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Ep 2.3- A Protocol of Rogues and Robots
30 Plays2 months ago
Ryn and Sam are wildly unfocused, probably because we are simultaneously monitoring two dozen intel drones, HubSystem, and Episode 372 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon! And also being slightly horny on main, giving mini-reviews of horror movies and a romance novel, discussing Murderbot's D&D class, and once again providing evidence that capitalism is the worst villain! All before we get betrayed by our mysterious augmented human security team or before the terraforming station breaks up and falls out of orbit, whichever happens first... Anyway, come join us!
Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 3: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
Recommended
Transcript
The 5K Experience
00:00:00
Speaker
I've changed into my pajamas because I ran a 5k this morning, which is something just as pretentious as having a podcast. I have just realized that now those are both two things that people do and won't shut up about. So now I have another one, which is great.
00:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, I feel i feel like people people shut up about running like 5ks or even like 10ks. It's when you get to the half marathon or the marathon bit that, like, people don't shut the fuck up about it.
00:00:32
Speaker
But, you no, the people who don't shut the fuck up about it are, like, not the serious runners. Right. Yeah. People who are the serious runners, they don't talk about the runs they go on. like They just run.
00:00:49
Speaker
They move in silence. The reason that I did that was because friend of the show and the artist of our beautiful new art, which I don't know if we commented when the first set of Murderbot episodes came out, that we also have some new...
00:01:03
Speaker
more sci-fi vibe-y art now. Casey, friend of the show, artist for the show, had a New Year's resolution of doing a 5K. And so Miles and I decided to get on board the bandwagon and be supportive because we were thinking, okay, if Casey's doing it, then she'll probably actually follow through. Because I think a lot of people have athletic ambitions, exercise ambitions, and then they find a friend and go, okay, we're going to be accountability buddies. We're going to do it together. And then neither of them do it.
00:01:33
Speaker
But we knew that Casey would actually do it. So we did it today. And we were talking about this phenomenon of not shutting up about running. And I think it's because running is so bad to do.
00:01:47
Speaker
It's not fun. it doesn't feel good. it takes a long time. It makes you stinky and you look stupid doing it. So the only thing that you have is to make you keep doing it is other people's perception that you are doing it.
00:02:04
Speaker
The little bit of attention that you get when you're jogging, like if you see people jogging you go, oh my God, they're so obnoxious at 6 a.m. Who do they think they are? They know that they're jogging at 6 a.m. and they want everyone else to notice it and go, wow, that person's so strong and cool and fit. I wish I was like them because as someone who has jogged at 6 a.m., yeah, I do want that. I do want people to look at me and go, wow, she has it so together. I'm so impressed.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah. So bragging is all you have. That's the only thing you get out of it. I placed, I would have to look up my exact number, but I believe i was six hundred and fifty fourth So you could say I'm pretty fast.
00:02:43
Speaker
Did you guys like run in a pack or do do or do the three of you sort of like split off and We ran in a pack, the three of us, which was good because it kept us all at a reasonable pace because I have learned and see now this is me.
00:02:58
Speaker
I'm stating a fact, but it's going to sound obnoxious. It is also kind of a brag. I am significantly faster than both Miles and Casey. So if I was left to my own devices, I would be fucking gone.
00:03:11
Speaker
But because we were all running at the same pace, I actually was able to maintain that pace and run for the whole thing. So I was thinking I'd run part of it and walk part of it.
00:03:22
Speaker
But because i slowed down, I actually ran the whole thing, which I felt more proud of. And also there's like an energy, there's a bunch of people. And so it's like exciting. I forgot that people cheer for you at races. So people were cheering and that felt nice.
00:03:35
Speaker
But It's the recognition about running that you need. Exactly. Yes, it's the attention. And Pat, also a friend of the show, brought his and Casey's dog to watch us, which was very sweet. And I sent him our live location.
00:03:51
Speaker
None of us knew what the track was going to be. We're like, it could be laps. It could be a big circle. I don't know. But here's our location. So you can just see when we're getting close to you and then know when to pay attention, which ended up being very useful.
00:04:05
Speaker
But I'm really proud. It was a big accomplishment. I worked really hard on it. So I will brag about it on my podcast. I'll be double obnoxious. I don't care. That's fair. All that is to say the run that I went on was very close to where you live.
00:04:18
Speaker
So I got to see you, which was very nice added bonus. And Molly shed all over my floor. She was leaving you something to remember her by. it was enough to like needle felt a new dog.
00:04:32
Speaker
And she's a short-haired dog. that's We should ask if we can put a picture of Molly on the social media for this episode. Because she is so weird and so lovable. She fascinates strangers. Just in the time when I was with her, not counting, you know, the however long we spent actually running, I saw probably at least 10 people come up to her and oh my god, she's so cute.
00:04:56
Speaker
What kind of dog is that? Because you look at her and you go, what the fuck is that? But she's so lovable. And she's so good. With her little sideways feet.
00:05:07
Speaker
And like looks like a puppy is not a puppy. Is as soft as a puppy. Will try to clear your sinuses by sticking her tongue all the way up your nose. She just really goes for it.
00:05:23
Speaker
She's just such a weird little creature. Just cast your mind back to the early days of PCR tests when they stuck the swab like all the way up your nose.
00:05:34
Speaker
That's kind of what it's like to have Molly lick your face.
00:05:40
Speaker
She's a very good girl. That's she's trying for. And she aims high. Into your sinuses. Really, really high into your sinuses. She's also kind of like, if you've seen those videos of the pumpkin toadlet, which is so small that it doesn't have whatever inner ear fluid or whatever other thing that it needs to have a sense of balance.
00:06:02
Speaker
So it just jumps, but then it can't land. That's her trying to execute a plan. She goes for it. And then there is a conclusion that is maybe not the one that she had hoped for.
00:06:15
Speaker
I don't think she hopes for a conclusion, though. She just kind of starts. And isn't that the kind of utter presence in the moment that we should all strive to achieve? That level of truth, then.
00:06:29
Speaker
The only way to learn is by playing. The only way to win is by learning. And the only way to begin is by beginning. So without further ado, Collapsus microphone, let's begin. begin.
00:06:53
Speaker
We were saying something earlier because the, I don't know if I specified that the 5k I was running because I'll keep finding ways to bring it up. But it is relevant. It was a pride 5k specifically because we're recording this in June.
00:07:06
Speaker
And there was somebody there who was wearing a shirt that said eating pussy cures depression. And, we our party was all looking at each other like, like well, maybe.
00:07:19
Speaker
like, you know, if any brave soldiers want to volunteer for data collection, we'll just send a beacon up into the sky. Listen, nothing else has worked. So like, I'll give it a go.
00:07:31
Speaker
listen Listeners, our DMs are
00:07:37
Speaker
open. You know who would immediately turn off this podcast the moment we brought that up? Murderbot. Exactly.
00:07:49
Speaker
Or it would have to listen because it's contracted to do so, but then it would immediately delete this from its memories. Yeah, I feel like I had some sort of like raunchy bit about for this episode at some point.
