I’ve written about it again and again and again and again, but what makes the Murderbot Diaries so special is how compassionate it is. It is a series that is essentially about growth and healing from trauma, about someone who has been hurt and abused all its life having its pain recognized by the narrative and being allowed to learn, over and over, that when it is ready to reach out it will find that there are still kind people in the world who will answer that need with care.
There are thousands of other, crueller, more callous stories out there that will tell us the complete opposite. That no one can be trusted, that everyone will fail and disappoint you, that you’re on your own, that the world is full of selfish, short-sighted, small-minded people who care only about themselves, and that you must become equally selfish, short-sighted, and small-minded to survive. Some of these stories are the very real experiences we accrue in real life. In stories like these, no one ever helps you– if they do, it’s incompetent and useless, or going to cost you something you can’t afford to pay. In stories like these, you’ll only fall if you try to lean on others. You must reject them instead, and one day you’ll fall anyway.
But that’s a miserable way to live. None of us are born alone, and none of us are fit to survive alone, and none of us can live without each other. And even at its most cynical and anti-social, Murderbot lives this truth. It rejects the senseless vengeance of the mass murder spree, it finds context for its emotions in the stories of media, it reaches out–wherever possible–to help those it can help, trying earnestly to do its best by others. And in doing so, it finds itself surrounded by genuine friends and allies it can rely on. Humans, bots, other constructs–whole communities of people who will never abandon it as easily as it fears.
It’s so important to have stories as compassionate, as real, and as true as the Murderbot Diaries- so that when real kindness is offered to us with an outstretched hand, we can recognize the evidence of our eyes, and trust enough to reach back and take that offered hand. And one day, to be healed enough to offer that hand to others in their turn.
