Chapter Text
As usual with my metas like this one (see previous works such as my chairs meta:
Murderbot and its complex and often violent relationship with chairs
and my Murderbot as a proper name meta:
Murderbot: Etymon)
I have just gone through the books looking at the use of the word, in this case laugh.
This meta can be seen as a companion piece to my meta on love in The Murderbot Diaries:
As with love, there aren’t a lot of laughs in the diaires: thirteen (13) to be exact.
All Systems Red:
No (0) laughs (two slaughters)
Artificial Condition:
No (0) laughs
Rogue Protocol:
Two (2) laughs
She laughed and her dark eyes crinkled. “We’re finally going, Miki!”
Don Abene, being lovely with Miki. A genuine affectionate laugh here, though not uncomplicated as it is Murderbot watching Miki interact with its humans—something it often finds somewhat emotionally fraught (see chairs).
“I’m excited!” Miki echoed. “We will do a good assessment, and then we can have a new assignment.”
Ejiro laughed. “I hope it’s that easy.”
More Miki associated gaiety, Ejiro laughing here (possibly slightly ruefully).
Exit Strategy:
Three (3) laughs (and a slaughter)
Ratthi walking when he was tired after a long day, absorbed in a conversation as he walked with Arada and Overse, laughing and pretending to defend himself as Pin-Lee threw a cushion at him, running as we frantically loaded a hopper to escape.
Ratthi possibly being a little flirty with Pin-Lee here, is this a memory of the survey from All Systems Red (and perhaps a call back to Murderbot’s initial assessment of the PresAux relationships: “ Ratthi had an unrequited thing for Pin-Lee, but didn’t act stupid about it.”)?
I stepped out of the pod into dark purple clouds, lightning, simulated rain, and the startled yelps and laughter of the waiting passengers.
Yelps and laughter—during Murderbot’s dramatic manipulation of the artificial thunderstorm. This is genuine human laughter, this time associated with surprise and wonder.
She started to laugh, then her face did something complicated and she hugged me.
Mensah being lovely with Murderbot, but only starting to laugh…she is reacting to:
But I was the only one here, so I braced myself and made the ultimate sacrifice. “Uh, you can hug me if you need to.”
Oh Murderbot, “the ultimate sacrifice”—trying to imagine the look on its face I can see why Mensah almost laughed (but didn’t, because she is lovely and Murderbot is being so sweet here).
Fugitive Telemetry:
No (0) laughs
Network Effect:
Eight (8) laughs (but given its greater length the density is comparable to the novellas) and two (2) slaughters
He led her into the darkened house, and she stumbled on a low table. She giggled and he laughed. Sounding way more intoxicated than he actually was, he said, "Wait, I got it," and tapped the house's feed to turn on the lights.
It’s the horrible Marne, pretending to be intoxicated with Amena. So this is a false laugh, a deceptive laugh.
It also sounded vaguely like the break-up part of the romance scenes on the shows I watched, most of which I usually skimmed over. I said, "It's not me, it's you."
She huffed a laugh.
Mensah being lovely with Murderbot—again. And again she’s laughing over the way it deals with what are complex emotions. These scenes with Mensah are endearingly funny; these are affectionate, kind laughs.
"Poor thing was dead," Unidentified Two = Target Two responded, and laughed.
Poor thing. I think a capillary just burst inside one of my organic parts.
Target Two is going to regret calling Murderbot a “poor thing”. This is a truly malicious laugh from Target Two, mocking and demeaning.
Target Two's gray face went surprised, then furious. It was kind of funny. This was a point where if I was a human (ick) I might have laughed. I decided to go with my first inclination and kill the shit out of some ass-faced hostiles instead. I told the Targets,
"Angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?"
What did I say? About Target Two regretting those words? Murderbot saying that if it were human it might laugh—here associating laughter with humans, and with a very sort of cruel laughter. This reflects the way the Target had just laughed.
This passage (“if I was a human”) suggests that constructs don’t or even can’t laugh? It would be surprising if they couldn’t, given their anatomical resemblance to humans. Though, as can be seen, there’s no evidence of Murderbot ever laughing.
Eletra shoved her hair back and looked exhausted. "They did something that knocked us unconscious in the shuttle.
One moment we were there, the next we were lying on the deck in this ship, and those gray people were laughing at us. I don't know what happened to the others."
More cruel laughter from the Targets (gray people).
If I sound calm, I was actually not calm. I thought I'd had control of the situation (sort of control, okay? don't laugh) and then it had unraveled rapidly.
Please don’t laugh at Murderbot, it’s really not a good idea (Ras has just shot it at this point so it’s not feeling its best anyway). This is one of Murderbot’s fourth wall breaking moments where it addresses us, the readers. And it’s telling us (humans?) not to laugh.
ART would have laughed at an attack like that. (Actually, ART would have laughed at the part where it sent back a code bundle that would have eaten my face.)
Murderbot thinking of ART laughing—which is nice…sort of? Code bundles which eat your face probably aren’t actually nice at all. This laughter could be more metaphorical (yeah, like Murderbot I may not mean exactly that word) than actual. If you laugh at an attack you may not literally laugh. Do bots like ART even laugh? You’d think that if one was going to do a full on “villain of a long-running mythic adventure serial” voice you’d want to have be able to laugh at least occasionally?
Also worth noting is that at this point Murderbot still thinks ART is dead (sob).
So there we have it, 13 laughs.
All the actual laughs are from humans (the Targets are human, despite their gray skin and pointy teeth). Murderbot thinks of times it might laugh if it were human; and where ART might laugh—but there is no evidence that Murderbot or ART actually can. Also, these laughs would be cruel rather than warm: Murderbot about to take revenge and imagining ART on the attack too.
Regarding bots and laughter, in Fugitive Telemetry the bots send amusement sigils to each other (much to Murderbot’s disgust, but it doesn’t like the private joke about JollyBaby’s name).
Though please note: this is meta is about literal laughs, any chuckles, sniggers, giggles, guffaws and chortles will have been missed.
So there they are, the very few literal laughs in the very funny Murderbot Diaries. Much of the laughter referred to in Network Effect is cruel, and all the actual laughter comes from humans.
All the errors in this work are my own, and I am always delighted to have comments (and will acknowledge any corrections or interesting points made in edits!).