00:08:02
Speaker
The point is, good God, we have, ah ah I've lost the plot here. Hello, everyone. That's how I'm supposed to start
Podcast Introduction
00:08:11
Speaker
this podcast. That's how I started like 95% of these episodes. But hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Fandom Apprentice.
00:08:21
Speaker
My name is Rin. I'm one of your hosts. I am a lifelong nerd. I grew up on science fiction and fantasy of all sorts. And one of the pleasures of my adult life has been finding random pieces of science fiction and inflicting them on my friends.
00:08:42
Speaker
Well, i have to I have a couple of options of jokes to make there. One of them being, well, some of us like having things inflicted on us. um But that does not help turning down the horniness of the episode in honor of Murderbot.
00:08:56
Speaker
Listen, we can make the episode horny. it's It's just that is not how our friendship goes. Exactly. that I don't want to mislead. There was um also at the Pride 5K show.
00:09:07
Speaker
There were two people who were older. They were probably in like their mid fifties, early sixties who were running. And it was a man and a woman, presumably, but they eat, they had matching little running outfits, but they both had shirts that said not a couple, which I thought was very cute and fun.
00:09:24
Speaker
I love that. It was, I'm like, that's, that's adorable. I love that they had that shirt ready to go. But anyway, no flirt with your friends. Fuck your friends. If that's your vibe, it not ours, but that's fair.
00:09:37
Speaker
i'll I'll take the flirtation, but, you know, we'll cut that from the episode because I'm just going to get gay and flustered today because you're anyway. Goodbye. You should have seen my outfit last night. i got comments about how goddamn hot I looked.
00:09:54
Speaker
I mean, if you took any selfies of the outfit, I will respectfully I didn't. i didn't take any picture. Not a single picture. what Was it your just like standard? We can cut this from the episode also. But but was it just like the standard queer event outfit? Or was it More or less.
00:10:09
Speaker
it was It was more or less um the standard. It was the... um
00:10:15
Speaker
the garden of eden i outfit ah with the snake tights and the boots um and but i had the shirt open all the way um doing a public service and so it was uh yeah just the the sports bra and the and the tights pulled up and the yeah I saw somebody, again, while we were running today, one of the people who was just like out in the crowd was wearing the exact snake sights that you have and seeing them on a stranger.
00:10:49
Speaker
i was like, oh I understand why Rin gets so many comments on these sights. Just seeing them unexpectedly in the world, they're very striking. I do. I did. um I've had them for years. And unfortunately, last night, um the toe tore out of one of them.
00:11:06
Speaker
Oh, no. One of the legs. um Which is fine. It didn't cause any major issues. Mm-hmm. But, you know, if that continues further, you know, I think that's that's the start of, like, further degradation.
00:11:24
Speaker
But they were also $10. I'm sorry there are plenty of people who would sign up for some degradation in the snake type. Sorry. I had an no opening continue. That or helping me tear them off.
00:11:36
Speaker
ah Again, we can cut this from you. I'm just feeling you know what honestly no this is that we we're ah horny on main today this is staying in again listeners just slide into our dms write your sexiest emails I didn't even introduce myself to the fucking episode because I am
00:12:07
Speaker
making a fool of myself here in front of all the nice podcast people hi i'm sam i'm the other one all that stuff that rind said i'm a nerd also let's talk about murder bot please
00:12:25
Speaker
um Yeah, so what we do here is for the first two years of this podcast, we read through Lord of the Rings, which was a return for me from my childhood, and first time read through for Sam.
00:12:42
Speaker
We have now read all of Lord of the Rings. Hell yeah, we have. And watched it. And watch the movies. And just the trilogy. And we read The Hobbit together separately, not on the podcast.
00:12:56
Speaker
There are, of course, many, many other Tolkien writings that were published posthumously. and a few other poems that were published during his life. We are not currently talking about
Discussion on 'The Murderbot Diaries'
00:13:07
Speaker
those. What we are currently talking about is The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, as you may have noticed in the last couple of episodes that we've put out.
00:13:16
Speaker
Today, we are discussing the third Murderbot novella, Rogue Protocol. A Protocol of Rogues. Hehehehe. A Protocol of Rogues and Robots, if we want to make it a I don't know, Sarah J. Maas novel.
00:13:32
Speaker
I don't even know where to begin with that, but I'll file that away. i have so many tangential bits and things, but we gotta stay focused. A Protocol of Rogues and Robots. Yeah, so this continues the the story that was begun in the first two in All Systems Red and Artificial Condition.
00:13:53
Speaker
And so it it picks up more or less where we left off. I do write out the gate. I feel like Rogue Protocol is one of the less well-organized novellas in the series.
00:14:09
Speaker
Ooh, hot take. It's a little bit, there's there's a lot of like time and space jumping and like, I don't necessarily think we needed the like extra explanations if it went to this transit ring and then it went to this transit ring and then it went to Havrad and then it went to Milu Station and then it went to Milu The terraforming station, it was it was a lot of jumps right out the gate that were a little hard to keep track of.
00:14:40
Speaker
And I felt like just across the board, this whole novella, there were a lot of little moving parts that occasionally I felt like the story could have been a little bit simplified. Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
Despite the fact that it's already like, by the time you get two and we'll we'll go over the full summary, but by the time you get to like, when they're finally on the terraforming station, and you start having the conflict, it's already been ah just under half the book.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah, I do feel like I had a hard time keeping track of things. And this is while I was writing things down to write a summary for this episode. Even towards the end, I wasn't sure.
00:15:25
Speaker
Are they on a shuttle right now? Are they on the ship right now? Where is this taking place? What is happening? Why are there these B plots and C plots? So I cut a lot of extraneous data from yeah the summary.
00:15:39
Speaker
We have to make room for media. So true. To jump into said summary, yes, we pick up where we left off at the end of artificial condition. Murderbot is on a transport with a bunch of humans who have signed a 20-year contract to a corporation and has accidentally on purpose become their de facto security.
00:15:58
Speaker
Murderbot is bound for a place called Milu. The people are set for somewhere else. This is one of those multiple location things. Don't worry about it. Murderbot's going to Milu, where Grey Chris, the bad guys from book one, are almost certainly up to some sketchy shit with the terraforming facility that may have been used to cover up more alien remnant stuff.
00:16:19
Speaker
Murderbot wants to go there and investigate to find evidence of their wrongdoing for Dr. Mensah, just to sort of thank her for everything that she did for it. And avoiding its feelings about leaving the doomed humans behind, it finds a bot-driven transport that it believes to be unoccupied. Oops, two humans, Wilkin and Girth, security consultants for a company called Goodnight Lander Independent, are on the ship.
00:16:43
Speaker
And G.I., Goodnight Lander Independent, is taking possession of the abandoned terraforming facility. So they are going there to do something, question mark.
00:16:55
Speaker
So they get to Milu Station. Murderbot travels from Havratan to Milu on this supply ship, which Milu Station is very underpopulated. It's not a large facility.
00:17:13
Speaker
It was primarily there to supply the terraforming facility. Mm-hmm. where they meet the team from Goodnight Lander Independent, which is made up of someone named Hiruna, someone named Donna Bena, and their human-shaped bot, Mickey.
