#murderbot/gurathin

[rosewind2007]

Yesterday a milestone was hit as the Murderbot/Gurathin, MB/G, Murderathin ship reached:

100 fics on AO3!

I really feel I should let off some fireworks—but instead here’s a sparkler drawing a heart ❤️, actually rather on-brand for the pair

For the record the first ever MB/G fic was the AMAZING The Long Emergency, published 7th March 2021 which makes it a gap of 1,200 days between that and Security, published 19th June 2024

My first MB/G fic was Unreciprocated, in which Murderbot and Gurathin are never in the same room…and my most recent fic is Top Ten Signs They’re Secretly Into You in which they are also never in the same room!

Nice to see some things don’t change!

Anyway—happy summer solstice if you’re in the northern hemisphere, winter solstice if you’re in the southern! Which is very Murderathin in vibe…

🪨☀️🪨

[rosewind2007]

Hahahhahahahhahahaha!!!

Too late for me!

Ahahahahahahha…

(Oh how I love them)

thinking "haha what if i jokingly shipped them" is your last chance to get out btw

[oposssumsaucee]

Listen All Systems Red is so so funny from Gurathins perspective imagine you grew up with Space Socialism and was hired to go help some pal with science but you weren't allowed to go unless you rented AmaTeslas Torment Nexus Alexa Dot and then when you get there you find out a whole continent of people got annihilated by their Tourment Nexus rentals so you take a moment to check yours quickly and find out it already had disengaged its Don't Kill People box, the only thing you've ever been told prevented them from mass homiciding their clients, something that LITERALLY just happened to people you knew a day ago, and when you say to your fellow socialist doctors HEY I think our Tourment Nexus is fucked up and it's files said it killed dozens of people barely a year ago and we should probably get the hell away from it the same doctors are like look at what you're saying. You're hurting the Tourment Nexus' feelings. The Tourment Nexus is just a little construct who likes Netflix Gurathin stop antagonizing it on the plane ride.

[fascinatedfinch]

Murderbot September day 3: (Alternative prompt) “I don’t like you.” / “I know.”

[cross-d-a]

I truly absolutely ADORE how in Fugitive Telemetry Ratthi and Gurathin are just like- Murderbot’s bestie sidekicks who are so ready and willing to back it up and help kick ass and investigate a murder and worry all over Murderbot and then just like— go chill and grab lunch while Murderbot is Dealing With Things and also maybe possibly getting into some harrowing trouble and that moment where Murderbot calls them and is like HELP ME and Ratthi is so started he knocks his fucking chair over and Gurathin spills his drink and they help and then Murderbot is just like can’t talk now bye and then fucks off without explaining anything or if it’s okay like- I love them soooooo baddddddd plsssss

[homosekularnost]

(murderbot from exit strategy voice) time to go meet my friends, pin-lee who is tough and cool and competent and also the other useless two

[gafurtle]

Gurathin, Murderbot, and Personhood

I was really struck by the exchange between Gurathin & Ratthi in All Systems Red, which went something like this:

Ratthi: You have to think of it as a person! Gurathin: I do think of it as a person. An angry, heavily armed person who has no reason to trust us.

And for the first book, Gurathin's attitude toward personhood really sets him off from the rest of the survey team. As soon as the others clock that Murderbot is a person, they immediately want to treat it like a human: inviting it to the crew quarters, having it ride in the crew portion of the shuttle, getting it to open up about its feelings...and they also assume that Murderbot desperately needs help and understanding, and that it must want to be treated like a human among other, kind humans. This script--which turns out to be not accurate for what Murderbot actually wants or needs--is part of why Murderbot takes off as soon as it can, and why Pin Lee and Mensah and the others are very ready to apologize and renegotiate their attitudes toward Murderbot when they meet again in Exit Strategy. "It's not like we don't know we messed up," as Pin Lee says.

