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Murderbot: Fugitive Telemetry
Oops, I read this last month but just rediscovered the txt file I made with some random notes/thoughts. Presented in no particular order:
-I was so charmed by the ongoing graffiti preservation project on the station - that was such a Preservation (hah) thing to do, so it was a great bit of color. And then the station conservation stuff became useful during the rescue sequence! Just a neat bit of writing altogether.
-I was dying over the rescue bag (blorp!), it's so undignified and hilarious
-Great to have more feelings about the escaped-slave aspect of MB's story, paralleled with the refugees
-Love how Gurathin progressed directly from not trusting Murderbot won't kill them to not trusting Murderbot to keep itself alive ♥
-So happy for Murderbot not having to murder anybody this book! Which made the gutpunch of getting shot by the kids it was rescuing twice as painful, well done
-Enjoyed the translation humor and worldbuilding around language
Dang, Murderbot fandom absolutely exploded this year. Last time I really checked in on the fic situation, there were maybe a few dozen fics? ...Actually, no, let's benerdy precise about this: the last fic I recognize is from Yuletide 2019. From the publication of ASR in May 2017 to the end of 2019, there are 53 fics on AO3. From 2020, there are also exactly 53. But just in the six months of 2021 so far, there are *223 fics*. Nice! That's too few datapoints to call it exponential growth, but it sure looks like exponential growth.
I also got sidetracked doing surname research, because a) I like figuring out more of Preservation's heritage and b) I like being able to picture the characters, and Murderbot is almost totally uninterested in describing people, so we gotta take our hints where we find them
Mensah - West African; most common surname in Ghana; Martha has mentioned Viola Davis is her fancast
Bharadwaj - Indian, name of a famous sage
Volescu - probably Eastern European/Romanian, -escu is a common Romanian suffix meaning "son of"
Ratthi - probably Indian; I found it as a very rare name correlated to India here https://forebears.io/surnames/ratthi, and Martha has described him as "Sendhil Ramamurty levels of hot", so I feel comfortable with this assumption.
Pin-Lee - This is an odd one. Nothing comes up on a straight search, but presumably it's her last name from her feed ID like the others, just the only one that's hyphenated. Pin is a Khmer/Southeast Asian name, most common in Cambodia. Lee could be Korean, Chinese, or British.
Overse - I couldn't find this name anywhere, BUT: överse is the Swedish word for survey! *laughs* Overse is probably white going by the art of MB's couch leap in Home, since iirc Martha consulted with the artist about the characters, so that's my favorite theory.
Gurathin - no clue! I haven't found it as a real name in any searches. We get very little description of him (we know he's short enough to have to go on tiptoes to look over MB's shoulder, has a broad forehead, and an asshole), I lean towards him being white just based on how he goes red when Murderbot grabs him by the throat.
Arada - ???
-I was so charmed by the ongoing graffiti preservation project on the station - that was such a Preservation (hah) thing to do, so it was a great bit of color. And then the station conservation stuff became useful during the rescue sequence! Just a neat bit of writing altogether.
-I was dying over the rescue bag (blorp!), it's so undignified and hilarious
-Great to have more feelings about the escaped-slave aspect of MB's story, paralleled with the refugees
-Love how Gurathin progressed directly from not trusting Murderbot won't kill them to not trusting Murderbot to keep itself alive ♥
-So happy for Murderbot not having to murder anybody this book! Which made the gutpunch of getting shot by the kids it was rescuing twice as painful, well done
-Enjoyed the translation humor and worldbuilding around language
Dang, Murderbot fandom absolutely exploded this year. Last time I really checked in on the fic situation, there were maybe a few dozen fics? ...Actually, no, let's be
I also got sidetracked doing surname research, because a) I like figuring out more of Preservation's heritage and b) I like being able to picture the characters, and Murderbot is almost totally uninterested in describing people, so we gotta take our hints where we find them
Mensah - West African; most common surname in Ghana; Martha has mentioned Viola Davis is her fancast
Bharadwaj - Indian, name of a famous sage
Volescu - probably Eastern European/Romanian, -escu is a common Romanian suffix meaning "son of"
Ratthi - probably Indian; I found it as a very rare name correlated to India here https://forebears.io/surnames/ratthi, and Martha has described him as "Sendhil Ramamurty levels of hot", so I feel comfortable with this assumption.
Pin-Lee - This is an odd one. Nothing comes up on a straight search, but presumably it's her last name from her feed ID like the others, just the only one that's hyphenated. Pin is a Khmer/Southeast Asian name, most common in Cambodia. Lee could be Korean, Chinese, or British.
Overse - I couldn't find this name anywhere, BUT: överse is the Swedish word for survey! *laughs* Overse is probably white going by the art of MB's couch leap in Home, since iirc Martha consulted with the artist about the characters, so that's my favorite theory.
Gurathin - no clue! I haven't found it as a real name in any searches. We get very little description of him (we know he's short enough to have to go on tiptoes to look over MB's shoulder, has a broad forehead, and an asshole), I lean towards him being white just based on how he goes red when Murderbot grabs him by the throat.
Arada - ???