#aspec-tmbd-update

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

Aromantic Awareness Week is around the corner, and we're excited to announce the return of Aspec Murderbot Diaries!

Back in 2023 we ran a fanworks event for aspec (aromantic-spectrum or asexual spectrum) Murderbot Diaries fanworks. Check out our 2023 AO3 collection here if you're curious. Thanks to an outpouring of enthusiasm from the fandom, we enjoyed a wonderful variety of prompts and fanworks celebrating the aspec vibes of The Murderbot Diaries.

And this year we're back! 🎉 💪

The tag set and prompt nomination for this year's event are now open, so get your prompt suggestions in! Nominations will close March 7th. (That's 3 weeks from now.) You can nominate prompts even if you don't plan to create a fanwork.

To nominate tags, go to this tag set and click the "Nominate" button. (It may take a day or two for your tags to be confirmed to the tag set.)

To nominate prompts, go to this collection and click the "Sign Up" button.

Fanworks submissions to the 2025 AO3 collection will open on March 7th and close on April 30th. You can create fanworks even if you don't nominate any prompts!

Check out our FAQ and Rules on our blog for more details, and follow this blog for updates about the event.

We're looking forward to seeing your prompts and fanworks! ✨

[ramshacklefey]

Murderbot Diaries Aspec Event Entry: The Infamous Shipping Chart Rises Again

Heyo! This here's my entry for the @aspec-tmbd event for the prompt:

The PresAux team get their hands on Murderbot's shipping diagram from ASR and have a fantastic time finding all the mistakes it made because it didn't realize humans could be aspec. Honestly, this is just a framing device for exploring all the possibilities for nuance opened up by adjusting the diagram to include aspec relationships.

(Image Descriptions are under the readmore because they are. Long.

Preservation Aux Relationship Reference Chart

A flowchart depicting Murderbot's "shipping chart" for the PresAux team from All Systems Red. The chart is dark grey with a burgundy border. The names of the eight PresAux members are in grey rectangles arranged in a circles, connected to each other with curved lines with arrows on the ends to denote whether the relationship is reciprocal or not. The lines are color coded, according to a key at the top of the chart, which is as follows:

Color Key:

Green: Friends

Purple: Something?

Rose: Attraction

Pink: Marital Partners

The connections on the chart show the relationships between the PresAux members as described by Murderbot:

Arada and Overse: marital partners

Ratthi, Arada, and Overse: friends

Ratthi and Pin-Lee: unreciprocated attraction on Ratthi's part

Bharadwaj and Pin-Lee: something?

Pin-Lee and Mensah: unreciprocated attraction on Pin-Lee's part

Volescu and Mensah: unreciprocated attraction on Volescu's part

Preservation Aux Shipping Chart 2.0

Murderbot's flowchart, heavily edited by the PresAux team to show a completely different set of relationships. The boxes with the team members' names are now each a different color, and the names are all in different fonts. All the lines except the ones connecting Ratthi, Overse, and Arada have been scribbled out, and even those ones are now different colors and have become different styles of dashed lines.

The color-key at the top of the chart has been updated as follows:

Green: Old Friend

Purple: Close Friend

Rose: Situationship

Pink: Marital Partners

Yellow: Mentor

Lavender: Come Back with a Warrant

There is also now a second key at the bottom of the chart, indicating the meanings of different sorts of dashed lines. It reads as follows:

Three dashes and two dots: Sexual & Romantic

Dots: Sexual & Aromantic

Dashes: Asexual & Romantic

Spaced Dots: Asexual Aromantic

Long dash and two dots: Come Back with a Warrant

The new relationship lines are as follows: (described as color/line meanings)

Pin-Lee and Bharadwaj: Situationship/Come Back with a Warrant

Pin-Lee and Gurathin: Close Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Pin-Lee and Ratthi: Old Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Pin-Lee and Mensah: Mentorship/Asexual Aromantic

Mensah and Volescu: Old Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Volescu and Bharadwaj: Old Friend/Asexual Romantic

Volescu and Gurathin: Mentorship/Asexual Aromantic

Overse and Gurathin: Close Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Overse and Ratthi: Come Back with a Warrant/Come Back with a Warrant

Overse and Arada: Marital Partners/Sexual Romantic

Arada and Gurathin: Close Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Arada and Ratthi: Come Back with a Warrant/Come Back with a Warrant

Ratthi and Pin-Lee: Old Friend/Asexual Aromantic

Ratthi and Gurathin: Marital Partners/Come Back with a Warrant

This version of the chart is also covered in commentary from the PresAux members. The comments are all in speech bubbles, and the color and font of the bubbles matches their names to show who wrote each comment. Comments (listed by relationship):

Mensah and Pin-Lee:

Pin-Lee: For fuck's sake SecUnit! She was my advisor at university!

Mensah and Volesu:

Mensah: Did I never mention we used to be married?

Volescu: We've been best friends ever since the divorce.

Volescu and Bharadwaj:

Bharadwaj: Does a 30 year long frienship even count as "friends" any more?

Ratthi: "Old Friends" means something specific in media.

