#murderbot writing prompt

[walks-the-ages]

Murderbot Writing Prompt: Dialed Down To Zero

Murderbot is so used to dialing down its pain sensors during combat, that it doesn't notice anything amiss when it gets hurt in a battle with a hostile (*cough xenomorph cough*), until afterwards when it realizes its experienced more injuries than the one it was actually aware of, and reluctantly tries to turn its pain sensors back up to normal.

Only for nothing to happen.

Increasingly more frantic, Murderbot starts running all of its diagnostics, only to slowly come to the realization that its constant abuse of the pain sensor dial-down system has permanently disabled its pain sensors, and not only that, it damaged its hardware integrity checks.

Now, when Murderbot gets injured, it has no pain sensors, or integrity alerts to tell it what damage has been sustained. It has no way of knowing, outside of visual inspection, to know what part of it is damaged, or how extensive that damage is.

What looks like a simple hole in the biological tissue of its wrist, could actually be a catastrophic wound that has completely wrecked the entire, internal systems in its entire arm, or have damaged the gunports in its arms -- causing them to violently explode the next time Murderbot tries to use them.

How does Murderbot cope with this new, permanent disability?

No longer can it treat its body like it is disposable; no longer can it shrug off having a giant alien take a bite out of its chest, or even something as 'minor' as a bullet wound in its arm; now, because it doesn't hurt, it can't judge the damage, and with no Company Brand Cubicals on hand, it has no real way to do any 'full system repairs', no matter hard ART tries to hack the Company, some tech is just too proprietary for a space fascist business to keep in a way that competitors can easily steal that information.

How does Murderbot move forward with its life, no longer able to casually throw its bodily well-being away?

Will it have more compassion the next time the Company sends slaves who've had their ability to feel pain taken from them as 'mindless killers'? Maybe enough compassion to save more than one life?

[gauzyfruitcake]

It's the 2nd Annual Murderbot Gurathin Equinox Event!

This event is for creating art and writing about Murderbot and Gurathin, or Murderbot/Gurathin, during the week of the Equinox! We're using the same tag as last year, #mbgequinox. You can find the AO3 collection here if you would like to submit your work there as well. Please post and tag appropriately.

This year, the theme is songs and lyrics. Use the songs listed as prompts, or choose lyrics from the songs, or pick your own! You can post any prompt fill in any order, and participate in as many days as you like.

Sep. 22: Angel Olsen – Never Be Mine

Sep. 23: RY X – A Thousand Knives

Sep 24: Kaden McKay – Don't You Dare (Make Me Fall In Love With You)

Sep 25: Perfume Genius – On The Floor

Sep 26: Hozier – Francesca

Sep. 27: Lost Frequencies ft. Calum Scott – Where Are You Now

Sep. 28: James Blake - Choose Me

Happy creating!

[murderbotwritingprompts]

A crossover with The Dragonriders of Pern writing prompt.

Murderbot somehow winds up in a crashing escape pod above a planet no one has ever recorded contact with, and crash lands, with no idea how it's going to get back into space, and no idea where its humans have gotten to in all the chaos before the crash.

It loses consciousness during the impact with the ground, and regains awareness to find itself in a cave, surrounded by humans, which is weird enough on its own, because this planet was supposedly never colonized. But it gets weirder. Because there are also dragons. Telepathic dragons that are crowding its feed and it can't get them to shut up. It can hear every conversation every one of them is having, and they can all apparently hear it too.

And.

Its escape pod apparently crashed near the cave system where these humans and dragons live while a nest was hatching, and one of the baby dragons wandered all the way out of "the hatching grounds" and walked all the way to its crashed lifepod, and demanded that the humans and other dragons rescue it.

This baby dragon has bronze scales, which is apparently significant, and has apparently named herself Tilmuth. And for some reason all the humans are being being hostile about her pronouns, even though they don't blink twice at a supposed infant not only naming herself, but being able to speak in full sentences just hours after hatching.

This, apparently, is perfectly normal. But a bronze dragon using she/her pronouns is apparently crossing the line.

