Target Two whispered something, which FacilitySys rendered as “What are you?”

I said, “I’m a Shut Up or Get Your Head Smashed.”

-The Murderbot Diaries, Network Effect

I’m like the worst person ever to get a arc (advanced reading copy) of the new mb book because I’m such a slow reader and I’m still like halfway through network effect

Probable Adhd + dyslexia combo is kicking my ass

Man I really need art of Murderbot flipping off the ceiling/ART. That shit was just too good.

Strange growths aside, when the other humans leave a dead one lying around, it’s just never for a good reason.

Martha Wells, Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

-stop peeping into people’s devices

-stop meddling in people’s decision

-stop overstepping boundaries, even a fairly good companion will cut off sharp, for sure

-learn to read cues

-it is never cool to invalidate people’s time

-pay back in mercy and understanding, not money

-people are not your test animals for your social quirks

-respect people’s schedules

Fuck, I forgot to post about this but I DID READ ‘Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy’. Which is a dumb ass name, just in general, and also because there was no friendship, no solidarity, nor communication between characters. It was abysmal, and Empathy was non existent.

Like, it was the longest transition scene that led no where.

Just, im still raging about this, how is it. That, this university, with all of its money, and it 'apparent’ history with helping beings against the corperates, had had someone with 'limited history’ running this mission, wtf?? They had no one else, no one.

“You mean there isn’t a way we can approach from the outside without being caught,” Dr. Mauriq said. She was mission team leader, but her experience with this kind of thing was limited. Iris could tell she was a little nervous and trying to hide it.

THERE IS AN ACTIVE TAKE OVER HAPPENING, YOURE JOBS ARE TOO EITHER STOP IT/HELP THE PEOPLE THEY ARE EFFECTING.

So limited experience leader, and when Art (arguably the smartest and possibly even most experienced in the room rn) make a very good plan with only 47 percent casualty rates (ill put money that it was mainly corperate goons but we don’t know cause THEY DONT ASK). Its shut down. WHY. WHAT IS THE POINT OF ART. BY THE END OF THIS THING WE DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW THE FUCKING MISSION ENDS.

Like, this is the second/first (depending if you read this mess first or system collapse) that we get to really see what this 'University’ and its people does and its basically…nothing but paper pushing.

And then the walk through, oh let my fluff stay clean as I writhe on the floor in agony. The one character’s confusion over clothing lines.

They went up a ramp to an upper-level walkway and took that toward the inner station barrier in this section. Sunara ended up walking beside Iris, and asked, “Why is there clothing hanging from the railings? Is it a festival, a custom?”

Iris glanced up at the transient housing cluster they were walking under. She tried her best not to sound as if this was a stupid question. And it really wasn’t, it was just that Sunara wasn’t used to corporate stations. “It’s their laundry. That’s transient housing up there, for people who are trying to get station jobs. The station’s gray water probably comes with the price of the housing, but not access to a recycler or cleaning facility.”

This was a stupid fucking question, how has your job not given you a fucking crash course on the lives the people you are suppose to come help. This one ain’t done yet, she needs a couple more classes

Them listening to the peoples screams as they are unhoused and possibly even brutalized. The 'graffiti’ and 'murals’. (Listen, if I have to explain this one….go ask someone else. I wont be nice in explaining this to you)

Then, the painful, painful, conversation between Art, Iris and, to a lesser extent, Tarik.

Right, that’s it, Iris thought. She said, “Peri, Tarik, that’s enough. This is obviously not the conversation to have when we’re in enemy territory.”

Proceeds to force the conversation in enemy territory, literally in the same fucking breath on private and also very much dehumanizing/depersonfiying ART during it.

I am capable of losing my temper.
But you don’t lose your temper, Peri. You get furious, but you don’t make mistakes and you don’t misinterpret things. Peri’s anger was made of ice and steel, but it thought at speeds that a human mind couldn’t match, in multiple directions at once. It was incapable of acting on impulse, in conversation or in any other way. This wasn’t even you getting annoyed.

To say that ART (im not calling it by its slave name) can make no mistakes or interpretations only factor in its job as a machine. Not a sentient being. (Can i hear what the point of this series was again?) ART very much loses its temper in network effect, it shows this by sneakily planting bombs on its pathfinders (the humans find out but fundamentally cannot stop it) and proceeds to destroy infrastructure and food lands.

It feels anguish and anger, it misinterpreted that kidnapping mb folk was a good plan and gets confused when murderbot is mad at it cause NO ONE AS EVER TOLD IT IT CAN BE WRONG BECAUSE SEEMINGLY ART WAS NOT PROPERALLY SOCIALIZED. Its like, idk how many of yall went to public school, but Art gives 'gifted child’ vibes. In raising art, because yes technically within universe Art was canonically raised next to iris, im sure when iris was at daycare/human school properly socializing with other children, art was being drilled in its capabilities (another check in the box with Art being a house slave)

Iris puts Art on a pedestal but its like being six and putting that robo dog that was all the rage on a pedestal. Iris is very attached to ART, but it doesn’t seem like she actually she’s it as a 'person’.

Also, characters aside. This was a horribly paced novelette that added nothing to the story but my growing distaste for Iris.

Like, that whole scene in which iris put shit on hold to have the private coms talk with ART should have been the continuation of the scene in which they are, oh I don’t know, Doing Their Jobs And Giving The Readers Lore On How Your World works. Ie. How the University actually operates if they’re not letting ART to literally cut it off. And THEN we get a private scene with iris and art in which they discuss things. Instead of, you know, holding up the entire team and blurting out things that are SUPPOSE TO BE PRIVATE. BAD COMMUNICATION. NO EMPATHY. BAD RAPPORT.