00:17:34
Speaker
Murderbot is forced to befriend Mickey, and it has a lot of emotions about it. It has an entire chapter of emotions about it while it spies on the humans through Mickey's eyes. Mm-hmm. It does at one point say outright it had a certain amount of time to seduce the bot.
00:17:52
Speaker
Which is just a lovely, interesting turn of phrase. Oh, absolutely. Murderbot's experimenting with figurative language, and we love that for it. Murderbot eventually strikes out on its own while keeping an eye on the humans.
00:18:06
Speaker
In unknown hostile attacks, Murderbot is forced to blow its cover to save the humans. It comes up with a story for the humans, slightly contradicting what it had said to Mickey before, saying that it's working for a human security consultant named Rin,
00:18:19
Speaker
It had told Mickey that it was the human security consultant, but Mickey and the human leader, Donna Benna, back it up because they realize that something bigger is going on. Sides form. We realize that Wilkin and Girth may not be trustworthy. Shocker.
00:18:34
Speaker
They're definitely not. They tried to murder Donna Benna. They take Wilkin hostage. The good guys take Wilkin hostage, unravel the Gray Chris scheme, make their own plan. There's more fighting. Mickey dies in the process of helping Murderbot fight off one last combat bot.
00:18:49
Speaker
Humans get to safety, murder boss slips away, and it decides that its new plan is to physically go back to Mensa to share its findings with her. And that is pretty much the book, but it has a lot of moving parts and a lot of other smaller things.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah, and and just to like... Again, touch back on the pacing, that whole, like, last couple of sentences that you said there, that's the entire back half of the story.
00:19:21
Speaker
Mm hmm. So it's like what what we had as two thirds of our summary is barely the first half is like not quite the first half of this of the book.
00:19:32
Speaker
And then the last third of the summary was the entire like over the last half of the book. So the pacing of this one is just a little bit weird. Yeah, a lot is happening inside Murderbot's mind.
00:19:47
Speaker
Like I said, there's an entire chapter where it's just having emotions about Mickey, which is great. It's a really good chapter and we will talk about Mickey. But oh yeah as for a plot summary, the plot of it all is not really the most important thing here. I...
00:20:06
Speaker
feel like now that we're really settled into this world this is book three there's a lot less general exposition a lot less getting people up to speed and it's a lot more focused on character relationships per putting murder bot in new social situations and being sort of an introspective one as much as a still very action-packed sci-fi book can be Yeah, there are four other humans that do feature in the book.
00:20:38
Speaker
They are like four other employees of GI. Two of them are shuttle pilots. And then two of them are terraforming researchers, I think.
00:20:52
Speaker
But they kind of don't matter. Yeah, i had forgotten most of them. I feel like honestly, you could have Donna Benna, Mickey, and Hirana be the entire team besides Wilkin and Girth, and it would be fine. I would not notice that the other ones were gone.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah, you might, it might be useful to have one of them there because we do have, towards the end, a sort of hostage situation in which Carter and Veeble, I think, are the two on the ship.
00:21:28
Speaker
I literally read this, like, I read this book, I reread this last week, and then i ah sort of ran through the the text this afternoon. So literally like less than three hours ago.
00:21:44
Speaker
That's kind of how not worthwhile these characters are. um But like Carter and Veeble or Cotter and Veeble doesn't particularly matter. therere They're useful because they stay on the ship or on the shuttle and Girth ends up engaged in a hostage situation with them.
00:22:03
Speaker
Basically holding holding them hostage. So like They're sort of useful to the story, but there there are ultimately, there's like one, two, four different, maybe five different ah like goals in this cast.
00:22:28
Speaker
Mm-hmm. You have the general goal of Goodnight Lander Independent, which is they've taken the contract to investigate the terraforming facility because apparently it's, you know, when a terraforming facility fails...
00:22:45
Speaker
There can be, you know, that's a lot of money, a lot of resources and a waste of a planet. And so that's, you know, a lot of, you know, if that was Gray Chris's fault, that could be very bad for them it from a legal sense.
00:23:02
Speaker
So GI i is doing the survey on the state of terraforming. Then there's the combat bots that Graychris left on the terraforming facility.
00:23:15
Speaker
Teehee. Whose goal is to stop anyone from seeing anything on the terraforming facility. Then there's Wilkin and Girth who were hired by Graychris to make sure that the terraforming facility breaks up in the planet's atmosphere as was originally the plan before G.I.
00:23:36
Speaker
took on this investigation contract. Mm-hmm. Then there's Murderbot, who wants to get information about Grey Chris's malfeasance.
00:23:50
Speaker
And then there's Murderbot again, who's trying to get who's trying to aid Mickey and the GI team in getting off the facility alive.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah. So there's there is a lot of moving parts.
Character and Plot Complexity
00:24:09
Speaker
But it it did take me until like this past read-through to really...
00:24:15
Speaker
Like nail down what's happening to whom and where. i feel like the the the competing combat bot versus Wilkin and Girth bit has been my sticking point for a long time. Because like the combat bots were left by Grey Chris and instructed to attack anyone that came on the facility.
00:24:39
Speaker
Any intruders to the facility. But Wilkin and Girth were also sent by Grey Chris to destroy the facility. so But they didn't know about the combat bots. Yeah, they should definitely have known about the combat bots because I was thinking, okay, Grey Chris should tell the combat bots that Wilkin and Gerth are coming and saying, hey, these guys are on your team. Please don't kill them. XOXO.
00:25:03
Speaker
But, you know, maybe because they're under more scrutiny. And it's also shown in the book that Grey Chris has taken a serious PR hit after the events of the first book. So they are being watched extra closely now. There's been a shit ton of lawsuits. It's not been good.
00:25:18
Speaker
So maybe there would be no way for them to mess with the facility without people noticing. So, you know, maybe you can't tell the bots and have them program around Wilkin and Girth, but you could definitely tell Wilkin and Girth because they were instructed to kill the actual security team that was supposed to help GI.
00:25:39
Speaker
And so they're ready to do murder. They're receiving briefings. You could also just include, Hey, by the way, Stay away from the combat bot. Yeah. I think, well, I think it does. Well, it does get explained actually.
00:25:52
Speaker
And there's like a, there's like a half a page or maybe even like a two line explanation, which is the terraforming facility was not actually a terraforming facility. It was again. Oh yeah. Great. Great. Chris was mining strange synthetics.
00:26:11
Speaker
Mm hmm. Or mining alien remnant tech off of Milu and using this terraform, this so-called terraforming facility to hide that.
00:26:24
Speaker
Because again, mining that for profit is illegal. under this sort of international intergalactic type law. So they were hiding that and using a quote unquote failed terraforming project to, to disguise that effort.
00:26:43
Speaker
And eventually the terraforming facility would have just fallen out of orbit and crashed into the planet and been destroyed until Mensa encouraged the wider galactic community to look into Gray Chris's activities and And so GI took on the, all right, we'll go take a look at this failed terraforming event to see what went wrong. Because that's a tragedy that terraforming failed. And Gray Chris was like, hmm, we weren't terraforming.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah. Which is what Murderbot is there to get evidence of. But Wilkin and Girth were designed to make sure, were sent there to make sure that the facility breaks up as originally planned.
