⎋ the murderbot diaries is about recovery. it's about violence, being violent, having a past that is violent and haunts you and is what named you and is what led you to choose this future. it's about being inbetween two discrete categories and refusing to fit yourself into either of them. it's about not knowing what to do once you're free of a horrible system. it's about trust and lack thereof (mostly the latter). it's about choosing to be better.
it makes me go fucking crazy. it's queer sci fi with such a diverse cast and it's great!!!
murderbot's name is one of the first things that makes me go insane. it's an epithet. it's insulting. it's personal. it's an epitaph. it chose that name for itself!
it's not insane to say that it might have been called this in a derogatory fashion, considering how it refers to comfortunits as 'sexbots' several times in canon. it also refers to other SecUnits as 'murderbots' (no capital letter) which is nuts. it has internalised so much about how violent it is meant to be!
it was partially responsible for the murder of 57 people in a mining installation (though for several years believes itself to be the sole perpetrator). destroying its governor module in response to that, to avoid it happening again (though it's unsure of the order of events for a long time), and yet still calling itself murderbot...
its sense of privacy over its name and anger at how it's shared in ASR (first book) is fascinating! but it makes sense. this is one of the few things it could hide, that was its own to keep, other than all the media watching. violating that.... it's a lot to lose.
secunit's beliefs about other bots / units are also interesting. it seems to fundamentally believe that it can't trust bots because humans could order them to betray secunit (how universally this applies in the second book is debatable, but it's still present throughout the series), even in the absence of humans. murderbot struggles a lot with this, but there is also a very real risk that leaving information behind about itself may later harm it. the corporation rim is dangerous.