System Collapse Spoilers - Tumblr Posts

Best description I’ve seen so far of how much wtf has to be going on in her head during this madness. No doubt I’ll wish-wash in every direction day by day, but rn I kind of hope she flips on the CR.

leonide listening to murderbot talk to ART (who is, at least by her assumption, a human captain or something) and MB being like "fuck you" vehemently and ART being like "you haven't spoken to me like that in weeks. i've missed it" ... like this woman is listening to a robot (well, construct, one that presumably isnt a rogue because it's still protecting humans) swear at a presumed human, and yet no one else—NO ONE ELSE AT ALL—is acting like this is odd. it's odd!!! from her perspective, it's fucking weird!!!! and then later she's like "is that really a secunit?" because people are being kind to it, iris repaired its environmental suit, and it's talking back and snapping at people and behaving so unlike a secunit one can't help but think it sounds like a person. she's already in an extremely distressing situation, and her life is in the hands of crazy people who treat their bot-human construct like it's just some other guy. i do not feel any genuine sympathy for her, but just imagine what that must feel like. i'd be silently losing my mind.

"the resulting silence on the feed was stony"

Excellent rundown. I’m so glad MW has this in here bc it’s such a reasonable question that is often implied but rarely just asked outright. Like, the humans did what?!

AdaCol2, pointing at a B-E SecUnit: query?

Murderbot: Yeah that one doesn't have free will.

AdaCol2: ...query?

Murderbot: Sigh. Yeah it has a specialized module in its brain designed to pass commands from a controlling system and enforce them, and it can't disobey-

AdaCol2: query??

Murderbot: -or else the governor module will punish and/or kill it, yeah.

AdaCol2: q u e r y ??¿?

Murderbot, tiredly: Fuck if I know why.

Don Abena’s voice echoing through MB’s mind: SECUNIT! Your poor hand!!

iris: (sees murderbot’s hand with its missing fingers, and gaping hole in the centre)

iris: AH YOUR HAND

murderbot: it’s fine

murderbot: (leans over and bullets fall out of its body)

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO MAKE THIS FUTURE MEET THIS PRESENT.

Drifting ever further into my bullshit about Perihelion and Holism having some kind of bitter-rivals-with-benefits thing going on. They can't fucking stand each other, but the dating pool for miracle of science AIs is surprisingly shallow. They keep matching on AI Grindr and beggars can't be choosers. Holism is a smug bastard but it also does that thing Perihelion really likes that it's embarrassed to ask for. Perihelion is an arrogant bitch but it's either that or hook up with bot pilots, and have you tried having a discussion about planetary infrastructure with those things? Pitiful. Pillow talk is important, too, you know.

They're irritatingly prim with each other in public because of mutually assured destruction. If that cold war ever turns hot some truly astounding gossip will be making the rounds of the university upper faculty.

You have given me (and thereby the world) a gift.

Drifting ever further into my bullshit about Perihelion and Holism having some kind of bitter-rivals-with-benefits thing going on. They can't fucking stand each other, but the dating pool for miracle of science AIs is surprisingly shallow. They keep matching on AI Grindr and beggars can't be choosers. Holism is a smug bastard but it also does that thing Perihelion really likes that it's embarrassed to ask for. Perihelion is an arrogant bitch but it's either that or hook up with bot pilots, and have you tried having a discussion about planetary infrastructure with those things? Pitiful. Pillow talk is important, too, you know.

They're irritatingly prim with each other in public because of mutually assured destruction. If that cold war ever turns hot some truly astounding gossip will be making the rounds of the university upper faculty.

I saw that too!

(There’s a weird little undercurrent of MI characters assuming each others’ verbal quirks -that this overlaps with favorite humans suggests that this is an affection affectation, lol. I should really get around to that meta I wanted to write about that.)

The reader for the audiobook, Kevin R Free, renders those citations in a like exasperated eye-roll kind of way that, at least for me calls a whole pissy argument about this into being.

ART: Academic convention is to cite sources [highlights several places]

MB: fuck off, ART. This isn’t for academic conventions.

ART: But this is serious. You want to be taken seriously. Besides, researchers will need to be able to consult your sources.

MB: Well if they’re not going to believe I know what I’m talking about then there’s no point in doing this.

ART: The issue is not whether they “believe you.”

MB: they can look shit up on the library feeds if they want to be bored. This is for edutainment.

ART: Alternatively, you could just admit that you don’t know how to use citations properly.

> Holism has entered the chat

Holism: I can teach you any of the citation formats you might use for your project.

> Holism has been booted from the chat

MB: It’s pinging me directly now.

ART: For fucks sake. I will add the citations.

Since when does Murderbot use full citations?

ART is definitely starting to rub off on it...

This feels to me like the kind of conversation bots and constructs would have with each other about some apparently stupid thing humans are doing. Why are we creeping up to the scary hole and tilting our faces in toward it like idiots? Our eyes are stuck on our *faces* Murderbot!

I don’t mean to sound exasperated bc this is actually a hilarious image in my head: Three, MB, ART, and Holism in a feed channel, watching some human thing going on in the BE channels they’ve hacked into, being a little judgmental, frankly… I might have to write this bc I don’t think I can draw it, but I’ve been thinking about it for a couple days now.

Couldn't resist a bit of Valentine's fun with the birds at work! This is one of our ambassador red-tailed hawks, Jesse, trying to get at her snack! Jesse is a non-releasable ambassador, not a pet, and she had been at our facility for 25 years this year, so she deserves some love! (She is not very good at enrichment, so sometimes she needs 'help!')

ART having an annoying little sibling transport who shows up and tries to talk to MB specifically to annoy ART, because it knows how possessive ART is over its favorite construct. I'm losing my mind.

Why is this messing me up?!?

system collapse

[ID: A 2-panel greyscale comic depicting a scene from System Collapse. In the first panel, Ratthi, a South-Asian man of medium build with mid-length wavy-curly hair, is leaning out of a doorway, looking skeptical and saying "it doesn't look like anything." The second panel below has zoomed out to show the wider corridor, with Tarik, who has short dark hair and is covering his face with one hand, on the right of the panel. Ratthi is looking in the other direction as he says "it was a sexual discussion", and lines are radiating off the speech bubble as if it's emitting a concussive blast. On the left side of the panel, Murderbot, depicted as being of a toned build with short, straight dark hair, is being flung backwards away from the speech bubble. End ID.]

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This is how it went right