00:27:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. The combat bots were originally there as protection against raiders isn and then left in place when the facility was abandoned.
00:27:40
Speaker
Ordinarily, like a terraforming facility might rely on like outside security, but because Greycris wasn't actually terraforming, they didn't want to rely on outside security. Yeah.
00:27:51
Speaker
So the combat bots were operating under sort of their original mandate, which was kill intruders. And GI i was registered essentially as intruders.
00:28:04
Speaker
But then Wilkin and Girth... They thought they were going because there's no way. like It sounds like there's there's issues. There's some sort of like radiation or some sort of signal interference so that Milu Station can't contact the terraforming facility.
00:28:22
Speaker
So there's no way for signal to get through there. it's You have to physically go to the facility. So Wilken and Gris were physically going to the facility. to what they thought send a signal pulse to destroy the, like destroy the tractor array that's keeping the facility from falling out of orbit.
00:28:41
Speaker
But what they were actually doing was reprogramming the combat bots to do that. m And, and Greycris was hoping that the combat bots would then also take out Wilkin and Girth and remove any evidence of this ever happening.
00:28:58
Speaker
That makes sense. And that shows how convoluted this book is that I needed you explaining it to me to be able to put all those pieces together. But yes, that's also just random semantically. We do get a distinction between strange synthetics and alien remnants. To us as readers, it doesn't matter, but it's a fun bit of world building that they specify alien remnants are mineral or biological elements.
00:29:27
Speaker
And strange synthetics are technology, but it's all coming from the same dead sentient alien race. So they're used basically interchangeably, but and we will probably also use them interchangeably.
00:29:41
Speaker
But just as a little fun factoid, they do technically mean different things. Well, and I had questions about that last episode. because the first book alien remnants is used and the second book strain synthetics is used and i think this was this was martha wells being like oops let me clear that one up for you yeah that sounds that's all right and um thank you i had questions i'm sure other readers did too that's why there's the distinction i'm Speaking of kind of throwaway characters, things that are moved past very quickly, I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about the humans that we meet at the very, very beginning, who yeah are on a 20-year indentured labor contract being shipped out to the middle of fucking nowhere, and the fucking dystopian capitalist horror of all of that, because Murderbot is really affected by its experience with these humans, and I think that maybe
00:30:41
Speaker
part of the reason that we don't dwell on them too much in the narrative besides the fact that they just leave is that it just emotionally can't handle the reality of their situation and it knows that they're doomed it refers to them as the doomed humans and there is nothing that it can do to rescue them from the horrible situation that they're in there's A line talking about how the labor contract included shelter, but charged a percentage for everything else, like food consumed, energy use, and and and any medical care, including preventative.
00:31:14
Speaker
I know. Rati had said using constructs was slavery, but at least I hadn't had to pay the company for my repair, maintenance, ammo, and armor. Of course, nobody asked me if I wanted to be a sec unit, but that's a whole different metaphor.
00:31:25
Speaker
Note to self, look up definition of metaphor. But this is a fucking hellscape. And even the length of time, the 20 years, the humans don't seem to understand why it matters if they're using the recommended corporation rim standard year, if they're using a proprietary calendar system.
00:31:48
Speaker
They are basically signing away their entire lives because they're in such a desperate situation and they don't even know the specifics of how it's all going to work. Yeah, or if they're using, like, the planetary here for the planet they're going to live on.
00:32:01
Speaker
And you can guarantee that the company is using, that whatever company has indentured them is choosing the longest one of those. Mm-hmm.
00:32:14
Speaker
And, you know, you can also guarantee that, like, they won't be allowed to leave if they work up debt, which is, like, their food and the medical care and the clothing and the da-da-da.
00:32:26
Speaker
Like, you know, that's – it's very Company Town's company script in space. Yeah. You know, I owe my soul to the company store. Mm-hmm.
00:32:40
Speaker
which if you're not familiar with the history of the labor rights movement around the world, during the Industrial Revolution, there was a phenomenon called company towns in which a company would establish usually usually like a mining facility and it would have a town next to the mine in which everything, the housing, the stores, everything was owned by the company.
00:33:08
Speaker
And so you were paid by the company, but you weren't paid in cash. You were paid in company script, which could only then be used at the company store in town.
00:33:23
Speaker
which always had higher prices for food than you were paid by the company. And so you'd take things on credit and be in debt to the company store, and then you're further in debt to the company.
00:33:34
Speaker
And so the company effectively isn't paid. I mean, first of all, they weren't paying you at all, but they effectively, then you are paying the company to live there and work for them. um And that's just this in space.
00:33:47
Speaker
And Amazon is trying to do that now in the year 2025. I don't think that any of their big projects are underway at this point. As far as I know, I would have to do a quick little cheeky Google to see about that.
00:34:03
Speaker
But that is something that they are actively trying to bring back because it is a very profitable model. Yes, you have the right to be paid in legal tender for your work.
00:34:16
Speaker
You have the right to not be paid solely so you are forced to use the company as your sole source of food and housing and livelihood.
00:34:33
Speaker
Mm hmm. So just remember that. And ah if you ever find yourself in a situation like this, um talk to your fellow workers about that.
00:34:47
Speaker
Find your systems of recourse ah outside people that you can talk to. Legal representation. Yeah.
AI and Autonomy in 'The Murderbot Diaries'
00:35:00
Speaker
So, but yes, did you have other, because there were some funny moments from that, which was Murderbot ends up as a, as security consultant Rin on board the ship masquerading as an augmented human.
00:35:16
Speaker
R-I-N, not R-Y-N. So, you know, it's it's doing its best, but yes, no one can match the original. There is a fun line of like, it having to establish the rules and, like, get involved in some scuffles.
00:35:32
Speaker
You know, rule number one, do not touch security consultant Rin. Very you important rule. I'd only had to pin one person to a wall. Mm-hmm. If you bother her again, I will break every individual bone in your hand and arm. It will take about an hour.
00:35:51
Speaker
should I just imagined delivered in the most deadpan. Staring directly into their eyes, but Murderbot's not actually doing the staring. It's watching through a camera. um Because it would not make eye contact. Why would it do that?
00:36:08
Speaker
There were humans and augmented humans everywhere, all around me, looking at me, which was hell. I also love that on the first page, it talks about missing art. Yeah.
00:36:20
Speaker
At various points in our relationship, art had threatened to kill me, watched my favorite shows with me, given me a body configuration change, provided excellent tactical support, talked me into pretending to be an augmented human security consultant, saved my clients' lives, and had cleaned up after me when I had to murder some humans.
00:36:36
Speaker
They were bad humans. I really missed art. I had a very similar quote, which was also about missing art. Also, i missed art, and I even missed Tapan and Mero and Rami.
00:36:48
Speaker
If you had to take care of humans, it was better to take care of small, soft ones who were nice to you and thought you were great because you kept preventing them from being murdered. So it's obviously not forming the kind of connections with these humans that it has with its previous humans and with art.
00:37:03
Speaker
But I think even in this first chapter, we're setting up that bonds and relationships are going to be a big theme in this book. Yeah.
