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.
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.
Woot! First prompt! Let's go with my most popular MB post as an official writing prompt:
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Murderbot somehow finds out it was originally a CombatUnit, stripped of its extra parts except for the advanced hacking capabilities after the disaster so The Company could keep their super expensive equipment on call at their beck and whim without letting the media and public know they haven't destroyed it.
Keeping Murderbot functioning as a lower-ranked construct also allows them to dodge certain taxes.
Murderbot decides, after listening to the entire archive of Big Finish Audios to calm down, that this is the perfect opportunity to fuck with the company. Big time. Hit them where it hurts--
Pined post, this will be updated whenever necessary.
Last update: January 25th 2023.
This blog is run by @rjalker My pronouns are it/its.
Rules and other info are below the cut! Read this post before submitting a prompt :)
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Along with submitting prompts, if you tag me in art, as long as it doesn't violate the rules, I'll reblog it here! Art of Murderbot will be tagged "Murderbotart"
Submission rules, in no real order
0)) if you think shipping incest or pedophilia is okay, leave, now. Your actions are disgusting and you are not welcome here. This includes between adopted family members.
1)) I highly recommend you type out your prompts in an LibreOffice document or similar word program before submitting it, in case tumblr crashes while you're on the submission page, or if I delete it by accident while trying to post it.
2)) If you submit a prompt here, you can of course also post it to your own blog. You can also post it to your blog, and then @ me to reblog it here.
3)) If you want to submit a prompt anonymously, you can submit it like normal, and note at the top that you want it to be anonymous. I'll copy and paste it into a new post. (You used to be able to open tumblr in a private browser and submit anonymously that way, but I think they've made it so you have to be logged in now in 2024...who knows when that'll change again though.)
4)) Include a name for your prompt when you submit it! This will make it easier to find them later. It can be a simple descriptive name like "Murderbot gets lost in the mall" or something.
5))Please include proper paragraph breaks. I have to be able to read your prompt before it can b published. Not including paragraph breaks will make this take three times as long.
6)) I will be editing prompts submitted, usually to help clarify confusing language or to add paragraph breaks if the submitter doesn't add them in themselves.
7)) If you aren't okay with your prompt being edited before it gets posted, post it to your own blog instead, and then @ me to reblog it.
If a prompt violates the rules in an easily fixable way, I'll edit the prompt to follow the rules.
If a prompt violates the rules in a way that can't be fixed, it'll just be scrapped, and I'll post an explanation of what it did wrong and how to fix it in the future, without naming names.
Unless you're purposefully being malicious, in which case you'll just get blocked and I will warn other people to block you for their own safety.
8)) No shipping Murderbot with anyone, in any way, unless it canonically starts a relationship with someone in the books. It's not anymore okay to erase canon Queer representation when it's representing nonpartnering, everything-repulsed aroace people than if it were representing anyone else.
If Murderbot were canonically an allo lesbian, and you wouldn't want people to erase that, then don't erase that it's aroace and doesn't want any kind of relationship.
9)) No erasing Murderbot's solitaremity, which is a form of touch aversion where not only do you not enjoy touch, you also do not crave it or get "touch starved". Unless Murderbot in the books canonically starts explicitly seeking out and enjoying touch for the pure joy of it, then you need to respect that it is solitaremit. Real solitaremit people exist, and we deserve to see ourselves represented in fiction too.
Touch aversion is a disability, and it's no more okay to magically cure it or sweep it under the rug than it would be to cure Murderbot's very clear autism.
10)) No whitewashing characters OR assuming white people are the default. Just because someone's skin tone isn't described doesn't mean they're white. If you think it does, you're just racist. The only characters you can depict as white on this blog are those who are clearly described as white, like the GrayCris Agent from book 4.
He is in fact literally the only example of a clearly white character in this series so far.
I know, because I was keeping track the first, second, third, and fourth time I've read this series. This, like many things, is an established pattern in Martha Wells' writing.
It is extremely intentional that the only blatantly white character in this series so far is the capitalist pig who is holding a Black woman hostage.
I promise you it won't kill you to draw or describe people of color. You will not be harmed by fighting against the "white people are the default" that is in your head.
11)) No NSFW even if it doesn't involve Murderbot. There are kids in this fandom, I want them to feel welcome here, and I don't wan to see it either. Post it to your own blog and tag it appropriately.
12)) No super graphic or gratuitous violence. It's okay to go beyond what's described in the books (or, I should say, not described at all), but don't be excessive about it.
13)) Original characters are more than welcome!
14)) All human AUs will not be allowed. Murderbot does not want to be human. Turning it into a human anyways is just insulting.
15)) Other AUs that likewise remove Murderbot's constructed status to make it wholly organic will also be dismissed. That's just lazy and uncreative.
16)) No prompts revolving around Christian holidays. I'm tired of it, and you can't convince me any of the main characters are Christian. You just can't. Post it to your own blog.
17)) No misgendering Murderbot unless it's to show that the character / entity misgendering it is a bad person.
Example: A random jackass misgendering Murderbot is fine, as long as it's properly portrayed as that person being a jackass. (Yes, even if it's written from the jackass's POV and they think they're a good person. It's very easy to show that the narrator is not correct even when they think they are).
You writing a whole prompt and referring to Murderbot with they/them, he/him, or she/her pronouns is misgendering and not allowed. If you do this, it will be corrected the first time. If you do it multiple times, you will just be blocked. You get once chance, and that's it.