Overse and Ratthi/Arada and Ratthi:

Ratthi: Should we try to explain this one?

Overse: Did you not read the key, Ratthi?

Overse and Arada:

Arada: Hey, you got one right!

Ratthi and Pin-Lee:

Ratthi: We've known each other since we were three...

Pin-Lee: If you'd ever asked, you'd know Ratthi doesn't do crushes.

Pin-Lee and Bharadwaj:

Pin-Lee: Mind your own damn business.

Bharadwaj: Now, now, it was just trying to understand us better.

Pin-Lee: it was being a nosy asshole and it knows that.

Gurathin (directly from his name): Your faith in my ability to make friends is touching...

Gurathin and Ratthi:

Gurathin: Now, it was not in the info packet. No, we will not be explaining.

Ratthi: You know it's just going to be more determined to figure it out now, right?

Gurathin: It's welcome to try. Pin-Lee's the one who hid the documentation.

Pin-Lee: SecUnit, I am not afraid to sue you for breaches of privacy.

PresAux Shipping Chart 2.0 (No Commentary)

The same chart, but with all the comments removed so it's easier to see the relationship lines.

[blessphemy]

✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

thanks for the tag @non-plutonian-druid!

the actual format of this game is this post but i rearranged it a bit so that i could hide my extremely long list of fics under a cut

Fandom fic events 2023

Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange

Yuletide Draft Dodgers

Murderbot AUpril Collection (open and accepts submissions)

2023 Aspec Murderbot Diaries

2023 PresAugust

We Were It // It Will Be Us: A TMBD Art Exhibition (open and accepts submissions)

Botober 2023

Upcoming 2024

Events:

i'm doing the Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange (2024) :3

Perhaps i'll post something for the annual 3/3 for Three collection idk (this collection is open and accepts submissions, and it spikes on March 3rd of each year)

WIPs:

Gift exchange fic

Absolute monster of a nullverse!network effect AU fic. i'm trying so hard to get draft 1 of this beast finished it's been beating my ass for over a year but i'm gonna Get It

Continue Via Solitude updates.

a 5+1 ASR bad ends fic that explores some meta shit. namely trust, forgiveness, and sci-fi horror genre vs canon.

Words and fics 2023

let's find out just how cringe (fun) i've been on ao3. i'm like. jeebus creebus i've posted a lot this year huh.

105,486 words of fan fiction. all of it murderbot. let's look at them going right down the statistics page (default sorted by hits, tho it gets kind of messy at the end with and i got lazy):

30,336 words of Via Solitude, an All Systems Red AU where murderbot has to do wilderness survival.

~5k words that's just a repost of Threat As Greeting, except with fresh interactive CSS effects.

3,346 words top 3 SURPRISING things you didn't know about the SECUNIT who pulled you out of an INCINERATOR (2023 gift exchange) outsider POV from the characters featured in Wells' pre-canon short story

1,502 words Aspec Drabbles (for the Aspec Murderbot Diaries event) it lot of fun to work with strict 100-word drabbles.

13,837 words References NULL: Logs From Project Murderbot [nullverse] the most purely concentrated angst/whump from the nullverse series yet. handle with care or skip it.

6,552 words How To Go On A Camping Trip - a guide for anxious SecUnits who are bad at vacationing (2023 gift exchange) i really liked this one tbh. fun standalone.

2,488 words Improve Your Baby AI With This One Weird Trick! (2023 gift exchange) my personal fic-titling theme for the gift exchange was "clickbait."

7,875 Alien Refuge (AUpril inspired) This is a Homestuck crossover, and reportedly the first time multiple people willingly interacted with homestuck-affiliated content, and they liked it. gottem. it's also pretty good, i did a nice job injecting homestuckism tone into the murderbot narrative style If I Do Say So Myself.

911 words No Comment: Shut Up And Dance [nullverse] fluff and humor. tfw your secunit friend (murderbot) is crashing in your living room and you (dr. ratthi) have insomnia.

2,922 words MetaMorphoSys (AUpril inspired) listen i NEED the next big fandom trend to be an AU world where people metamorphose inside cocoons. hear me out. HEAR ME OUT. in this fic we take the fridge horror of canon murderbot diaries and make it visceral, wet, biological, and ethically Even Worse. get yr Amena emotions also.

0 words SecUnit Technician Bingo Card it's funny. idk.

3,438 words nullverse reference sheet [nullverse bonus content] self indulgent AU notes

2,290 words Systems: Splorch [nullverse bonus content] a friend of mine said "how long until we get a fic with #oviposition in the murderbot diaries ao3?" i took the answer to that question into my own two capable hands at 7.5 hours. you're welcome.

2,562 words Artifacts NULL: Fire Festival [nullverse] slice-of-life friend times with nostalgia vibes. how far we've come.jpg.

388 words Entries shared by the Society for Conservation of Feed Artifacts (SCFA) (created for TMBD in-universe robot art gallery, which is an open collection that accepts any submissions!) wait this reminds me i have one more to post. i'll get to it.

