the murderbot diaries shrine ^_^

return home :3


going to be the most incomprehensible page. i have a lot of feelings ok. ^_^

literally my fave gender non applicable evr. most autistic bot/human construct ever. uses neopronouns. thinks murderous rampages are boring. has a terrible time with facial expression control. prone to bouts of Not Caring in the first 2 books but now it cares a lot (just doesn’t like to admit it)

i read (listened) to these books pretty much in about two weeks when i was on vacation. my mom had listened to the first book a year before and still had the audiobook for me to download. i was stuck on an air mattress at my grandparent's and couldn't sleep, so i listened to the entire first book in a night. this isn't crazy considering it's only like four hours long. anyway, go look at my art of it

martha wells interview
  1. How intentional was Murderbot’s autistic coding?

    2. It was actually not intentional, it’s just how my brain works. I knew I had problems with anxiety and symptoms associated with OCD, but it was really only after All Systems Red came out and I read people’s reactions to the novella that I realized how neurodivergent I actually was. They didn’t diagnose OCD or ADHD or anything like that in the 1970s when I was growing up, especially for girls.

  2. How did you think about Murderbot’s emotional arc while maintaining its core attributes (not wanting to be touched, looked at, etc)?

    3. I didn’t want its core personality to change. Part of the arc is the Preservation Aux team learning to recognize Murderbot as an independent being capable of taking care of itself and learning to navigate the world and making its own choices. If it had gone to Preservation with them at the end of All Systems Red the way they wanted it to, that process would have been much slower.

  3. Murderbot’s special interest (Sanctuary Moon) is huge for its characterization. It’s identity-defining and lifesaving, plus it plays a huge part in how it emotionally regulates. How did you treat this part of Murderbot while writing?

    4. I think it was important for me growing up, and I’ve seen it be important in a lot of ways for a lot of people that aren’t usually recognized. We tend to see only “educational” programs as having merit, when a lot of the real influence of TV is to show characters who model compassion, acceptance of others, non-toxic masculinity, morality, etc for people, especially kids, who do not have a lot of adult figures in their lives who exhibit those traits. It also teaches social behavior. It was just kind of obvious to me that while Murderbot enjoyed it for the same reasons I do (the distraction, the comfort of an escape from its daily life), it would also learn a lot about human behavior and communication from media, just the way humans do.

  4. Autistic people are often infantilized for their behavior, but Murderbot is also in a position of necessary competence and projected strength: how does this play into others’ treatment of it?

    5. I think people that don’t know it treat it as dangerous rather than infantilizing it; the people who know it rely on its competence for their lives, so that puts the relationship on a completely different footing.

  5. Did Murderbot attend Arada and Overse’s wedding? Assuming they had one.

    6. Their wedding would have been a big party, so I don’t think Murderbot would have wanted to go.

edited and condensed for clarity! also it was conducted over email so some of the questions were cut because they didnt make sense.

im so lucky to have met her and to have given her a little letter explaining how important murderbot was to me + ask her for an interview. forever grateful!!!!!

TOP MOMENTS! (or my faves anyway)

  1. talking to mensah about the rise and fall of sanctuary moon in the 4th book ohh my god If i had the pdf if would be over for all of u. it wants to just infodump abt it but then it finds out she’s already watched it and genuinely cares about why it likes it the best
  2. meeting ART
  3. Network Effect ART and MB being mean to each other -> ART calling it “little idiot” ART WANTING TO BOMB A WHOLE COLONY FOR IT.

MURDERBOT ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

  1. watching the same tv show over and over again
  2. fighting with the gunship its in love with in a very aroacespec way
  3. denying any sort of attachment to its humans. then calls them “my humans.”
  4. causing problems on purpose. causing problems on accident. it has range!
  5. being wildly pessimistic despite things usually turning out okay.

other characters

ratthi and gurathin are the besties of ALL TIME!!!!!! (they are always together in the books. they fight alot and are opposites and ijust think they are neat)

arada and overse WIVES OF ALL TIME (THEY ARE MARRIED IN CANON!!!!!!!!) im obsessed with @tenowls on tumblrs design of them ARADA IS SO SMALL…..

also last byt not least ART MY FAVORITE TRANSPORT AND TEACHING VESSEL WITH HIDDEN WEAPONS. + military-grade snark and endless amounts of endearment for its dearly beloathed best friend slash aroace loveinterest secunit. THERES A WHOLE PART WHERE AMENA POINTS OUT THAT ITS TREATING SECUNIT LIKE ITS POTENTIAL PARTNER BUT WANTS TO INTRODUCE IT TO ITS “FAMILY”(crew)AND IT DOESNT SAY SHES WRONG 9i9p234.Y$*IRF EXPLODES!!!!!!!

amenaisms because im obsessed with her and i just thought you should know:

  1. SUCH a teenager but shes obnoxious in the best ways possible (i.e. she wants ART and MB to get along soooo bad (read: she wants them to admit their love/p? for each other)
  2. emotional support moment to secunit and i just think that’s neat. she crouches down and makes sure its okay (its not.) but aughghghgh.
  3. sort of afraid to cry and show weakness but she DOES and it rules
  4. she’s literally secunits younger sister okay she literally just adopts it as a sibling OKAY*

    5. *i know a lot of people kind of cast mb as like a parental figure to her but i personally dislike that interpretation because it's pretty reasonable to say that mb isn't mensah's "partner" in any way that could be interpreted as it becoming another parent. i enjoy the idea of it being a sort of cousin/weird extended relative with an ephemeral title who isn't treated like a child by mensah. older cousin/sibling vibes without mensah's child vibes.

  5. she and ART get along so well that ART even tells her to call it ART. are you hearing this. the mouthy machine intelligence is bonding with an obnoxious teen. Big hugs...

one of my favorite things about thes series is how secunit is always treated w respect by the pres. aux team and no one tries to change it just accommodate it which i think is a really important point in fiction. its autistic traits arent suppressed it isnt scolded for them, instead it retains its sense of boundaries and they all find ways to support that. examples are:

mensah as a character is huge for me and i love her a lot. she wants to be respectful of secunits personhood from the getgo and doesnt fear it like the others do. she has authority but doesnt abuse it and by setting boundaries and expectations she helps it grow.

certified sillythoughts pulled fresh from my discord server

i rhink its genuinely soo funny that ART is a gunship. imagine giving an obnoxious nerd weapons

the big thing that really really stuck out to me was that murderbot doesnt change. which i love. usually the introvert gets friends, or becomes popular, or extroverted, or they change to accommodate others. their sharper personality traits are dulled by plot and characters

but murderbot stays aggressively antisocial+anti-touching +anti eyecontact through! the whole! series! no one every forces it to make eye contact or interact with people or admit that it likes its friends BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DO! they write into its contract that no one is allowed to touch it. and they give it drones. and they dont look it straight in its eyes. i wish that level of understanding / accomodation existed in my world.

URGGHHHHHHHH autistic coded robot done right article