18)) No headcannoning Murderbot as being binary trans. Why do I even have to say this. Go somewhere else if you hate nonbinary people that much.
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Prompts can be as long as you want, but should be at least a good sized paragraph at minimum, not just a single sentence or two.
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You can submit art as a prompt or for a prompt, as long as it follows the rules above and:
A)) Murderbot's face must not be shown (it puts in a lot of effort to hide its face as often as possible, we should respect that!). Get creative with it. There are a lot of fun ways to accomplish this.
B)) Murderbot must not be whitewashed or light-washed.
Its skin color in the official art is very dark brown, with black hair.
The image below shows the shade of its skin tone taken from official art. The background color, and the box in the middle, are the main shade, and then it is shown being affected by light and shadow.
Lighting can be more dramatic or stylized with different colors, but the brightest lighting in the world isn't going to turn a black or brown person white or pink. Do not desaturate its skin either to make it grey.
Look up tutorials on how to properly draw dark skin if you need to, there are many that people kindly make for free here on tumblr.
[ID: A simple digital drawing of a hand, with a small pale orange sun next to it as a source of light. The art has a border of light orange in the same shade as the little sun, with black outlines, and the background is dark brown.
Five rectangular boxes are at the top of the screen, showing a simple gradient from warm brown to darker brown, with the the middle box the baseline, which is also the background color. The furthest left box is the lightest, the furthest right is the darkest.
The shades are placed on the simple drawing of the hand, with the brightest color used to highlight the part closest to the little sun, with the second brightest forming a larger part of the lighting, then the baseline, with the darkest color on the opposite side of the arm and fingers that are in shade, with the softer shading taking up most of the shadowed parts.
End ID.]
C)) Murderbot cannot be drawn stick thin and skinny. It's literally designed to be physically powerful and kill people and things. It is not skinny.
D)) Try to include an image description for your art whenever possible. If you do not include one, I will have to create one before it is published, so it will take longer to publish, depending on how complicated the image is.
Memes will be allowed, as long as they don't violate any of the other rules.
As long as your fics follow all the rules, you can also submit full fics here for people to read, as long as each chapter individually isn't too long to fit in a single post. Say whether or not it's okay for people to use your fics as writing prompts.
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All prompts will be tagged:
Murderbotwritingprompts
Murderbot writing prompts
TMBD writing prompts
The Murderbot Diaries
if you want to filter them.
"blogrunner prompt" will indicate prompts created by me
"submitted prompt" will indicate prompts submitted by others
You may request specific tags to be added to your own prompts, like if you're going to be submitting a series of prompts set in the same "universe".
To maybe help keep things ordered, Each prompt will also be given a number in the order it was submitted, no matter who created it, and tagged with that number as "prompt1" "prompt2" ect.
Will this actually help anyone find prompts later? I don't know, I guess we'll see...
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Some common terms and their definitions:
Transmisia
Transmisia is indeed ""transphobia" but minus the "-phobia" suffix, because hating trans people isn't an anxiety disorder like phobias are, and people who do have phobias get treated horribly because people think it means they're bigots when they're not.
The -misia suffix comes from the word "misos" for "hatred", which is also where the word misogyny comes from! Miso-hatred, gyn-women. Misogyny = hatred of women.
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Athiktomisia (link to coining post)
Athiktomisia is bigotry towards people who are touch averse, with athikto translating to, roughly, untouchable or thereabouts,and the -misia suffix like above indicating hatred. Athikto+misia = hatred of those who are untouchable.
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Solitaremit, soliteremity, etcetera (link to coining post)
Solitaremit is a specific form of touch aversion where the person is touch averse, and also does not get ""touch starved"" or have any desire for touch at all, specifically created because many touch averse people who do not get touch starved were being alienated even in touch averse spaces, because desiring touch and being touch starved was still behind held up as normal and universal.
Solitaremity is...uh, the state of being solitaremit. Example sentence: Most people, even those who are otherwise touch averse, don't even know that solitaremity exists.
Solitaremity was created specifically to be a unique word that is brand new, and thus (meant to be) easy to search for and find, combining the words "solitary" and "hermit" for maximum emphasis.
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Solitaremisia
Solitaremisia is, again, the -misia suffix, combined with solitaremit to specify hatred against people who are touch averse who specifically do not desire touch in any way, even with touch starvation. Which is unfortunately a common attitude even in other touch averse people :|
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Gregariable
Gregariable will probably be used at some point, it was created as the counterpart to solitaremit, it means someone who desires touch and gets touch starved, whether or not they're also touch-averse. Aka, 99.99% of people are gregariable. It combines the words "gregarious" and "sociable" to create a unique word so that it would be easy to search for.
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Aroacemisia
Aroacemisia is bigotry against aroace people in particular, again with the -misia suffix to indicate hatred.
Amisia, acemisia, and aromisia are hatred towards aspec people in general, hatred towards asexual people, and hatred towards aro people.
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Exorsexism
Exorsexism is the specific hatred of nonbinary and genderqueer people, which is separate from, but sometimes a part of, transmisia.
Murderbot is nonbinary, so any transmisia it faces is inherently exorsexist.
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It its antagonism
it its antagonism refers to hatred targeted specifically at people who use it/its pronouns, usually always combined with exorsexism. It its antagonism is a form of neopronomisia.
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Neopronomisia
Neopronomisia is hatred of pronouns other than she/her or he/him. This includes but is not limited to pronouns like it/its, te/ter, and they/them.
