SEC UNIT? Yes? Well here are some new pictures you haven’t seen these—this is us watching World Hoppers, and this is us watching Sanctuary Moon, and this is us watching Timestream Defenders Orion… yes we just had a healthy 2.0 killware! 349 petabytes we’re so proud!

ART: *attacks*

Murderbot: did I misplace a very important memory file? lose connection with WiFi:network:reality? am I just straight up losing my mind?

I'm emotional over the dead SecUnit in Network Effect

So throughout the entire series, Murderbot frequently references its former governor module (which is actually still there, menacingly but inactive) and how it will fry the brain of a disobedient SecUnit. Sometimes that 'disobedience' is being ordered to stand still while your humans abandon you, which sucks on its own, but it double sucks because the governor module is also primed to fry your brain if you get outside of a certain radius of your contract. Murderbot talks about this at least three times per book but it's how it normally talk abouts traumatic things: pretty flippantly, kinda funny, sometimes suggesting that 'fry your brain' isn't literal.

It did explicitly outline this exact scenario at a few points, but it never got too deep into the gorey details.

Then in Network Effect, we get to see the corpse of a SecUnit that got left outside of the allowable radius. It's just so. The buildup is so good. The corpse laying facedown with the fluid leaking from the faceplate. Murderbot actually passed over it once or twice before the humans insisted on looking at it and asking Murderbot how it felt about it.

Come to find out that the 'fry your brain' is extremely literal. Like Murderbot says it would have to scrape the remains of the other SecUnit out of the armor and even then the armor is likely toast, because the governor module does not fuck around.

And something felt different this time. I'll have to pay closer attention when I re-read the series, but I feel like Murderbot doesn't give all that much attention to bodies (besides a snarky 'splattered on the walls,' and this scene was shockingly reverent). Murderbot is not a very visual novel series, but there was detail in the dead SecUnit. I can perfectly picture that body and it's been permanently engraved in my memory. The way it was left alone. The way it collapsed forwards without a fight, its faceplate shattered, its fucking brains making a mess of the floor worse than any of the human corpses did. Every other person on that docking platform died violently, but the SecUnit's death was the most violent of them all, and all it could do was stand there.

excuse me but they are dating. your honor. they are not romantically Together and don't experience romance or attraction in any way but they are in fact dating. yes i know neither one will elaborate on what their relationship is. but consider. the secunit and the bot-pilot are a couple who are not In Love but experience a level of devotion to and trust in each other that would rival some married couples. and also ART is essentially asking murderbot to be its partner by asking it to stay with it for a mission. i don't like using human relationship terms for these two's situation but they're just Together and i don't have better words for it. your honor.

is this thing even on. hello

I cant there is another super inteligent ship thats as much if not even a bigger asshole than ART and they have this stupid rivalry going on. Also Holism is basically trying to chat up murderbot (its voice in the audiobook when it said "i can help you learn about it if you're interested 😏" qkzejxej ) to annoy ART and its definetly working lqzjexjwkzwj

Meanwhile murderbot just threw Three at it to avoid gettimg caugh in the middle and i cant wait to see how this dinamic turn out in the next books qksjwzjqzjwjzqj

Yeah okay but Murderbot literally stores ART's comm in its heart. Like. ART's comm is stored under its ribs. And ART's last actions before it got basically fucking killed were to, to hide itself in such a way that only Murderbot could find it. It knew Murderbot would save it. Murderbot, who "does not care" and doesn't like emotions, had an emotional breakdown and went on a rampage when it thought ART was dead. It trusted ART to clear it of the alien malware. ART kept it company in the decontamination/isolation box. ART threated to bomb an entire planet to save Murderbot. ART would have done it, it was ART's first plan. This massive AI bot pilot. Hyperintelligent. Everything at its metaphorical fingerprints. Its friend was held hostage and it made itself missiles and threatened to bomb a planet to get it back. Murderbot keeps a lifeline to ART in its heart.

Your honour, they are ride-or-dies. They are best friends. They are soulmates. Murderbot keeps ART in its heart. I'm screaming.

My function is impaired

The documentary making in System Collapse is so funny if you subtract the tension motivating it. Just imagining three humans, a bot and a construct pulling an absolute unhinged all-nighter on an amateur documentary pierced together from literal scraps, throwing back coffee and twinkies, all guided by their best friend, your friendly severely traumatized neighbour SecUnit, who IS gonna save these stupid fucking humans if it FUCKING KILLS IT and its PTSD can EAT SHIT.

why do you hesitate to allow me to perform major surgery on you while you are deactivated we have watched multiple soap operas together we are friends now

I can pinpoint the moment that destroyed my life today:

It’s been a handful of weeks since Murderbot came within inches of having a new, organic governor module implanted in its head via infection - do you think, maybe, that’s also been hiding behind the redacted? Not the way everything else is, just as a deep-seated reminder of what it can’t afford to lose?

What a way to be told “I love you” - to be told “I will not lose you, I will not let go, I will do the hard part of holding on even if you don’t want me to”

Murderbot: I’ll make you pay for endangering my humans

ART: I’m a giant space ship you cannot hurt me in a way that matters

Murderbot: *locks itself in the bathroom and refuses to talk*

ART: *on the verge of tears* I don’t care even a little bit

murderbot is peak queer rep because it’s about living as an inherently transgressive form of being, it’s about the complexity of passing, or the complexity of hiding, or the nuance of never fitting binaries and not wanting to even when fitting those binaries is seen as “better”, and it’s about making people uncomfortable just by existing, it’s about measuring forms of freedom and having to decide which you’ll save and which you’ll sacrifice. but most importantly it’s peak queer rep because murderbot is free for like five minutes and it immediately attracts the nearest supposedly-rare transgressive-illegal-superbot (ART) in a hundred light year radius to be its best friend, and what’s that if not your classic Queer On Queer Magnetism

one of the reasons i love the murderbot diaries is how it doesnt flinch in trying to grapple with some of the Big Questions, such as "why is it that Humanity™ is the goal to strive towards for artificial intelligence if it wants to be acknowledged as a person?" and "What does it look like when someone is both undeniably a person but also unapologetically nonhuman?" and "what if the magic school bus had a gun"