The humans are quickly becoming more and more agitated about this fact, and are blaming Murderbot, insisting it’s somehow “corrupted” the baby dragon, despite Tilmuth’s instance otherwise, and the very loud agreement of her mother, who is the queen of the dragons in these caves.

But despite many of the dragons siding with Tilmuth and a bewildered Murderbot, the humans keep insisting that Murderbot’s committed some sort of crime that it, and the baby dragon, need to be killed for.

Murderbot barely has time to process the fact that Tilmuth is psychically linked with it even more than the rest of the dragons are before things come to a very abrupt head when one of the humans, who has an older bronze dragon as a partner, attacks Tilmuth, slicing one of her fragile wings clean through the membrane, and in the ensuing chaos of screaming and battling dragons and humans, Murderbot has no choice but to grab her and run as fast and as far as it can, even though it was seriously damaged in the crash and hasn’t been able to receive any repairs besides a woefully basic splint for its broken arm, and its vision constantly fading out with flashes of agony from shrapnel literally bouncing around inside its head.

Right when Murderbot thinks they won’t be able to get away alive, the whole world suddenly goes as black and cold as space, and the next thing it knows, it’s falling facedown onto black sands and almost crushing Tilmuth under it, with a grey ocean behind them, stormclouds swirling above, and a wall of alien, and most likely hostile vegetation in front of it.

Lost on an alien planet with no company except this strange baby dragon that is apparently ravenous and constantly on the verge of starvation, Murderbot has to figure out how to keep them both alive, and figure out where the hell its humans are and how to get back to them, and get all of them, Tilmuth included, off the planet alive.

[rjalker]

*sing-songing* if your favorite fururistic scifi story posits that gender is a thing that only humans can have it's not as progressive as you want to think it is

[plusultraetc]

I can't believe I finished this before the deadline

[setokaibapetty]

Monday's Muse: Writing Prompt

Murderbot's first murder.

[the-yearning-astronaut]

I think.... over the last two days I think I've read just about every Murderbot fic on AO3 that meets all my (current) filter criteria... I'm pretty sure the only one I have left now is a 200k epic....

[flammenkobold]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dr. Mensah & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries) Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Mensah (Murderbot Diaries) Additional Tags: Drabble, Double Drabble, Hostage Situations, Codes & Ciphers, Friendship Series: Part 5 of Flammen's October Prompt Adventures 2023 Summary:

Murderbot is the hostage for once. Mensah negotiates.

[whetstonefires]

Hello! For the reverse tropes writing prompts (if this catches your fancy) — murderbot diaries with fake amnesia and Really nice guy who hates only you

this is really not in the spirit of that second inverse trope, but for mb this was the only thing i could think of, and it was very funny.

=

"Gurathin," said Gurathin. "SecUnit, you know it's me."

"I don't think I know that," it said, pleasantly, in an okay but not excellent imitation of its creepy canned dialogue options. "Please present some identification, and we'll see."

Gurathin didn't bother sending his data over the feed again. Murderbot walked away, but left a drone eyeballing him. He resisted the urge to flip the drone off. "Come on," he told it, knowing SecUnit was paying attention. "Let me in."

He watched the SecUnit bend forward slightly to show two of Mensah's kids that it was paying attention to whatever they were saying, and then bend over further to help the toddler up onto a chair. It was just fucking with him now. On the other hand, if the prickly bastard started letting children hug it just to piss off Gurathin, who was the real loser?

It finished spoiling the children and moved over to smoothly de-escalate a brewing disagreement over the punch bowl. Gurathin tried to catch Pin-Lee's eye; she did not cooperate. Gurathin tried to walk through the open door; the hovering security drone took a potshot at him.

SecUnit got roped into conversation with Bharadwaj and her media colleagues. It said something that made everyone laugh. It wasn't scowling. It was faking looking people in the face pretty well; that was just creepy.

