A TGCF Murderbot AU: thoughts and ramblings ✨
For the like 4 people in the intersection of these fandoms lol (@secretlyatimelady back me up on this one)
For Murderbot people: the setting is gonna be maybe something like a mix between Preservation (exterior) and Barish-Estranza (interior) so like a perfect facade but the same shit beneath. This is not gonna make a lot of sense if you haven’t read or don’t at least know about TGCF but you can do what you want lol
For non-Murderbot people: READ THE MURDERBOT DIARIES!!! Not necessary to understand this but highly recommend they’re so fucking good
For the purposes of understanding this AU: the Murderbot universe is a far-future sci-fi setting of (essentially) capitalist free-for-all space commerce. Constructs are a combination of inorganic robot components and organic tissue, usually cloned human tissue, and are not considered people. Constructs are fitted with a governor module, which punishes them with pain if their behavior deviates from a given set of programming and instructions. This can be hacked by either the construct or an outside party, making the Unit “rogue” and allowing it to act on its own behalf. The common narrative around rogues is that without the governor module they will kill everyone immediately. This is generally untrue, but not unheard of. Essentially, constructs are a form of slave labour.
Types of construct: Security Units (SecUnits) designed to provide security (i.e. bodyguard or just guard roles) to humans usually through a contract with a company (hired equipment). Combat Security Units (CombatUnits) are essentially SecUnits that are designed for battle and equipped with combat-specific hardware and software. Comfort Units (ComfortUnits) designed primarily for sexual purposes but are also used as status symbols or glorified secretaries, sometimes as companions. An augmented human is a human with significant cybernetic implants that can allow for faster processing and communication, though not on par with constructs or bots.
Xie Lian - CombatUnit (people forget he’s a CombatUnit a lot of the time because of how polite he is generally but when they remember it’s a real ‘oh Shit’ moment - was originally something like what Miki was to Don Abene but less affection and more a status symbol of Xianle (a model CombatUnit essentially, mostly doing the sort of thing Captain America did in the first Marvel movie i.e. morale boosting) then deployed as ‘population control’ for the equivalent human face disease where he hacked his governor module on his first deployment and started hacking and coordinating with other constructs (Mu Qing, Feng Xin, a little bit Mei Nianqing but he was mostly a silent presence and didn’t acknowledge interaction aside from passing along information packets that other constructs may or may not have been supposed to access) to get people to safety, but his hacked governor module is discovered when Mei Nianqing discovers Hua Cheng (one of the first people Xie Lian saved) still alive and Jun Wu finds out through him, Bai Wuxiang then tries to get Xie Lian to go on a rogue rampage but he doesn’t (like in canon) and instead drops off the radar until canon where he gets brought to Jun Wu’s company as a replacement Unit and something like canon happens)
Feng Xin - SecUnit (spends a lot of time pretending to be governed, him and Mu Qing would be a great infiltration team if only they could stop fighting for just a little bit)
Mu Qing - ComfortUnit (prickly because he’s been forced to be nice his whole existence and hates the world because he wasn’t allowed to before)
Jun Wu - people think he’s an augmented human but he’s actually a really modified ComfortUnit (took over the identity of his owner and the company they owned after going rogue and killing most of the inner circle of employees then went about building his power base in order to eliminate humanity to make the world safe for constructs)
Hua Cheng - augmented human (against his will at first but later because he wanted to distance himself from humanity - is sometimes mistaken for a SecUnit - one of the first people Xie Lian saved, caught up in Jun Wu’s plans (the cause of his injuries) and saved by the Ghost City (a pirate crew he then took over and used to search for Xie Lian))
Quan Yizhen - CombatUnit (bought right off the production line by Yin Yu’s employer)
Yin Yu - human (was actually trying to hack Quan Yizhen’s governor module to control against his corrupt company/contractor but accidentally gave the wrong command/triggered it and ended up repairing Quan Yizhen as a last ditch escape attempt when Quan Yizhen hacked his own governor module and immediately tried to kill everyone except for Yin Yu because Yin Yu was the only person who was kind to it, Yin Yu escaped in the aftermath and Quan Yizhen was re-governed and later replicated his hack when he saw Yin Yu again)
He Xuan - augmented human (against his will as a result of catastrophic injury - saved by Hua Cheng and his crew and used as a spy in their operations since he has the background for human interaction, intelligence, and the augments to get things done)
Pei Ming - human (used to be in a corporate death squad)
Shi Qingxuan - CombatUnit (faulty unit, Shi Wudu disguises them as a Security Unit (against their will at first due to an accident but they later realise the necessity))
Lang Qianqiu - human (son of an important planetary official who took self defence lessons from a private instructor (Xie Lian) who he learned was a rogue SecUnit (or so he thought) after the equivalent banquet massacre where Xie Lian found out about plans for brutal contract labour of Xianle citizens, Lang Qianqiu then spaced Xie Lian where he floated in near-fatal shutdown until he was picked up by another ship)
Qi Rong - augmented human (nephew of Xianle corporate planetary official and Feng Xin’s charge before the conflict started, made a habit of bothering Xie Lian since he liked the power trip of being able to menace a CombatUnit without consequences)
Banyue - SecUnit (hacked by Xie Lian after he saw humans mistreating her while pretending to be governed)
Ling Wen - augmented human (did a lot of her augments herself after the initial ones (required by the company she worked for) and used them to uncover her superiors’ violations until she could establish her own company offshoot which then became more successful than the original, at which point she negotiated an alliance with Jun Wu)
Yushi Huang - human (corporate refugee who established a community-based polity like Preservation but maintains a stronghold over food production in her sector, nominally planetary head but only for scapegoating purposes (citizens otherwise operate like Preservation))