00:37:14
Speaker
in In this book and in general, Murderbot is now a sort of coming to terms with the fact that like it can define its own relationships to people. hmm.
00:37:26
Speaker
And that it actually does want to do that. Yeah. We have kind of a nice mirror with GI, which also every time we say that, that's how it's abbreviated in the book, but that just makes me think of digestion whenever I say GI. Same. I was like gastrointestinal?
00:37:47
Speaker
Yeah. As two bitches with tummy issues. you know That's not usually the context in which I am used to that abbreviation, but it's faster than saying good night, Lander, independent.
00:37:58
Speaker
So. GI kind of mirrors Prezox as team of humans doing science who like each other, but with the addition of Mickey and seeing what it's like to have a bunch of nice humans with a construct in the mix that they're already familiar with, that they treat as a part of their team.
00:38:20
Speaker
And how does it feel for Murderbot to watch those interactions and to compare how the humans treat Mickey with how it wants to be treated. There's a lot of murder. And Mickey's not a construct. Mickey's a bot.
00:38:34
Speaker
True. there There is a distinction between bots and constructs. and It has been constructed, but yes, if we are being correct about language in these books, yes, it is not a construct. It is a bot.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. we We learn a lot about like artificially constructed intelligences and the differences in levels, I feel like, through this book, because we have references to the previous bot transports. We have the bot transport at the beginning of this book.
00:39:01
Speaker
We've encountered art. We've encountered Murderbot and other sex units um in previous books. We've encountered sexbots in previous books. Transport and ship, we've encountered now the drones, the combat bots, the semi-autonomous diggers in this book, and Mickey.
00:39:22
Speaker
And like, where are their differing levels of intelligence? Like, what can they respond to? How can they think? And so I'm currently replaying Mass Effect Andromeda, which is the fourth one sort of spinoff in the Mass Effect series.
00:39:41
Speaker
It gets lambasted as the worst one in the series. I really like it, but that's because I'm a nerdy science bitch, and it's a lot about like science and exploration.
00:39:54
Speaker
And still there's shooting, which is also fun. Sounds like art would love it. Art would have a great time. And I get to get to play a wonderful space lesbian.
00:40:04
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Pathfinder rider, she's doing her best. Anyway, the point is, Mass Effect has an interesting take on sort of this differing level of artificially constructed mind, right? And when I googled it, I saw like other things come up about this. So I don't know if it's like an accepted term in computing, but VI versus ai virtual intelligence versus artificial intelligence. Right.
00:40:34
Speaker
I have never heard that before. VIs in Mass Effect, and I assume potentially elsewhere, are sort of, they're honestly what like to us gets called AI. They can like learn things and pick up things, but really they're they're responding to their program.
00:40:56
Speaker
They are ah like they have a series of protocols and they operate within those parameters and they can't really reach outside of those parameters.
00:41:10
Speaker
They don't really learn. They don't really think. Whereas an AI, an artificial intelligence, learns and thinks and can adapt and change and grow and essentially operate like a human brain.
00:41:29
Speaker
You know, and it it might not be exactly the same, particularly like in Mass Effect in the case of the Geth, they're a hive mind, but they are an artificial intelligence.
00:41:40
Speaker
And so, like, art and Murderbot and clearly constructs in general are, like, that artificial intelligence, I feel like. Like, they can, you know, respond and learn and grow. And Murderbot talks about, like...
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't necessarily have the code to do X thing, but then it like adapts other bits of code and it writes new ones and it it grows and it changes and it evolves.
00:42:14
Speaker
Whereas like the combat bots and the and you know transport and ship, those are VIs. Right? Yeah. They have a set of instructions and they will follow that set of instructions and you can adjust that set of instructions.
00:42:31
Speaker
But like... That's what's getting delivered to them. And then there's even the lower level, the like semi-autonomous diggers, which are not even like the eye level. That's like, I am running a program now.
00:42:46
Speaker
When the program completes, it'll be done. But even the diggers, Murderbot feels this tenderness for. it talks about them as being sleeping and not wanting to wake them up because...
00:43:01
Speaker
the central intelligence that, you you know, this AI that would have governed... the facility is no longer there. It is offline. Presumably Great Chris extracted it because that technology is very expensive, leaving behind all of the things that are semi-autonomous.
00:43:19
Speaker
And Murderbot doesn't want to distress or upset any of these things that wouldn't be able to understand what's going on, which is really sweet and kind of sad.
00:43:33
Speaker
And even... intelligence is like ship and we call it ship and not the ship because that ship with a capital s that is a name that murderbot is calling it and even though it especially with mickey makes fun of mickey and doesn't like it and has a lot of big angsty feelings about it and thinks that it's stupid still recognizes that it is a being that should be respected and it doesn't want to treat it unfairly.
00:44:05
Speaker
Well, and Mickey seems to sort of almost bridge the gap. Like, Mickey seems to be able to learn and respond, but doesn't do that in quite the same way that Murderbot does.
00:44:18
Speaker
Yeah, Mickey is able to... If not exercise free will, at least sometimes use its own judgment. Towards the end, when it sacrifices itself, Donna Bena orders Mickey to change its priorities to save itself as opposed to saving its friends. And it says, no, I want to save my friends.
00:44:40
Speaker
And it is programmed with the ability to make that choice. But one of the things that really infuriates Murderbot is that Mickey is like that TM. And we'll discuss what being like that is in this case.
00:44:55
Speaker
Just because it wants to be. It is living its best life. It loves its humans. It loves its function. It does things for them because it wants to. And it really hurts Murderbot to see this...
00:45:12
Speaker
alternate, this like alternate reality where, you know, this could be me, but that's not what I want for myself. Because Mickey, Donna Bennett introduces it as the team's assistant.
00:45:25
Speaker
Murderbot sees it as a pet. And I think it's somewhere in between there, but I think they definitely treat it more like a pet or a child than they would a coworker.
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And Murderbot doesn't want to be infantilized. Right. This is embarrassing. This is gross. I can't bear to watch it.
00:45:47
Speaker
But also, well yeah. Yeah, it talks about like there has to be a happy medium somewhere between getting treated like a horrifying killing machine and getting treated like a pet.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, there are one of the other pieces that it was throwing me for a loop was just like, how many combat bots are there? So I like went through and I there are four combat bots.
00:46:12
Speaker
That is more work than I did. There are four combat bots and then it mentions there are 30 combat drones, which Murderbot takes over at one point. And they're its friends.
00:46:24
Speaker
And there they were my new drone friends. Yeah, Murderbot also loves its drones. It really, it cares for them and is sad when they break and die.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah, this it's so it's so interesting to see how, you know, Murderbot on the one hand knows that transport and ship and and the, you know, the diggers and even Mickey aren't nearly at its level of intelligence.
00:46:57
Speaker
can't respond or perceive in the same way that it can, but also still wants to give those, it it it sees them as independent beings.
00:47:10
Speaker
And you know when it has to hack transport and ship and cut itself out of their memory, it feels bad about doing that. It's like, I can do that, but I don't want to.
00:47:22
Speaker
Yeah, because it's spent its entire life being forced to do things against its will, it doesn't want to rob anyone else of autonomy.