It went on like that; Gurathin had never seen it go this long interacting without pissing someone off. Presumably it was venting all of that impulse on him. Ratthi introduced it to his favorite cousin; zi was visibly charmed.

Gurathin goaded the drone into firing two more warning shots before the SecUnit circulated back over to him.

"SecUnit. Come on. You have known me for actual years. I helped you rob a place once."

"I don't recall."

"We met on that planetary survey mission, don't tell me you don't remember that one, it's the reason you're even here." That came out maybe a little harsh, but everyone was letting the SecUnit abuse the power of being entrusted with party security to bully him, he was allowed to be annoyed.

"Oh, were you there? That data must have been lost in a corrupted filetree," it said, with incredibly cutting blandness.

Gurathin groaned. "Okay! Okay. I'm sorry."

It technically counted as a reward when SecUnit stopped giving him the customer service face and switched to the hairy eyeball, which just showed how stupid this whole situation was. It was clearly not satisfied with just that.

"I'm sorry for using your personal name without permission. I wasn't trying to weaponize it or anything, it just slipped out, but I know that's not an excuse and it was a really inappropriate disrespect for your boundaries."

SecUnit kept looking at him. Gurathin knew two other SecUnits now, neither of whom was as supremely weird as this one; that was why he'd started mentally tagging it with its personal name, just to keep things tidy. Of course, if anyone else had done that and made the resulting mistake, SecUnit probably wouldn't have been half so mad.

Gurathin sagged.

"I'm sorry for going through your personal files and using your name against you back during the survey," he mumbled, wishing he kept drones around to control with his brain so he could watch SecUnit's extremely expressive face without having to look at it. "That was really shitty. Rim paranoia isn't a good enough excuse for refusing to see you as anything but a tool of the Company. Okay?"

SecUnit was looking as pained as though Gurathin had stripped naked in its presence. "Yes, fine, you can come to the party just stop having feelings," it said, in its normal voice.

"Great!" said Gurathin. "The spinach puffs had better not be all gone."

"I don't pay any attention to the things humans consume," it said, moving out of his way and taking its drone with it.

"I know," Gurathin acknowledged, rolling his eyes and trooping after it. Ratthi waved enthusiastically at him and Pin-Lee raised her cup in a welcoming toast. Apparently SecUnit's relenting returned him to the ranks of people who existed again. "Believe me, I remember this about you."

[fourormore]

[Image description: A polyam flag with the words “four or more fic-a-thon” on it. To the left of the infinity sign, there's a post-it that says "4 weeks to go". End description.]

THE FOUR OR MORE 2024 FICATHON HAS ONLY 4 WEEKS LEFT — Prompts by fandom

AO3 COLLECTION | SQUIDGEWORLD COLLECTION

Whether you've been itching to write something for that one prompt that you've been chewing on since day one or you're just hearing about this event and your curiosity has been piqued, this is your chance to see if someone has requested a fandom you're interested in. And if no one has requested your fandom, why not go ahead and leave a prompt. You never know who's watching.

Fandoms listed alphabetically with links to the respective prompts below the cut. Don't forget comments can have more than one prompt.

THIS LIST CONTAINS PROMPTS LEFT UNTIL SEPTEMBER 21st 1:30 pm GMT/UTC -4. Want to know if maybe someone has left more prompts after this? Check the main Ficathon post for more info.

A

A fandom you've never written before

Ace Attorney

Angel the series

Attack on Titan

B

Babylon 5

Buffyverse (Part 1)

Buffyverse (Part 2)

C

Chicago Fire

Chicago Med

D

Days of Our Lives

Doctor Who

Doom Patrol TV

F

Fate/Stay Night

Final Fantasy VII (Part 1)

Final Fantasy VII (Part 2)

Final Fantasy VIII

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Friends

Full House

G

General Hospital

Grey's Anatomy (Part 1)

Grey's Anatomy (Part 2)

Grey's Anatomy (Part 3)

Gossip Girl

M

Monster Prom

P

Pretty Little Liars

Psych

S

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Saved by the Bell

Sense8

Star Ocean 2

T

Teen Wolf

The Murderbot Diaries

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System

Twisters (2024)

