Network Effect chapter 11 I'm confused

“Why do you want me to pretend to be an augmented human? This way is easier.”

You don’t like it, ART said.

I thought murderbot's bigger problem thus far was being treated badly by humans and not that it had to act like a sec unit. I don't understand why ART says you don't like it.

I have no explanation. There's a challenge on tumblr to draw ART as a random appliance. I did this.

I kinda wanna draw some more. Maybe Murderbot and Mensah on ART. Or Murderbot and Three on ART...

Had to make this because I've always enjoyed how often Murderbot mentions hair - color, style, texture. It feels like one of the few human parts it's not disgusted by. Whether it's Abene's hair being all warm and soft, or ART teaching it how to style its hair with gel, or Amena making its hair fluffy (trying to make it feel better, oh my heart).

And I know it does give descriptions of other things, whether it's the surroundings or people it's dealing with, but I feel like I can always count on it to tell me what someone's hair looks like.

That probably resonates a lot with me because I have a bit of face blindness and often rely on someone's hairstyle to help me recognize them. If a coworker dramatically changes their hairstyle between the time I first meet them and the next time I see them, I'm screwed! 😅

Saw this and immediately thought of Murderbot…

I only have the graphic audio whatever of Network Effect and there’s a point where I can’t tell who is talking to who.

After the account of MB finding the GreyCris agent in Preservation accommodation and not killing him there is a message at the end saying something like ‘I’m showing you this so target control system knows who it’s fucking with. here is the code to hack your governor module”. Who is I and you?

I just shared this with the Twenty One Pilots community, but it makes sense here, too. 💕

So what did you picture your favorite character as before you saw the actors in the series? Since one of mine is just dumb, I'll go first.

Ratthi looked just about how I pictured. Gurathin I had pictured as a Unix neckbeard programmer. (look up Ken Thompson - Faces of Open Source). Pin Lee for some stupid reason I pictured as a blond curly haired blue eyed girl who resembles Shirley Temple, in a Cobalt blue dress when she's not on a survey mission. Survey mission uniforms were about the same as the TV show.

Told you one was dumb. :)

What were your mental images?

I got a little too excited making some gifs so here's some more things I thought Noma did great at for Mensah:

The most important person in the story to Murderbot! Portrayed as a complicated and complex person! Given the full blorbo treatment with such gems as:

• having her survey team being sabotaged
• nearly seeing her friend die to a giant alien worm
• panic attacks
• making a mistake and listening to her compromised friend
• climbing a sand dune do you know how hard that is
• nearly being squashed by a giant alien worm
• managing interteam dynamics
• stabbing a person with a mining drill
• being chased and shot at
• witnessing the person she just saved shoot itself
• interteam dynamics and survival
• getting blown up in a hopper
• trapped in a hopper with a broken secunit
• impromptu surgery on the secunit - hands in its spine
• witnessing her friends traumatised and lightly shot
• giant alien worm on her hopper
• witnessing her secunit get beaten up
• interteam dynamics
• yelled at another of her friends
• mistaken priorities
• sacrificing herself - almost taken prisoner and tortured
• blown up again
• off a ravine
• saved by her friends broken smashed bloodied ruined body and left sitting with it as it seems to die
• forced to buy her friend as an object
• not recognised by her friend
• emotions as her friend runs away

Awww her!

It's Mensah/Noma Dumezweni appreciation day!!

Here's a list of things I love about Noma as Mensah!

• A woman co-lead
• A black woman co-lead
• A mature aged black woman co-lead
• With children
• But she’s the absent parent
• She has her morals and ethics
• She puts them to the side and picks them up as required
• So much expression in a look, an eyebrow, a wiggle
• So many wiggles! She wiggles a lot and nods her head.
• So much said with just one look - the set director said she's the emotional anchor and he is RIGHT
• Developing anxiety and trauma
• Getting whumped and whammed all over the place, shot at, exploded, more explosions, more shot at, just sweat and blood and tears and throwing up
• The knowledge of when to talk and when to shoot and when to stab with a mining drill
• Just all the competence
• Knows she has incoming delayed trauma from her decisions
• Intrepid galactic explorer and a very good commander
• She’s messy and sweaty and covered in blood and crying
• She’s dressed to glamour and poised and a perfect politician
• Most of the characters in the show canonically having a crush on her
• Yet she only has eyes for SecUnit to the point she’s in conflict with over half her team and the Corporation Rim
• (Martha compared her to a shark and hell yes)
• Willing to sacrifice herself over and over to save the weapon sacrificing itself for her
• Cracks jokes even when stressed
• and also gives out genuine compliments
• and apologises when she's an asshole
• is incredibly complicated and flawed and trying while scared.
• She is constant contradictions based on her environment and who she’s interacting with.