Murderbot's Moral Dilemmas
00:47:34
Speaker
And it also understands that sometimes things have to be done for the achievement of a goal, but it's going to be tormented about it.
00:47:43
Speaker
Speaking of Murderbot being a murder bot, when Wilkin is holding Donna Benna hostage and Murderbot breaks in, freezes Wilkin in her suit And then gets Donna Benafri for the second time in the book, by the way.
00:48:00
Speaker
oh Murderbot is fully about to execute Wilkin there. Oh, yes. Like, she has been disarmed. She cannot move. She has been locked inside her power armor.
00:48:13
Speaker
She cannot move. She cannot scream. She can just be there. And Murderbot literally is like, look away. You don't want to see this. and it's kind of implied too because murderbot takes the like the grenades that wilkin has that murderbot is going to basically like lock a grenade onto her armor and walk away yeah and donna ben is like no wait yeah maybe so oh you testify yeah yeah
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah, make her make her testify. ah and then it has to grudgingly admit that that's a good point. Wilkin and Girth both use she-her, and I feel like it took me until this reading to notice that.
00:48:55
Speaker
Brain cell, I was about to say the exact same thing. I didn't register that at all the first couple of times that I read this, because I just don't really...
00:49:05
Speaker
Because Murderbot doesn't care about human genders, it comes through so little in the narration. One thing that I was on the lookout for this time, because you had pointed it out previously...
00:49:18
Speaker
in artificial condition was the cleverness of us not seeing humans using any gendered pronouns to refer to murder bot. And that continues in this one.
00:49:30
Speaker
Although doesn't. Well, well, if you let me do the, although the second half of my sentence, um, no, I love you security consultant, Rin.
00:49:43
Speaker
Yes, that's what I was going to say. Is that we learn that security consultant Rin uses she, her pronouns. So was that how Murderbot was being addressed? i At what point would that have come up?
00:49:59
Speaker
Because it seems to be something that Donna Bena knows or is or a assuming. Yeah. So there's something giving Donna Bena that impression. I don't know, but it was interesting.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, because because in the first... like When Murderbot in um Artificial Condition poses as security consultant Eden, it displays itself as not having a gender in the feed.
00:50:27
Speaker
And so like like it doesn't attach pronouns to itself. And i you know yeah I don't know if that is um the case again Yeah.
00:50:40
Speaker
like it's It's interesting, like, how did Donna Benna come to that conclusion? That said, I remembered ah little piece, ah something I had seen, ah tweet from Martha Wells.
00:50:55
Speaker
Ooh, let us hear it. I keep seeing people say that Murderbot refers to itself as she, her in the books, you know, the ones I wrote. Could someone comment with a quote from the books I wrote or point me, the writer, to where that is?
00:51:08
Speaker
Maybe I can clear up the confusion. In the books. Which I wrote. And I think, honestly, this is probably that instance.
00:51:20
Speaker
And then i i read somewhere that, like, I think what she was seeing was people talk about translations, foreign translations.
00:51:31
Speaker
Ooh, interesting. Because, and i and so I went ahead and I looked up a couple of different translations and I didn't get to actually read any of the translations in languages that I'm at all familiar with.
00:51:45
Speaker
What I did do is I went and I scrubbed through the first episode of the TV show in Italian. And from what I could see, they managed to get by without using gendered pronouns for Murderbot in the show.
00:52:00
Speaker
But, okay, so apparently in the German translation, Mörderbott is, because German is a gendered language, as is, you know, Italian, as is Spanish and French. And i there are there are many, many languages that I am totally unfamiliar with that are gendered.
00:52:19
Speaker
I didn't look up anything in Danish, but Danish doesn't have like masculine and feminine, um which is another language that I'm sort of vaguely familiar with, having lived there.
00:52:30
Speaker
But do not speak, for the record. Do not speak Danish. I'm a little Danish. dan good But in the German translation, murderbot is given feminine pronouns sometimes and masculine pronouns sometimes, depending on how it's previously referred to.
00:52:49
Speaker
Because unit is feminine, apparently, in German. But bot is masculine. Ooh, that's really interesting. So depending on the situation...
00:53:02
Speaker
the pronoun is used differently for murder bot. Mickey in the German translation apparently gets masculine pronouns and art gets both like inanimate pronouns and masculine pronouns.
00:53:14
Speaker
The Italian translation apparently uses feminine words for it because the phrase that gets used for it, um machina assassina, killing machine, is is feminine.
00:53:33
Speaker
Love it. Girl boss. but We support women's wrongs.
00:53:41
Speaker
God forbid women have hobbies.
00:53:46
Speaker
ah Listen, that we can't talk about Murderbot like that, but we can talk about Wilkin and Girth. So true. Yes. Again, who we had just not picked up. I felt that way about, i think it was Valescu as well in the first book going, i don't fucking know what pronouns this person has.
00:54:02
Speaker
And we have also done that for other books. I'm remembering, i think it was Satisfaction Guaranteed. Where there was a character who we were like, oh, we all thought that this character used they them pronouns.
00:54:18
Speaker
And I don't even remember what their actual pronouns were. But when we were talking about it in book club, we realized that we had all been wrong somehow. Quite frankly, Satisfaction Guaranteed is is one of those books where i like I feel like the author was just kind of uncomfortable putting in trans people.
00:54:35
Speaker
m There was like a throw ah throwaway line about like a trans woman one of the characters knew. And then there were other characters who were like, you definitely could have played with trans themes here.
00:54:50
Speaker
Including, and again, another one of these characters that refuses to use their given name and only goes by their last name and gets annoyed if anybody uses their given name.
00:55:02
Speaker
like Like, there are... There are themes, there's a there's like various like body dysmorphia themes in that book. And that is not to say that like cis people can't and don't deal with that.
00:55:18
Speaker
But for a book that was like so much like focused on the character's queer community around them, isn it felt like, on the one hand, now that I think about this,
00:55:34
Speaker
i When I read it, I was like, that's just weird that like this like wildly queer community has not a single trans person in it. Especially because like our community is so full of trans and non-binary people.
00:55:51
Speaker
You, honestly, as our lovely cis person, are an anomaly. Yeah. Thumbs up. I am used to being the only cis person in a situation. And I feel like that is a privilege that I have passed some kind of vibe check.
00:56:05
Speaker
So I'm just trying to stay on the right side of that vibe check. But I have met other, other like queer people who it's like, wow, I'm really the only trans person that you interact with.
00:56:19
Speaker
Aren't i That's weird. You have a whole queer community. that you interact with on the regular and everyone in that community is queer, but there is not a single trans person in it.
00:56:30
Speaker
Interesting. i wonder why they don't want to hang out with you. Maybe examine that. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's really a thing in romance, especially. i see a lot of it in queer romance, that there will be virtue signally mention, usually of one of the characters having slept with or dated a trans person at some point in the past, being like, oh, I'm cool and open minded.
00:56:58
Speaker
I slept with a trans person once. Maybe not the flex you think it is, fellas. Try again. But yeah, that is absolutely, absolutely a thing. But bringing back to... Bringing back to Murderbot. To Murderbot.