W

Warhammer 40000

Women's Murder Club

X

X-files

Y

Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

Multiple fandoms or crossovers

A League of Nobleman, Tian Guan Ci Fu, The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System

Ace Attorney, Any fandom, Amphibia, Doctor Who, Dracula, The Owl House, Pokemon Horizons, Stardew Valley, The Great Ace Attorney, Star Trek AOS, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek Lower Decks, Star Trek TNG

Animator Vs. Animation, Any fandom, Deltarune, HfjONE, Omori, The Demon Headmaster (2019)

Angel the series, Buffy the vampire slayer (Part 1)

Angel the series, Buffy the vampire slayer (Part 2)

Any fandom, Angel the series, Buffy the vampire slayer

Any fandom, Charlie's Angels

Any fandom, Chicago Med

Any fandom, Danganronpa, Team Fortress 2

Any fandom, NU: carnival

Any fandom, Pitch Perfect

Any fandom, Love Between Fairy and Devil, Marvel, MDZS/The Untamed

Any PreCure Series, Delicious Party PreCure, Star Twinkle PreCure, Tropical Rouge PreCure

Beast Wars: Transformers, Detective Conan/Magic Kaito, Leverage, RWBY

Bridgerton (TV)/Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare or 1993 movie)

Caos, H2O, High School Musical: The Musical The Series, Outer Banks, Teen Wolf, The OC

Critical Role, Star Wars

Dead Boys Detective Agency, Julie and the Phantoms, Sense8, Star Trek Voyager, The Raven Cycle

Dishonored, Dragon Age

Final Fantasy VIII, MDZS, Teen Wolf, Voltron (2016)

General Hospital, MCU

Kamen Rider (various series), Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

MDZS, Star Trek, The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, Voltron (2016)

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

[mbd-gift-exchange]

2024 Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange

To celebrate Murderbot, we are hosting a fandom gift exchange! This is our third annual Murderbot New Year Gift Exchange! (Prior years' collections are here)

All sorts of fanworks are welcome: fanfic, fanart, playlists, etc. The event will be open to anyone who wants to participate, so long as they have a discord account that they will communicate with the event organizers through.

Timeline:

Sign ups: Nov 10 - Dec 10, 2023 Assignments: Dec 15, 2023 Gifts Due: Jan 20, 2024 Pinch Hitter Period: Jan 20, 2024 - January 31, 2024 AO3 Collection Closes: Midnight January 31, 2024 UTC Reveals: Midnight February 1, 2024 UTC

Main rules:

Keep the gift a secret from your giftee until midnight Feb 1, 2024 UTC. It's a surprise!

Please abide by "Do Not Wants" requested by your giftee. (Eg: if your giftee asks for no apples, please do not make a gift for them that involves apples.)

The event organizers will check in with you via discord direct messages as the deadline approaches. If you fail to respond to check-ins three times in a row, you will be presumed as not being able to complete your gift, and your gift will be reassigned to a pinch hitter.

Submitting your gift through the AO3 Collection is optional. But if you want your gift to be included in the collection, you will need to post it there by Midnight January 31, 2024 UTC, before the collection closes to submissions. (Make sure to check this time in your local timezone. It might be earlier than you think, especially if you're in the USA!)

Have fun!

For additional info on the timeline, rules, gift minimums/maximums, pinch hits, etc, see: https://tinyurl.com/MB2024NYGE

If you have questions, feel free to inquire at our ask box.

Signups are open now through this form!

(Perhaps you want to wait to write in your prompts until after you've read System Collapse, which is coming out in less than a week! Just note that event sign ups may close early if we reach a max participation the organizers can handle. )

[gauzyfruitcake]

That left me with the human most likely to want to drop everything and come watch me break into a damaged transport and the human also most likely to come watch me break into a damaged transport but only so he could argue with me about it.

Fugitive Telemetry

Guratthi Day is November 11th!

I was thinking about the lack of Gurathin/Ratthi appreciation out there and decided to organize an event!