But that scene was never going to be in this story, because this is written by Martha Wells. And for Martha Wells to actually live up to what she’s writing, is to actually delve into what that would actually look like. And seeing that Martha Wells is a racist, slave apologist capitalist…that was never going to happen. This is the most surface level, badly written (Grammer, Martha is very good at distracting you) book series its not even funny anymore.

I, at this point, cannot stand the Murder bot diaries. Everyone says all these things about being it progressive and groundbreaking when I see no such things. There isn’t even good grammar/editing.

Fic idea where ART turns itself into an escape room to test its internal defenses post-NE. And Three and Iris are havin a grand ol time. While Seth and Murderbot are red in the face screaming at it for clues that don’t suck 😂

Я припинили читати книги ще у школі, .. з кількох причин. And for years було складно повернутися до цього. Навіть якщо це книги які я хотіло прочитати. В мене просто не виходило, не знаю, якийсь … ментальний? блок?

Then i discovered the murderbot diaries and consumed all 7 books in a little more than a week

І почало їх читати українською. Також майже закінчили слухати network effect (англійською).

Було б непогано to be able to одночасно читати та слухати її англійською, і читати її українською.

I need more network effect per my network effect.

Immediately after Arada agreed to meet Leonide on her explorer, against everyone’s advice:

“ART put the contact on hold and said, Clear. And then it did one of me what-the-hell-have-the-humans-done-now sighs.”

^ART learned how to sigh from Murderbot lmao

Network Effect - Martha Wells

RAAAAAH I LVOE THESE BOOKS the murderart really hits in this Oh murderbot….. it finally knows what it wants it has friends and people it cares about who also care about it….. murderart……. murdermensah…………. i love them

originally posted: 24/04/2025

I just listened to rogue protocol and my chest hurt every time miki is there. it feels like a tangible ghost. I’m already mourning you and you’re delighted by a pretty view. you change murderbot intrinsically and you’ll never know. Miki I love you please don’t go. miki please

but do you know what it’s like: to live with pain?
of course; you’re a master of combat, and i am nighttime apnea
with every finger, you are ready both to kill and to be killed
and i – with every fiber – love and want to be loved

network effect time! the one i drew for artificial condition got nerfed with a content label, so maybe have a look at it too if you’d like <3 still of this one under the cut

[Infomercial Voice] Have YOU ever wanted Murderbot to babysit your hormonal teenager??? Well neither has it! For the low low price of several hard currency cards, YOU can hire Murderbot for any kidnapping ventures, planned or unplanned*

*Murderbot reserves the right to complain as much as it wants without any humans telling it it’s being unreasonable, human survival is highly probable but not guaranteed, humans will be held responsible for any stupid choices they make, Murderbot is not liable for any incidences of dumbassery besides the ones it directly causes, no long-term commitments, NO HUGS

Three stood in the hallway of the ship, immobilized, unable to contact the others.

this broke me

ALT

making my way through the Murderbot Diaries and I’m generally not a sci-fi reader, so I’m not the target audience & it’s not hitting for me the way I wish it would — NOT THE POINT, the point is I just got to this paragraph in Network Effect and almost died, Martha Wells is so fucking good.

I had to get out there because Target Leader had started to walk toward Thiago and avoiding a hostage situation was important to my risk assessment module’s Projected Schedule of Events Leading to a Successful Resolution. (In company terms that’s a PSELSR, which is a terrible anagram.) (I don’t mean anagram, I mean the other thing.)

You know how you’re just trying to write some porn, and then you start thinking about Ratthi and Overse and Arada and Thiago all in the escape pod at the start of Network Effect, and the escape pod is damaged and it’s attached to ART’s cold corpse (but they don’t know it’s ART’s cold corpse) and being dragged through a wormhole and they’re trying to cannibalize the evac suits to keep the life support going but there’s no way they’ll survive however long they’re going to be in the wormhole for and they all know that and Ratthi is injured and they have no idea where Amena and SecUnit are but the last they saw was really terrible (and there’s that bit in the narration where Ratthi’s voice is “harsh with fury, fear” so chew on that one for a minute) and they were home, is the thing. They were home, and they were going to be fine, and now here they are trying to keep this damaged escape pod alive even though there’s no conceivable way of them surviving it but they still have to fucking try.

And then they do survive, improbably, and survive the life-or-death situation they’re immediately thrust into upon entering ART’s cold corpse, and then survive a whole lot of things after that. And probably, through most of it, they don’t even really have a chance to think about it much. About those hours they spent in the escape pod, knowing they were going to die.

But at some point, they’re going to have to think about it. Right?

Anyway. Did mostly finish the porn though, so that’s nice. Not quite done, but mostly.

So I read Network Effect

All this in the first 80 pages btw ^

Yeah anyways I have my thoughts I’ll be putting them in order soon on my personal blog

“It was urging me to start rescue breathing, but I couldn’t. My lungs work in a completely different way than human lungs do. It’s not only that I need much less air but the connections are all different. Aside from the utterly disgusting thought of putting my mouth which I talk with on a human (ugh), I didn’t think I could expel enough air for what the kit wanted me to do.”
- Network Effect, chapter 6 pg 98

Poor Murderbot. SecUnits can’t play the trumpet like a human can, or annoy their neighbors with badly played trombone or saxophone. That’s so sad.

hey everyone! I’m rereading tmdb, and I just stopped at the beginning of network effect. I drew a little piece of art based on scenes at the ART💔💔💔