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I feel like any argument about what gender murderbot seems "coded" as is kinda beside the point when in the text, murderbot is explicitly genderless. They are a robot. That's why I'm slightly upset about the skarsgard announcement - I like him as an actor but he's very masculine and murderbot is genderless. But yeah how are they even going to do murderbot's inner dialog - voiceover? Seems like tough material to adapt
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Dec 15, 2023 21:46
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mewse posted:That's why I'm slightly upset about the skarsgard announcement - I like him as an actor but he's very masculine and murderbot is genderless. Yeah I mean I think this is at the core of the discussion. The showrunners have picked a conventionally attractive straight cis man. That raises worries about the way they're going to interpret the character.
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Dec 15, 2023 21:59
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mewse posted:But yeah how are they even going to do murderbot's inner dialog - voiceover? Seems like tough material to adapt
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Dec 15, 2023 21:59
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The books read like Aliens fanfiction to me, with the sardonic and emotionally vulnerable genderless murderbot being the, in my opinion, pretty thin twist on the formula. Maybe they'll just have the terminator be kind of a quippy teenager Joss Whedon style.
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Dec 15, 2023 22:32
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thotsky posted:The books read like Aliens fanfiction to me Wait, Aliens as in ”face hugger” Aliens? How so?
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Dec 15, 2023 23:25
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If they embrace the satire like starship troopers, it'll be amazing. Just imagine the opening with a montage of sec units massacring post after post, and then our like mb rolls up and is like "I'd kill all humans but honestly I'm working my way through my shows. The meatbags live for another day."
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Dec 15, 2023 23:30
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I never read them and always envisaged murder bot as one of those wheeled slabs like in the TV show robot wars, am I to understand that is not correct
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Dec 15, 2023 23:36
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sebmojo posted:I never read them and always envisaged murder bot as one of those wheeled slabs like in the TV show robot wars, am I to understand that is not correct They are a human-shaped android.
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Dec 15, 2023 23:43
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sebmojo posted:I never read them and always envisaged murder bot as one of those wheeled slabs like in the TV show robot wars, am I to understand that is not correct It’s a terminator, op. More specifically the good terminator in t2
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Dec 15, 2023 23:44
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:If they embrace the satire like starship troopers, it'll be amazing. Just imagine the opening with a montage of sec units massacring post after post, and then our like mb rolls up and is like "I'd kill all humans but honestly I'm working my way through my shows. The meatbags live for another day."
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Dec 16, 2023 00:01
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buffalo all day posted:It’s a terminator, op. More specifically the good terminator in t2 Nah, it has a human brain.
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Dec 16, 2023 00:07
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Yeah, Murderbot and the SecUnits in general are lab grown cyborgs with both organic and machine bits.
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Dec 16, 2023 00:16
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sebmojo posted:I never read them and always envisaged murder bot as one of those wheeled slabs like in the TV show robot wars, am I to understand that is not correct Humanoid robot with machine guns inside their arms but instead of killing they are depressed and want to watch shows
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Dec 16, 2023 00:51
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Awkward Davies posted:Wait, Aliens as in ”face hugger” Aliens? How so? Yeah. At the start of the first novel Murderbot is tasked with protecting a bunch of scientists from Xenomorphs, called "hazardous fauna". GrayCris, an especially evil company involved in terraforming, with a secret interest in exploiting dangerous "alien remnants" that lie waiting to be discovered on various worlds, then becomes the primary antagonist due to corporate shenanigans. They're clearly Weyland-Yutani. It's also pretty much spelled out that Murderbot would slaughter their wards if her owners deemed it necessary, like Ash did in Alien, if they hadn't hacked their governor module. Other bots do similar stuff. Like, the entire vibe of the universe is basically identical. thotsky fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Dec 16, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 00:53
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Murderbot is so clearly aping Aliens that I thought it was an adapted fan fiction after I read it.
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Dec 16, 2023 00:57
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Person raised to be killer freeing themselves from evil corporate overlords to watch more Netflix could go anywhere. It’s an amazing premise. Also, it’s great reading about people’s takes on Murderbot’s gender. I could have sworn that facial stubble was mentioned repeatedly, but I’m a cis man…….
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Dec 16, 2023 01:05
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I had the same problem with Murderbot that I did with (the bits of) Translation State (that weren't about Sphene), and that's "What if [SFF Archetype] actually just wanted to watch TV and post on Tumblr just like you" is a trend in SFF that leaves me absolutely cold. I understand why it's popular (especially while we're still in the middle of COVID), but it does nothing for me in the same way that most fanfic and its associated tropes do nothing for me.