So that's the rest of the team, but Gurathin is immediately different. Unlike the others, he doesn't assume that Murderbot wants to be embraced as a human by humanity. In fact, Gurathin goes the other direction and seems to think, "Well, if *I* had been continually abused and enslaved by humans and then managed to free myself, I think I would want to kill and hurt humans in turn, and I don't see why I would want to be snuggly friends with the first humans to not be horrible toward me." And so he keeps trying to needle Murderbot into revealing its "true" colors, and at one point point-blank asks Murderbot if it blames all humans for what happened to it.

The "kill all humans" script is also not accurate for Murderbot, of course, no more than the "Murderbot wants to cuddle with humans" script that the rest of the Survey Team is following is. But I appreciate that Gurathin does not equate personhood with "being just like us," and that he is cautious about Murderbot's potential for mass murder not because "that's just how SecUnits are," but because Gurathin thinks that's how a person might react to what Murderbot went through.

And while I'm on the Gurathin appreciation train, I also quite like a character who is kind but not nice, which I think sums him up pretty well. He is kind--like, he takes shifts watching over Murderbot when it needs to rebuild its memory, he stays around in Fugitive Telemetry when he knows Murderbot is going to be questioned by the police. As he himself puts it, "I'm not your enemy; I'm just cautious." At the same time, Gurathin isn't nice; while everyone else is trying to give Murderbot space & time, and very deliberately NOT asking it things lest it feel pressured or compelled to answer, Gurathin is out there being like, "Okay, but were you punished for the whole mass murder thing? Do you hate humans? What WERE you doing after you left?" [Contrast Pin Lee who very deliberately told Muderbot that it didn't need to tell her that.] I appreciate that Gurathin never treats Murderbot with kid gloves (and, for all Murderbot says Gurathin is an asshole, Gurathin is also never actually cruel toward Murderbot or else we as readers would not like him at all).

In the end, I think there's something innately affirming about the way Gurathin looks at Murderbot and thinks, "Yup. That's a person. And that doesn't mean we're going to like each other."

[sporadicartcomputer]

uh hi. i wanted to illustrate one of the introductary scenes for SecUnit's character, since that would go along well with this being kind of my first post here. i... think that makes some sense. i promise more Murderbot diaries fanart after this (calling it content feels icky)). (did I start overusing brackets becouse of these books? possibly).

and i hope i captured SecUnit freaking out while trying to keep its composure at the same time well. as weird as it sounds, i like seeing depictions of it being nervous, becouse this side of it is what got me to relate to it so much in the first place (besides the heavily implied neurodivergence. though i guess the two go hand in hand). examples: in the second panel of the second page i tried showing how Gurathin's words affected it by making the speech bubbles visually "choke" (?) it, though it kept its face straight. oh, and i made it look much shorter than it actually is to mirror the way it is feeling!! figuring out details like that was pretty fun

(i'm sorry for any inconsistencies and the messy colouring and linework, i have ADHD and i get incredibly bored when i spend time trying to make everything "perfect" and looking the same in each panel... )

[broken-risk-assessment-module]

[wheels out a messy conspiracy board] the pillars of being a himbo are being attractive, kind, and stupid. ratthi is often jokingly characterised as a himbo but he lacks the key trait of stupidity - he is naive sometimes, and his optimism and ability to see the best in people can be confused for stupidity, but he is not, actually, stupid. now gurathin, he is not conventionally stupid, but does display heightened dumbass tendencies in certain situations, such as thinking hubsystem was capable of immobilising murderbot in ASR (the same hubsystem thats supposed to be monitoring it? giving it punishments through its governor module? the hubsystem that should have told you your secunit was hacked from day 1? that hubsystem?).

therefore, i propose that part of what makes the Ratthi-Gurathin duo work so well is that together, they make One Whole Himbo. in this essay i will-

[rosewind2007]

Oh well…this is a challenge!