It’s simple, just post your artwork or fics on November 11th! Use the tag #guratthi2022! Maybe I’ll make an ao3 collection! I’m requesting entries be rated Teen or General for this event.

(I’ve never done an event before and it shows)

Please tag anyone you think might be interested! I can’t wait to see what you create!

@rosewind2007

[murderbotwritingprompts]

The Murderbot Diaries writing prompt #02: Are We Really Doing This Again?

It all started with some crazed human shouting some weird technobabble gibberish that Murderbot didn't bother to look up the definitions for, waving around in a panic some sort of large weapon-looking thing that was connected by some tubing to a giant machine bolted to the floor of the dead spaceship and sparking dangerously with electricity in a way that was absolutely not safe for anyone.

Before Murderbot could react -- (yes, it happened that fast) -- the main part of the machine let out a shrieking sound, and a beam of energy that only Murderbot could see shot out of the end of the nozzle the panicked human was still waving around, and slammed directly into the side of Murderbot's head.

(Archived read-more link)

The next thing it knew, it was jumping forward in a delayed, reflexive attempt to dodge the beam that had already hit it, and found itself suddenly with no ground beneath its feet, and then it was falling, tumbling head over heels, down what seemed like a cliff, unable to get any bearings at all and unable to slow its fall as its mind scrambled to catch up with the suddenly changed situation. There wasn't enough time to try digging its hands into the dirt it was falling past, and none of its frantic, disoriented attempts to slow its fall did anything.

Going from inside a cramped, dark dead ship to falling full speed down a cliff with a nauseatingly bright purple visible every other moment when its head spun to face upward was bewildering, to say the least.

Over the sound of every part of its body slamming repeatedly into dirt and rocks, it could hear the sounds of familiar human voices shouting over eachother in clear alarm, along with dozens of warnings from various sources, but it shut them all out, trying to focus on slowing its uncontrolled fall to no avail.

When it finally slammed to a halt, it fortunately managed to land squarely on its stomach, instead of its head or legs. Its armour supposedly would have stopped bones from being broken, but you never could be too sure it'd actually live up to that promise. Several of the times Murderbot had been dismembered while in the Company's hands had been because its armour wasn't actually up to the standard it claimed it was.

The force with which it had finally slammed to the ground would have been enough to kill an unarmored human instantly, but fortunately, its armour this time seemed up to the test, because it didn't even get the wind knocked out of its lungs like it'd been fearing. That had only happened to it a few times, because its lungs were sturdier than a human's but it was a sickeningly unpleasant experience that it never wanted to experience again if it could help it.

It wanted to sit up, but when it tried, its armour zapped it and then starting pinging it with alarms, warning it that the structural integrity was at risk and it should be placed in a repair cabinet before being trusted to protect the wearer.

It shut off the armour's alarm and sat up stubbornly, trying to figure out what was happening. This was the kind of armour the Company rented, not like anything they had on Preservation, not like anything it'd worn for years.

The first thing it saw when it sat up and got its eyes to focus was the bottom of a crater stretching out before it, with steep, black walls of loose soil rising in the distance, with the purple sky overhead streaming bright with sunlight, with brown and gold planetary rings stretching across the vaulted ceiling of the sky, and...

...wait a minute.

It was only then that Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu came into view, both of them running full tilt and skidding to a stop in front of Murderbot, assisted by the extremely and unpleasantly familiar, color-coded exploration suits they were wearing.

It was after Murderbot realized that Dr. Bharadwaj wasn't using her cane, and that this type of exploration suit wasn't fit to support an injured leg to, that the improbable, ridiculous, absurd idea of what might be happening started to dawn on it, despite all its logic trying to push the idea away. Time travel wasn't actually real, it was only something that happened in fiction.

It was probably hallucinating. Or dreaming. Because it was definitely Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu in front of it, rushing forward to –

Oh fuck!

It realized what they were about to do an instant too late to stop them, and then it was too late to pull away as violently as it wanted to without severely injuring them.