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Dec 16, 2023 01:22
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Remulak posted:Person raised to be killer freeing themselves from evil corporate overlords to watch more Netflix could go anywhere. It’s an amazing premise. I think in one of the books they get surgery and part of that is changing face shape and growing hair.
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Dec 16, 2023 01:38
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Remulak posted:Also, it’s great reading about people’s takes on Murderbot’s gender. I could have sworn that facial stubble was mentioned repeatedly, but I’m a cis man……. From the second book quote:Then ART said we also needed to change the code controlling my organic parts, so they could grow hair. quote:I told ART that I preferred it that way and extra hair would just draw unwanted attention. It replied that it meant the fine, sparse hair humans had on parts of their skin. ART had done some analysis and come up with a list of biological features that humans might notice subliminally. Hair was the only one we could change my underlying code to create, and ART proposed that it would make the joins between the organic and inorganic parts on my arms, legs, chest, and back look more like augments, the inorganic parts that humans had implanted for medical or other reasons. I pointed out that many humans or augmented humans had the hair on their bodies removed, for hygienic or cosmetic reasons and because who the hell wants it there anyway. ART countered that humans didn’t have to worry about being identified as SecUnits, so they could do whatever they wanted to their bodies.
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Dec 16, 2023 01:46
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Benagain posted:okay I forget if people already recommended but you should check out The March North by Graydon Saunders because it's one of the very few books I've read where this doesn't happen, lots of people die but the effects of it are front and center in both the plot and characterization of the survivors. But anyway, yes, you're right, I wouldn't have thought of it in these terms but it is a great example of a story that reckons with the effects of having extras die. It's a bit obscured due to the general unforgiving obscurity of the whole thing, but it's definitely there. Since then I have read the second Commonweal book and my general review of the series so far is that it reads like it comes from a somewhat distant alternate universe and is in dialogue with a ton of books in a fairly different fantasy genre that don't exist in our timeline. It's difficult to say anything with confidence but we can surmise that in this other timeline, perhaps television was never invented and so writers took to the word processor's convenience without any conception of "pacing" a story (note there's no fantasy equivalent to television in the Commonweal despite its many other similarities to modern life). Perhaps authors in that timeline use crude, sub-ChatGPT AI assistance when writing, so that "iterate through each character in the scene for a non-verbal reaction to each line of dialogue" has become a normal convention. How did the books cross into our timeline? It seems that Glen Cook's Black Company crossed into theirs, so maybe these coming back here restored the balance. Anyway self-effacing humor aside, "reads like nothing else" is overall a good thing and I do intend to read the rest soon.
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Dec 16, 2023 02:41
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They should do some polling to find out whether more readers think Murderbot presents as more male or more female and then cast them the opposite.
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Dec 16, 2023 02:45
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Just cast a real robot,wonder what Mitt Romney is up to these days. I just read all systems red last week and if someone told me that it started as hk-47 fanfic I would totally believe them. Light, fun read, great editing, has basically 0% filler,the final set piece is kind of “huh that’s it?”
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Dec 16, 2023 03:18
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Am I the only one who's mentally pictured the murderbot protagonist as matt lucas's head on a robot body
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Dec 16, 2023 03:24
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Lex Talionis posted:Since then I have read the second Commonweal book and my general review of the series so far is that it reads like it comes from a somewhat distant alternate universe and is in dialogue with a ton of books in a fairly different fantasy genre that don't exist in our timeline. It's probably accurate to say that the Commonweal is in...idiosyncratic dialogue with a ton of books from fantasy and other genres that exist in our timeline but that we do not recognize in Graydon mirror. If you want some really weird poo poo though, read Graydon's The Human Dress. quote:This isn't a Commonweal story. This is something Past Me wrote, and referred to as The Doorstop.
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Dec 16, 2023 03:50
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Note that Murderbot uses it, not they, and this is quite intentional. It's not human and (contra popular depictions of androids wanting to "become human") does not want to be or be seen as human, and rejecting human pronouns, including they, is part of that.Antifa Poltergeist posted:Just cast a real robot,wonder what Mitt Romney is up to these days. It does end a bit abruptly, but the first four novellas are basically one complete story arc smeared across four publications, so. I ended up reading them all back to back once the fourth came out.
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Dec 16, 2023 05:04
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withak posted:They are a human-shaped android. Ty but I think I will continue with my version it makes the discourse much more interesting
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Dec 16, 2023 05:58
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Would murderbot watch the live action adaptation of a Reylo esports alternative universe fic?