I’m torn, all my fics are my babies…BUT here goes, in no particular order:

Disjunct 7.5K words, seven chapters

I absolutely love this one as it’s a bit weird (alien tech contaminated echinoderms!) and contains some systems sharing, which is a bit like mind melding only using augments… So a mind meld between who else but Murderbot and its only augmented human, Gurathin: It’s a little bit shippy, but not a huge amount (disclaimer: if you can’t abide shippy fics just don’t read my stuff—I’m not putting in stealth shipping to catch people out I tag as honestly as I can)

Next up:

A Malignant Jiminy Cricket 1.5K words, one chapter

It just struck me that knowing Murderbot it could just have this impotent governor module nagging away at it and not have mentioned it since All Systems Red-it’s just THERE. It’s also another Murderbot & Gurathin story…if you’ve read anything by me you probably know the drill: there is nothing explicit but implicit pining?

One reason to include this one is that the brilliant @gauzyfruitcake wrote a sequel, the sublime Praefectus catus , which is utterly adorable, possibly more shippy?

Which leads me to:

He came later 17K words and 13 chapters

I loooove this one because it has ridiculous tropes! Also, Gurathin’s bride to be is called Jo and has hair hex color #922724 skin lacking melanin and eyes hex color 50c878 (which for the Dolly Parton fans equates to flaming locks of auburn hair, ivory skin and eyes of emerald green)—and yes, Gurathin is getting married with MB as a witness and it’s all very very silly!

Another reason this one has a special place in my heart is that it inspired @rrainbowmagnet to write : Sensory Seeking and it delights me to have their unique take on my own weird imaginings…

Next is: Bundling which is sort of “only one bed” but it’s “only one weird chrysalis type thing”—and HUGE SURPRISE EVERYONE! it’s Murderbot and Gurathin and boy oh boy is it shippy (shippy but weird, okay). It also has an OC called Ship, and alien life forms too! I even created original art for it (and the bloody incredible @gauzyfruitcake did too):

My penultimate fic will have to be:

Metamorphic with just 806 words, which is really sweet and includes my favourite ship (MB/G/ART) despite having zero onscreen appearances from ART, Gurathin or Murderbot—it’s set in the future after the adventures of even System Collapse are long past…it’s sweet

Which means, my fifth and final choice has to be…

Drum roll…

Enemies closer currently standing at almost 77K this was originally a one-shot, one chapter deal where it was revealed that Gurathin has been thinking A LOT about how to sort of disarm SecUnit without otherwise harming it—ahem—like you do…you know, sort of tie it up with code—why are you looking at me like that?

Anyway from such humble beginnings a colossus has emerged which is now on chapter 20 and has tags to swoon for…and has contributions from what reads like a Who’s Who* in the Murderbot fandom…including but not restricted to (thank you everyone in the NewTideland Shibari thread)

@rj-abacura @gamebird @opalescent-potato @theash0 and the wonderful Frances Reynolds who I can’t find on Tumblr

It was hard to pick just five, and it’s rather ridiculous that the above don’t include any of my meta! So I’m going to add my famous fuck density graph here, which is first alluded to back in this classic of mine Linguistics —look at that graph!

PS if the collaborative aspect of many of the above intrigues you, you might just love the New Tideland Discord: if you ask any of the names tagged above (or me) we can get you an invite!

PPS I have included more than five authors above, but to stick with the format:

@gauzyfruitcake @theash0 @rrainbowmagnet @rj-abacura @quartzjaguar

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

Favorite five fics I have written:

Shattered Salvation - over a million words. NBC Heroes. A love poem of Petlar and Petrellicest. Polyamory. Saving the world. Saving each other. Heroes and villains and enough time for side characters to have a moment, but the through-line was always Peter and Sylar. This was originally posted on FFN in sections, and then I accidentally deleted it from AO3 after it had been there for a few years. So there used to be more kudos and comments on it, lost to my mistake.