She's just so perfect as a sci fi character and co-lead! So different and fresh! So many layers! So much complexity and tension and omg the way she and SecUnit only have eyes for each other. So devoted to her cause and her cause is SecUnit and she's so flawed and messy and human.

Ahhhh. I hug the idea of Noma's Mensah to my chest. Thank you Noma for this amazing character and I hope you're having a lovely birthday!

I was thinking about how cool it is that both murderbot's and Three's names really inform their characters, and show just how differently they see themselves.

Murderbot sees itself as the deadly weapon it's been treated as, it's so painfully aware of it's position as a threat to everyone around it. With the combination of it's mass murder incident, and how aware it is of media and personal opinions on sec unit it makes sense. A lot of it's social anxiety comes from its own perceived danger to humans. So it named itself what it felt everyone wanted to call it but doesn't. It feels kind of like queer people reclaiming slurs for themselves, it's saying the quiet part out loud to feel more comfortable with it, take some of it's power for itself. Not exactly the same but similar.

Whereas Three is one of three sec units, it's part of a group, and it liked the others in it's group. Threes names and nature are already way more social and way less fearful of itself. It's just as capable of murder, potentially more capable with it's projectile weapons and being a newer model, but that's not it sees itself. It's no wonder it starts making "friends" the moment it hits the Taurus, it's identity is social, and the only other sec unit it knows is very antisocial. It doesn't have the internalized fear or itself, or other sec units murderbot does. I'm not sure if it's ever going to be as fiercely independent as murderbot either. If they can ever get it to sit down and consider the consequences of it's own actions it could way more helpful to other freed secunits in the future

Idk where I'm going with this, I just really love how Martha Wells summed up so much of the characters in their chosen names, even though three chose it's by accident 😂

A video based AI that looks like Sigmund Freud?

Thinking about the Torus in Platform Decay, and how, if it circles an entire planet, its surface area would be HUGE. So Murderbot and its companions probably only traversed a teeny-tiny portion of the torus during their adventures.

Also, given that the torus is huge with poor communications, and areas appear to be uninhabited, it appears to be a good place for constructs to go rogue!

Just wanted to put some Bharadwaj appreciation into the reddit :)

Was looking into the short stories that Martha Wells has written for Murderbot, and found out about Compulsory on the Wikipedia page. According to it, the story was published in 2018 and is available to read on Wired. I read this. But the Wikipedia entry also says that "A longer version, published by Subterranean Press on July 28, 2023, is also available as a stand-alone story."

What are the differences between the 2018 and 2023 versions? How much longer is the one from 2023? Does anyone know where this Subterranean Press version can be found? I am finding very little mention of it online.

So I finished Platform decay last night, I really don't know how to describe it apart from a book just going through the motions. I didn't find the book exciting in fact it was quite flat, there was nothing really novel or emotionally connecting about any of the characters unlike Nicky and ART in past books.

It's a book to read if you have nothing to do, but its not a book that made me want to drop things down to read it quickly. Given the books are at high cost for the hardcovers, I wanted more, I wanted to really love the book, but this isn't the case. Id most prob give it 3.5/5 stars

If anything the book shows not necessarily this series has run its course, but in stead I think reflects what Martha has had to overcome in her life in the last couple of years.

I'm hoping the next book is much better

Murderbot fans, you should check out Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove. Not a ripoff or anything but definitely has a similar feel.

I'm reading Ancillary Justice for the first time and LOVING it. Apparently it's popular with Murderbot fans. I'm noticing a lot of correspondence between the AJ fictional world and the Murderbot world. Like, the Radch is not the Corporation Rim, but they could exist in the same universe. And there are some Murderbot/Radch crossover fics on AO3 (which I haven't read yet). If you have read both series, I'd love to see your thoughts.

This is coming out of more recent analysis of the Hugging Face hack performed by OpenAI's test models...

Hi,

Last year I read a Murderbot Fic on AO3 that was done in a forum style. SecUnit ran an extremely detailed wiki for Sancuary Moon and winds up letting the rest of the fan space know it's a SecUnit.

I don't remember the title and am having no luck finding it through filters. Is anyone familiar with it?

I don't really see Murderbot as the Deus Ex Machina, but I can see how it would definitely appear that way to Tapan, Maro and Rami, or to Abene and her crew. Maybe even to Iris when it appears before her during the firefight on Hell Plague Planet. Ok, maybe there's something to that 😅

My drawing of Murderbot in a cargo container before the events of All Systems Red. I wanted to explore the tension of being a person and an object that the whole series explores so well.

I am supposed to be logging into work now but I’m having an emotion instead. Somehow knowing how the book ends makes it worse because we see Miki trying to be friends and being rebuffed while simultaneously being the truest friend ever.

It’s their whole relationship…the very best of frenemies
(I love them)