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Dec 16, 2023 10:28
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mystes posted:I wonder if they're even going to seriously try or if they're just going to take the absolute barest elements of the setting/premise and throw away everything else Ding! Ding! Ding! Looks like we have a lucky winner.
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Dec 16, 2023 11:37
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Clark Nova posted:The Genderbot Diaries The Machina Monologues.
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Dec 16, 2023 11:44
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mystes posted:That sounds less like an adaptation of the murderbot books and more like burn notice in space Piqued my interest. Genderless space Michael Weston? I'd watch it.
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Dec 16, 2023 12:15
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mewse posted:I feel like any argument about what gender murderbot seems "coded" as is kinda beside the point when in the text, murderbot is explicitly genderless. They are a robot. That's why I'm slightly upset about the skarsgard announcement - I like him as an actor but he's very masculine and murderbot is genderless. I think if they're smart enough to never show his face (possible, unlikely) it could work. Skarsgard is slender enough that it could come across somewhat androgynous, especially if he's not lifting weights 24/7 during the filming.
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Dec 16, 2023 16:54
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Reading Manifold: Space by Stephen Baxter and enjoying it quite a lot, more than the first one which was overall good but had too many annoying side plots that didn't work out. About halfway through and it's an interesting take on alien life and civilization in a meta sense. Knowing Baxter it will go off the rails crazy sooner or later which I am looking forward to.
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Dec 16, 2023 16:57
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I guess my best idea for what I would want murderbot to look like would be to sort of ape the kind of ageless/distant look from Halo Forward Unto Dawn (although I think murderbot may have been described as having darker skin): 
mystes fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Dec 16, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 17:15
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So I'm on Kings of the North now - which is kinda Book 5 of The Deed of Paksenarrion. 1. The cover art is terrible, lol 2. It's shocking how much the sequel series so far just feels like a continuation of Deed. It's obvious Moon kinda gently retconned a few things after Legacy of Gird - but the style and substance feel like a legitimate continuation of the existing series, with a very similar optimistic tone and setting full of mostly decent people. If that's a good thing for you, and you enjoyed the first three, I'd recommend it. 3. Paks isn't a main character, but it's really nice whenever she shows up.
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Dec 16, 2023 17:28
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mystes posted:I guess my best idea for what I would want murderbot to look like would be to sort of ape the kind of ageless/distant look from Halo Forward Unto Dawn (although I think murderbot may have been described as having darker skin): This got me curious and I went flipping through my ebooks, and based on an (admittedly fairly cursory) search Murderbot's skin tone doesn't seem to be mentioned, although it is noted at one point to be visibly uneven due to how often parts of it get shot off and have to be regenerated. Various shades of brown skin seem to be the norm in the setting overall, though, not that I expect Apple to follow that while casting. We do know that it has (short) head hair and eyebrows (part of a shared design lineage with sexbots, although on those it's configured to grow longer), and that while it has the physical ability to grow vellus hair, that's normally disabled. Although it starts doing so after ART modifies it to be more inconspicuous. It also is not entirely covered in skin; parts of its body are entirely, visibly artificial with the skin joined to the edges of the metal or plastic or whatever covering those parts.
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Dec 16, 2023 17:52
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dwarf74 posted:3. Paks isn't a main character, but it's really nice whenever she shows up. A big part of the later books is just Paks riding around and catching up with old friends. It's awesome, just absolute comfort food after the rough time she had in the trilogy.
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Dec 16, 2023 18:13
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ToxicFrog posted:Although it starts doing so after ART modifies it to be more inconspicuous. It also is not entirely covered in skin; parts of its body are entirely, visibly artificial with the skin joined to the edges of the metal or plastic or whatever covering those parts.
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Dec 16, 2023 18:14
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mllaneza posted:A big part of the later books is just Paks riding around and catching up with old friends. It's awesome, just absolute comfort food after the rough time she had in the trilogy.  It's cool that she just shows up and makes everyone's day. It's nice when other characters in books like characters you like.
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Dec 16, 2023 18:15
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The Fifth Season (Broken Earth #1) by NK Jemisin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H25FCSQ/ We Can Build You by Philip K Dick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LVQYWG/
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Dec 16, 2023 18:26
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re: Malazan chat, humble's bringing back the bundle for it: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/steven-eriksons-malazan-book-fallen-tor-publishing-group-holiday-encore-books 1$ for book 1 10$ for books 1-4 18$ for the whole series + extra spin-off books
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Dec 16, 2023 21:12
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