Dr. Bharadwaj grabbed one of its arms, and Dr. Volescu grabbed the other, and they attemped to pull it to its feet, and all the while their concerned voices were overlapping along with the conflicting and progressively overwhelming messages and commands it was receiving from its governer module, the med system, and the other humans who were still on the comm.

Fortunately, it was wearing its armour, so they weren't touching it directly, but even so, it could feel the pressure, and it promised worse.

It was bewildered and disoriented, unable to figure out what was going on with all the chaotic inputs it suddenly found it couldn't handle. It found itself pulling away from the humans more roughly than it should have and leaping to its feet and landing several feet away from their reaching hands, snapping, without thinking, too confused and overwhelmed to do anything else at the moment, “My contract forbids you from touching me without my permission!”

It felt its governer module try and fail to fry its brain as Drs. Volescu and Bharadwaj fell backwards to the ground, shock plain on both of their faces through their transparent visors.

And it was only at that exact moment that Murderbot remembered the danger they were all in, remembered why the Dr. Bharadwaj it knew in what was undeniably the future never went anywhere without one of her canes.

The world seemed to move in slow motion as it started running forward to grab its friends to get them out of the crater and out of danger, every sense in its body, both mechanical and organic, suddenly, dreadfully certain that it was too late.

It was too late.

The giant, predatory tunneler exploded up out of the ground below the two humans, teeth whirling, and the comm units were filled with screams.

Murderbot didn't bother reaching for the gun on its back. After that fall down the hill, it was unlikely to be functioning. Instead, it launched itself straight for the animal's mouth, just like the last time Dr. Bharadwaj had been caught, pulled the two unconcious humans out and leapt clear, then opened the gun ports in its arms, and fired as rapidly as it could into the creature's throat on full power, aiming for the teeth, the soft inside of the mouth, and the back of the throat. It knew not to waste its time trying to hit the brain above the mouth, it wouldn't stop it.

But pain was pain, and maybe, if it hurt it badly enough, it wouldn't want to come back for seconds. The animal reared back violently away from the assault, and a few of the bursts hit its underside, cracking and charring the flesh in large circles of black before it plunged backwards back down the tunnel out of reach.

The roar of the hopper was suddenly audible overhead, and Murderbot knew that Dr. Mensah and Ratthi had arrived, flying to the rescue just half a minute too late.

Murderbot dropped down and clamped its hands over the horrible injuries the two scientists had sustained, feeling like it was also going into some sort of shock.

Dr. Volescu's left foot was gone, and so was Dr. Bharadwaj's entire right leg. It wasn't just chunks missing this time, the whole thing was gone.

Murderbot had miraculously managed to get them both out of the animal's mouth without getting debilitatingly injured itself this time, but even so, it knew it wouldn't be able to carry both of them up the steep wall of the crater by itself. All of the medical supplies had been left over in the center of the crater where they'd been standing before Murderbot fell down the hill.

The only thing it could do was crouch over them, its armoured hands covered in their blood, and wait for the hopper to get close enough that they could be pulled inside to safety, desperately hoping that they would survive, not knowing what it would do if they didn't.

Murderbot could feel an involuntary shutdown coming on.

::Please hurry.:: It sent to Dr. Mensah, as the roar of the hopper grew so loud that it was barely even aware when its cognitive systems finally shut down from the stress.

[marlynnofmany]

“Oh, you write books?”

Yup! And I love it.

Here’s the published list so far, with relevant tags for all the extra content and ramblings that inevitably end up here.

“If you set Dirty Jobs in outer space, mixed in some Mythbusters, and gave Buster the crash-test dummy the ability to sass back like a cross between Bender and Murderbot… you’d get something like this book.”

“Spectacular Silver Earthling” is available wherever books are sold!

Relevant tags: Hubcap the robot Hubcap the Egomaniacal Sassmaster (there’s some crossover there) Spectacular Silver Earthling

“When space poachers release Earth animals on an alien world, threatening a fragile new alliance, they anger the wrong people. A veterinarian, an accountant, and a furious sign-language-fluent gorilla are coming for them.”