00:57:13
Speaker
La Machina Assassina.
00:57:17
Speaker
I'm trying to think what else I had for this book. There is a line at one point, I was tired of pretending to be human. I needed a break.
00:57:30
Speaker
God damn, I relate. Yeah. It's exhausting. It's tiring. Speaking of not being human, as Murderbot's relationship with Mickey evolves and they start to kind of trust each other a little bit and Mickey doing the same thing that Art did of going, we're friends.
00:57:50
Speaker
We're best friends. I love you. And Murderbot going, who's stay away from me. Don't touch me. But they're moving in a good direction. And then Mickey betrays Murderbot by telling Donna Benna the truth when Murderbot had asked it not to.
00:58:06
Speaker
And so then Murderbot's kind of giving it the cold shoulder and Mickey's feeling sad and it's all just feelings all over the place and it's disgusting. But Mickey confesses something to Murderbot and says, I never talked to a bot like me before.
00:58:21
Speaker
I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me. And perhaps part of the reason that it's so over the top is just that it's personality and that it's very sweet and trusting and outgoing.
00:58:32
Speaker
But also it's really excited to talk to someone that it has shared experiences with. And Murderbot is struggling because it also wants that, like we talked about before, it wants to have that connection, but also struggles with it because like how art is not the same as a sec unit. Mickey's not the same as a sec unit.
00:58:58
Speaker
It's not a bot. Like I'm not like you, but we're kind of close and I want to be like you, but I don't want to be like you. I don't know what I want. That's stressful and I want to avoid it. And also I don't want to be...
00:59:10
Speaker
your friend experiment. i am not ready for this. It's difficult, but I like that we see Mickey be complicated and have its own reasons for wanting to do things.
00:59:24
Speaker
That's an interesting so interesting thought is comparing and contrasting Murderbot's relationship with art with Murderbot's relationship with Mickey isn't and comparing Mickey and art The big thing that ties mickey Mickey and Art together is that both of them like they're humans.
00:59:43
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Neither Mickey nor Art has been mistreated by humans. And so trust, both of them trust humans. Mm-hmm.
00:59:54
Speaker
And I think perhaps therefore that's why they're both more willing to trust Murderbot out the gate. Mm-hmm. and And Mickey, you know, confesses that it doesn't know what a sec unit is.
01:00:11
Speaker
Like it had no prior knowledge of sec units prior to meeting Murderbot. But art did. But art didn't care. And yet, you know, art art has that almost a similar relationship with SecUnit as SecUnit does with Mickey, which is like that its processing power is so much higher. It has so much more capacity for learning and growth and analysis.
01:00:37
Speaker
it's It's on a different level. Mm-hmm. And it also has the skill of dealing with specifically adolescent humans, which we'll talk about that in the
Horror Elements and Speculation
01:00:51
Speaker
future. But it has young people on its crew.
01:00:54
Speaker
You know, it's owned by a university. So it's used to dealing with people who are prickly and recalcitrant and not eager to open up and make friends. So, you know, Murderbot being in an emotional state similar to a teenager, art knows how to handle it.
01:01:09
Speaker
There's ah line earlier on where Mickey is just being so aggressively friendly and Murderbot's going, are you just instructed to answer every question with yes? What's your fucking deal?
01:01:23
Speaker
And then it, Mickey sends back a little smiley face and and Murderbot is metaphorically slamming its head against the wall. And it says, Mickey was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness.
01:01:37
Speaker
It really thought its humans were its friends because that's how they treated it. I signaled Mickey I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private. Yeah, no, Murderbot. Yeah, no, Murderbot is an abuse victim and is having trouble figuring out how to trust.
01:01:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Which is very fair. It has trauma. A lot of it. And it actually, I have another quote, if I may pull it up. So it's talking about when it first survived.
01:02:10
Speaker
at the quote-unquote mining facility, or terraforming facility, excuse me. I don't know why I expected to see damage and signs that the human staff had run for their lives. There was no indication that this was anything but a planned abandonment.
01:02:22
Speaker
Maybe I was thinking of Ravi Hyrule again. You'd think once I'd seen the place, found out what had happened, the partial memories would fade. Not so much, it turns out. That's trauma, babe. That's, you're you're getting triggered. That's what that is. Mm-hmm.
01:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's a it's having a rough time. And we will see Murderbot go through healing over the rest of the series, which is really nice.
01:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's not going to be... struggling this much forever the whole arc of all of these books is ultimately very hopeful and I think that that's one of the things that I love about it that we still despite all of the horrors there are still these moments where people can connect and good things can happen and then also gradually the needle can move towards the righting of wrongs and justice happening.
01:03:22
Speaker
This is, speaking of horrors, again, this is a horror movie. Oh, yes. The big, scary, empty, abandoned terraforming facility. Don't go in there.
01:03:34
Speaker
Yeah. the It's haunted. facility that Yeah, we don't know what happened. Somebody gets ah grabbed out of nowhere by something you don't fully have a good look at.
01:03:46
Speaker
And then you're working with people you don't really trust who ah betray you it's It's a haunted house. The bots have unfinished business. Yeah, you think you've saved the day and then, oh nope, the monsters are still there. Like, no, this is a this is, again, it's a horror movie, much like All Systems Red was.
01:04:09
Speaker
i feel like, you know, Artificial Condition took a little bit of a break from the horror movie. But this, this is a horror movie. he It has, it has all the hallmarks. It even almost has the pacing, even though we we talked about the pacing being a little weird.
01:04:26
Speaker
Like, The first half of horror movies or like a good a good portion of that exposition is like hopeful. And like everything looks fine.
01:04:36
Speaker
There's something lurking over in the corner, but like it's sunny and bright. And then all of a sudden the coloration changes and then there's blood and murder and guts everywhere. And oops, that's Jason in the corner. um Yeah. Side note, as a horror lover, I have read so many books.
01:04:54
Speaker
I have listened to horror podcasts, occasionally play a horror game. I can't do horror movies. As soon as it's really visual, and I was talking to Pat about this earlier...
01:05:06
Speaker
If I'm not in control of the narrative in a game, you can choose when you turn the scary corner, you can kind of figure out what to expect, but in a movie where you're totally passive and then the scary film is just happening to you and it's in front of you and you can see it.
01:05:20
Speaker
like I can't fucking do it. I have never really been a horror movie person. I, you know, Honestly, the the one like, like I've, I've seen The Shining.
01:05:32
Speaker
and like, I have not watched all of Psycho, but like, and I've like seen Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Like I've seen those, but really the only one that I like sat down to watch with people was like Cabin in the Woods, which is kind of a satire Yeah.
01:05:56
Speaker
It makes fun of horror movies. It's a horror movie, but it's lambasting the whole genre. I had to watch a lot of horror movies for my gender studies major, actually, because they are really eating rife with gender commentary. The two that I, we watched a bunch, but the two that I remember were Rosemary's Baby and Silence of the Lambs, which both had very different things to say about gendered experiences. But There's a lot of subversion and negative stereotypes and reclaiming of things and people exercising their power and confronting the things that repulse us. Horror is really, really fascinating.
