#<- has anyone here read RoG? It's not the best story-wise but it's worldbuilding is all kinds of tasty

[microraptorreactor]

My recent ULTRAKILL and Murderbot Diaries binged got me thinking about my poor, hilarious accident of an OC, Elysium. Elysium who was so close to both pieces of media that many of my friends gaslit themselves into thinking I had played/watched Ultrakill or Murderbot Diaries.

So it's 2021, and my DnD group is getting back together post-pandemic, this time in a digital format. We are playing a system known as Anime Campaign (the system that inspired Epithet Erased) and I was writing my second character for the game. I decided to pull from two pieces of media I had read recently. The Robots of Gotham and I, Robot.

The character I made was Elysium 12 Karma Torrent, who borrowed mostly from the world of RoG (pulling especially hard from the character Standing Mars) and parts of the concept from Little Lost Robot. Elysium (they/it) was a prototype security/military biomechanical android with an overconfident personality and a taste for human blood. Everyone ended up getting very attached to Elysium by the end of the campaign. One of Elysium's most iconic moments was when to fill a spare hour at the end of a session, our DM let Elysium battle Argluwedes, a player character who definitely should have kicked Elysium's ass, and it won against Arg thanks to some very good rolls. Just a well-loved character all around.

But here's the thing: the campaign had two players who had only met me through the group. All they knew about me/my character was that:

A. I really liked robot media.

B. Elysium was heavily inspired by something I had seen recently. (I had mentioned Elysium wasn't original at all, because again, they were basically just Standing Mars)

So one friend convinced herself I was an ULTRAKILL fan. I had never heard of the game at the time, but my character was a blood-drinking military prototype with a slim build, they/it pronouns, was constantly looking for a fight, and complete with squishy bits. You know. Like V1.

The second friend thought Elysium was supposed to be a SecUnit. This person I don't talk to anymore and I wonder if they even understood what Murderbot was about, since they thought Elysium had to be a SecUnit because it was a hyperviolent (?) security/military robot, used they/it pronouns, Had a dry sense of humor, had squishy bits, and constantly looked for a fight (?????). I didn't realize why this comparison sucked until I read Murderbot, but after this person got cut off the group formed a running joke that they couldn't read due to how bad their media literacy was.

There was so much confusion when I revealed that no, I hadn't stolen Elysium from either piece of media. But tbh I'm glad people made these guesses, I would have never gotten into either if it wasn't for this. I love my silly little murder dog that accidentally got me into ULTRAKILL.