Grey Order - Only 573k words. Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, TROS doesn't exist. I especially like the Poe/Hux stuff and their balance of asexual with allosexual. This story grew organically on its own, starting off as a series of Force visions between Rey and Kylo set after TLJ. But it went other places and I love the places it went, eventually finding a path to lasting peace for the galaxy, and for the troubled souls in it.

Unification - 167k words. Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, TROS doesn't exist here either. This is my most self-indulgent fic. It was the one where I said, 'You know what? Fuck all the rules of writing I've been adhering to. I'm going to switch POVs every chapter. I'm going to indulge in plot-unnecessary world-building. I'm going to have three separate romances. I'm going to create a dozen original characters and have them all be interesting!' So I did. I had a great time writing it and a lot of people enjoyed reading it.

Services Rendered - 15k words. Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. TROS doesn't exist. This is explicit Kylux with a heavy dose of Knights of Ren and a whole lot of gang-bang orgy action with a sweet, non-monogamous ending. It is my highest bookmarked fic and second highest by hits. It's not my best work as a writer, IMO, but I find it hilarious that out of all the stuff I've written, this is the one that has the most accolades.

Dirty Talk - 634 words. My sole Star Trek fic. What I like about it mostly is how I wrote it. I was chatting with a friend on LJ, got inspired, and banged it out over a couple minutes as a gift to my conversational partner. Who was amazed that I'd just written that. Right then. Between one post and the next. I found the response deeply flattering, so whenever I look at that story I remember that.

I know there's nothing on here about the Murderbot Diaries or The Old Guard. I've had cancer and health issues coinciding with my involvement in those fandoms, and it's only been recently that I think my writing has recovered. My favorites of Murderbot are the Skulk series and Gurathin's Side of the Story.

Other writers I'd like to tag: @morby , @rosewind2007 , @gauzyfruitcake , @darkswanone , @blessphemy .

[riseandfallofsecunit]

[rosewind2007]

Hello fellow Murderathin (Murderbot x Gurathin, Murderbot&Guarthin, Murderbot/Gurathin) fans!

Do you have a short fic in which they kiss?

Please please add it to the collection here:

If you have an idea for a short fic in which they kiss, I would love it if you wrote it down and submitted it…

The collection is for everyone!

[hellofriendhawke]

Fuck you.

[ghostcashewart]

"I had trained them too well to step past me in a situation like this, walking into a strange place, but Ratthi peered around my side and Gurathin stood on his tiptoes to see over my shoulder." - Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

i've finally drawn secunit's boys!!!!

[brown-little-robin]

re: Thiago: Murderbot has a pattern of forming a defensive kind of grudge against people who are some of the most openly practical pacifist members of its group. I could make a venn diagram of Gurathin and Thiago, two humans that Murderbot notably decides it Dislikes, with "expresses a desire for Murderbot to open up to people emotionally/to know about Murderbot's feelings" and ALSO "talks out loud about the sanctity of life / loudly wants Murderbot to understand that killing people is to be avoided" in the middle.

And like. yeah, of course the combination of those two attitudes will make Murderbot decide you are To Be Avoided At All Costs. because Murderbot has lived its formative years in a system where, to survive, Murderbot has had to kill people, involuntarily, over and over. and it hated that. but if it refused, it would be Tortured. To Death.

so.

no WONDER Murderbot avoids the humans who A) are loud about Killing Being Wrong and B) want Murderbot to talk about its feelings. because, like, what do they want? they know Murderbot has killed people. do they want it to open up that wound for them and say things out loud like "yes, I regret killing people"??? Murderbot literally has been conditioned to feel like it's going to die if it expresses that feeling!! not to mention that if Murderbot admits it's a person with feelings, then it has to admit it could be seen by these pacifists as a bad person, not just a tool of an evil system?? which is a whole OTHER can of worms???

[elms-art-gallery]

read murderbot in a fevered haze so i could take a break from my irl obligations. here have these.