01:06:40
Speaker
I just don't like watching it as a movie. Don't like seeing it. I definitely had like more horny on main thoughts when I was writing these notes, but I didn't write them down. Oh, so sad.
01:06:51
Speaker
I'm so sorry. So I only have one other thing for this. So before we go to my tangent and I wanted to check in and see if you had anything else for Rogue Protocol before we tangent and take it out.
01:07:04
Speaker
No, I think that's about it. This is a tough one. Because of how complicated it is, it's very much in the middle, not one of the ones that I would say is great on its own.
01:07:17
Speaker
But it serves the broader narrative. It's good because it's Murderbot. It's definitely an enjoyable read, but you have to take it as part of the bigger picture. I agree.
01:07:28
Speaker
I agree. And I i don't think it's... As we sort of noted, it took me several reads to get the nuances of it. So you either have to go in being like, I'm going to closely read this or be like, I'm just going to kind of accept that what happens happens.
01:07:47
Speaker
That there's cool robot fights and that's fine. There's robot fights and the parts that I'm really going to listen to are murder bot having emotions because that's the growth like that will continue. Yeah.
01:07:59
Speaker
Yeah. It's good. It's not my favorite one of the series, though. We should rank them at the end of this. Oh, we will. Definitely. Note to self, we'll file that away. But so this one is called Rogue Protocol, obviously.
01:08:13
Speaker
So I was thinking about, it was my my thought was, is Murderbot a rogue? And then my thought was, if it's if it is not a rogue, what is its D&D class?
01:08:26
Speaker
Ooh. And it is so tempting to say fighter. i would say monk. Interesting. Interesting. Justify that. Just because of its fighting style, it does a lot of close hand-to-hand combat, quick reflexes.
01:08:43
Speaker
It can be kind of cerebral and, you know, monks are very interested. They have their spiritual element. Murderbot has its emotional, social element in that it's not necessarily experiencing emotions and socialization in the same way that everyone else, but it's studying them. It's It has a discipline surrounding mastering these things.
01:09:07
Speaker
And it punches people really hard with its big strong fists. That's interesting. One could make the argument that Murderbot is a paladin. Hmm. Justify that.
01:09:20
Speaker
It's a reluctant paladin, perhaps, but it it has this, like, sense of duty and sense of... It it feels like it needs to provide protection, that it needs to redeem itself for what it what it did on Ravi Hyrule or at...
01:09:36
Speaker
at Ganaka Pit I think there is you could also from a very like if you want to map one-to-one mechanics from the 2014 5th edition um we don't talk about the 2024 in this house mostly because I haven't sat down to bother learning any of the changes and I don't care We've been playing the 2014 one since about 2015.
01:10:01
Speaker
So if you want to map one-to-one mechanically, I feel like you can make the argument for Eldritch Knight. I was thinking Warlock and that the company is its patron.
01:10:13
Speaker
You could do that. Or the artisan's patron, honestly. Oh my god. Art would be the worst warlock patron. Art be terrible.
01:10:24
Speaker
No, but like, you know, drones are just fine familiar. o Its little energy weapons are like cantrips.
01:10:35
Speaker
You know, and it's got its got its combat its general combat skills. Yeah, I mean... Monk definitely crossed my mind. Paladin, you know, Rogue is interesting and tempting because Murderbot can be, like you said, a little cerebral. Mm-hmm.
01:10:53
Speaker
You know, and, you know, that doesn't stop it from not being, like, it's it's not a full caster. You know, it's got some magical abilities in keeping with the insufficiently advanced tech, or sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Yeah.
01:11:09
Speaker
rule um so like it's got some magical abilities so you know it's arcane trickster eldritch knight sign knight type things half caster like a paladin or a um or a ranger type character but i don't think i could see warlock like like it's not it's not a caster caster Yeah.
01:11:35
Speaker
It talks too much about how its its job is to chuck itself at the problem physically. Yeah, for that. And while it's, you know, definitely thinking through things, the main part of its strategy is still going to be, I'm just going to hit it until it stops getting up.
01:11:53
Speaker
isn With it being whatever the problem is, I'm going to hit the problem. The phrase that it uses is kill the shit out of it. Which is very good.
01:12:04
Speaker
If you listeners have thoughts on a murder bot D&D build, obviously it's a warforged. So true, actually.
01:12:16
Speaker
Let us know. if ah If Rin has seduced you through this podcast and you want to follow up on our offers from the beginning of the show. Oh my god.
01:12:27
Speaker
I am nothing if not a great wingwoman. I am many things that are not that. I've never wingwomaned for anyone anyway. I thought I had a lot of hankies out of my back pockets last night at the march.
01:12:43
Speaker
And then I intersected with another queer who was flagging even more heavily than I was. And I was like, oh, I've been outdone. Cool. Cool. No, they were incompatible.
01:12:55
Speaker
ah Ah, tragic. But if you have thoughts on Murderbot's D&D class, if you have other thoughts about this episode or our past or future episodes, you can leave us a review or a comment on whatever podcast to platform you're listening on.
01:13:16
Speaker
If the podcast platform you're listening on allows that sort of thing. If it doesn't, you can find a different podcast platform. you can ah You can find us on our social media, at fanapppod, on whatever social media we're on The ones that we're most active on are Tumblr and Instagram these days.
01:13:39
Speaker
You can send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com. Subscribe to the show and you will get our episodes as soon as they drop in the feed. We release every other Tuesday.
01:13:51
Speaker
That's the end of my roll, Sam. Shout out to somebody in California who downloaded 34 episodes in the last week. I hope that you're good.
01:14:01
Speaker
and I hope that you catch up with this eventually. That's let's see if our episodes range from let's do some quick math. If our episodes are average an hour and 45 minutes, 1.75 times 35.
01:14:14
Speaker
That's our longer ones. That's our longer ones. Roughly 50, 60 hours of Fandom Apprentice. Thank you. I hope you're okay. roughly fifty sixty hours of phantom apprentice thank you i hope you're ok
01:14:28
Speaker
Because it was all, we can't see very, like we can't see your home address listeners, but we can see vaguely regions where downloads have happened. And it was just one super concentrated dot.
01:14:42
Speaker
So I think that was all just one person. We love you Thank you. I love that people are still finding us and catching up on the show. Yeah, if you're new to the show, we have a very large backlog of Lord of the Rings and associated ephemera.
01:15:01
Speaker
We are building into our sci-fi era. So there will be more sci-fi to come beyond Murderbot. Worlds beyond number.
01:15:13
Speaker
And I think it is time for us to retreat into our repair cubicles. And we'll see you all next time. Shut down for a rest cycle. We'll see you next time.
01:15:24
Speaker
Bye. The Phantom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Beiruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
01:15:39
Speaker
Our art is by Casey Turgeon. You can find more of her work at KCT Designs on Instagram. The content discussed is the property of the original copyright holders and is used here under fair use.
01:16:27
Speaker
Amazing. I do not want to know how this is going sound.
01:16:31
Speaker
Honestly, it's really satisfying. It's a good sound. Keep it in the first cut so I can hear it and then we can cut it out. Tori and I had a lively conversation about mic sounds, which they were. I know we were talking about it.
01:16:47
Speaker
time. one time um