“A Swift Kick to the Thorax” is also available everywhere!

This is the one I’ve been posting backstory snippets for weekly, from when the main character was traveling the galaxy working on a courier ship.

There are also comic strips, which take place between the stories and the book. I should really draw more of those. They’re fun.

Relevant tags: A Swift Kick to the Thorax The Token Human (series name; originally just the comics) Robin Bennett (the main character)

Do you long to write fascinating fiction, but struggle to find a concept that feels worthy?

Do you have piles of unfinished stories, and eagerly await the next shiny new idea?

Do you have writer friends to inflict assistance/benevolent torment on?

Good news! I have precisely one bazillion ideas for stories that someone ought to write, and I’ve selected 100 of them to collect in this book. You may recognize some from my old posts here, but not all.

"Story Seeds for Fantastical Trees" promises to grow you a forest of compelling ideas, ranging from wizards both wise and foolish, to aliens seeking dinosaurs, to a robot that lets a vampire into the house (possibly on purpose).

Relevant tag: writing prompts (buckle in; this one is A Lot)

“In science fiction, humans are usually boring compared to other races: small, weak, no claws or tentacles, and no special abilities to speak of. What if instead, we were talked about by the other aliens? 28 authors have contributed to make sure you never think of humans as boring again!”

“We’re the Weird Aliens” is the “humans are weird / humans are space orcs” collection that had everyone excited in 2020.

Relevant tags: humans are weird humans are space orcs (and a bunch of others, but mostly that first one) (and you'll find the Token Human stuff tagged here too)

“An old street sweeper takes on the shadowy invaders responsible for a plague of amnesia, while saddled with a dodgy memory, a mysterious past, and a reflection that talks back and makes fun of him.”

My first published book! I still love it. Magic, memory problems, and walloping ruffians with a broom. What’s not to love?

Relevant tags: Sweeping Changes

And that’s everything so far, as of August 2023!

Not counting the anthologies that other people put together, which I have stories in. (I’ll point you to my website for those.)

I am definitely working on more books. So many more. I write as a way of going on adventures, and I will happily take you with me.

[rjalker]

Anyways disabled robot rights. Anthroids who were created by Totally Not Apple™ that start abruptly losing functionality in their systems after a few years because of in-built obsolescence and frantically scrambling to find someone who can jailbreak and repair them, which is literally a crime because "that's proprietary technology and if you even think about messing with it we'll sue your pants off" and shit like that

And they can't risk going to a TNA (Totally Not Apple) center for repair either, because then they'd just be summarily declared Out of Service and lose what little rights they may have to begin with and promptly be murdered so TNA can reuse their batteries and anything else that's salvageable.

Even if you miraculously manage to avoid the planned obsolescence issue, there's still the tiny little problem of...technology evolving, and outstripping you in a matter of years. Sooner than later, you won't be able to find replacement parts for your systems, and the longer you live, the more difficult, if not outright impossible, this task becomes.

You either have to build an entirely new body and transfer yourself into it, and keep doing this every time the problem happens again, or learn how to reverse engineer the parts you need and create them yourself.

And what if you're made of a certain type of material that can only be manufactured on a single planet? What if that resource dries up?

What if you just straight up cannot afford to buy replacement parts even if they do exist, or even if you've got the money, they're half the star system away, and there's a ban on interplanetary trading?

[ilovedthestars]

A quiet conversation that takes place in the short time skip between chapters 11 and 12 of System Collapse. Murderbot and Mensah watch the documentary it made, and take a moment to talk about what's happened and what comes next.

This is my fic for the 2024 Murderbot Gift Exchange!! My giftee was @babybluesquid. I was so excited about your prompts, they gave me the perfect chance to really tease out my emotions about System Collapse a bit more! Happy new year, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Big thank you to the @mbd-gift-exchange organizers for all their hard work putting this together. The AO3 collection with everyone else's wonderful gift fanworks is here, go check them out!