9,314 words in 31 fics written for (Botober 2023) daily prompts. turned out to be a fun exercise and exploration of bot culture tho it took me longer than the month of october to finish.

4 fanarts of fics that i liked.

26 fanbindings where i printed out and made booklets out of fics that i liked.

2 translations.

3,080 words Refrain [nullverse bonus content] if you're unfamiliar with my Brand this will sound unhinged. if you are familiar with my Brand you know by now that i have a knack for taking literally Anything and treating it with tender loving care and unexpected deft so this doesn't even surprise you. tl;dr it's porn of two bots having a deeply OSHA-unapproved Fuck Session, there's no genitals involved, and it's tagged #Vivisection. it's pretty good if you're into robots and perhaps mild gore.

Rules & Tags for this game

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass, just keep on scrolling.

@fishdetective @beatrice-otter @snugglyeldritchjellyfish @ilovedthestars and anyone who feels like it

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

Thank you everyone for submitting so many lovely prompts! For your perusal, here are the fanart-specific prompts that were submitted, pasted onto the Polish cover edition of All Systems Red + Artificial Condition. (Phrasing of some of these prompts were streamlined to help them fit onto the image.)

Characters illustrated with pride flags/colors.

Friendship bracelets, friendship tokens, Best Friends interlocking necklaces.

Drones! Drone communication, drone decoration, drone boops.

Feed hangouts, feedsonas.

Corporation Rim advertisements using Sex℠, Love®, or Gender© to sell products.

Bottles of: Gender Fluid, Love Potion, Relationship Anarchy, Polyamory Pigment. Or these ideas represented as objects: Candies. Books. Trinkets.

Non-human intimacy.

Murderbot wearing 'triple-A' battery shirt.

Thread of Fate subversions: cutting, braiding, having multiple threads.

Bots/constructs helping each other out with maintenance.

Murderbot 'friend dates' with its humans. (Theatre with Ratthi, hike with Mensah kids, etc.)

Check out the rest of our fanworks prompts here! This poster contains fanart-specific prompts but there are plenty more that could work for both fanart or fanfic.

If you are a visual artist, a doodler, or someone with a drawing implement, I hope these might inspire you to make something! :) If you post the art to tumblr, tag us and we'll reblog it.

We're looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

More prompts that were submitted to the Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 event, pasted onto the Estonian Artificial Condition edition cover. (These have been shortened to fit the poster—for full text and even more prompts check out our collection here!)

Iris has always been worried about what might happen to her relationship with Peri if she got into a romantic relationship with someone

Murderbot and Three go on an undercover mission where they have to pretend to be humans dating each other

Amena is having a lot of trouble and anxiety about being aroace, so she goes to her Third Mom for advice and solidarity

Murderbot seems to see allosexuality as a universal human condition. I'd like MB to connect with an asexual human or augmented human and realize it isn't alone in how it feels

Right, but how DOES your relationship with your new SecUnit fit in with your relationships with your marital partners?

Going to college at the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland, Amena is surprised by the cultural differences from Preservation. (In norms of dating, marriage, family structures, friendship expectations, displays of physical affection, the role of bots, or something else you have ideas about)

Take a look at the fanworks that have already been created for some of these prompts, or maybe one of these inspire you to create something yourself!

There's only a week and a half left for event submissions, so now's your chance.

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

Here are some more prompts that were submitted to the Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 event. (They've been shortened to fit the poster—for full text and even more prompts check out our collection here!)

Everyone thinks they're dating, but they aren't.

Murderbot talks to Bharadwaj about its sex aversion, and the surveillance it had to do as part of its job.

The most important relationship in someone's life is hatred. Academic rival, least favorite character, worst enemy, etc.

Aspec character experiences jealous. Learns it's not just a romantic/sexual thing.

Murderbot learns from another Ai that not all SecUnits/bots feel the way it does about romance and/or sex and/or relationships.

What if ART and Murderbot teach Three how to person?

Bharadwaj and Pin-Lee: flirting, aromantic, relationship history.

Surprise! Demiromantic and/or demisexual Murderbot.

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

More prompts that were submitted to the Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 event, pasted onto the Danish All Systems Red edition cover. (These have been shortened to fit the poster—for full text and even more prompts check out our collection here!)

Newly rogue B-E SecUnit has a connection to one of the human-HubSystems.

Explore a relationship between two or more characters that starts as ~Just Friends~ and then ends up as ~So Much More… like an academic advisor and grad student, like becoming SecUnit and Client, like adopted siblings, like two or more assholes who committed murder and had to hide the body together.

Murderbot learns some humans are also touch-repulsed. ART and Murderbot try to figure out ways "translate" feed expression into something humans can process.

The PresAux team get their hands on Murderbot's shipping diagram from ASR and have a fantastic time finding all the mistakes it made because it didn't realize humans could be aspec.

Murderbot is so good at not noticing human romantic stuff that it fails to realize it has fan club among ART's students. The rest of the crew resort to increasingly ridiculous measures to keep it from finding out.

Arada and Overse are marital partners and Ratthi is their best friend. He's like a third partner, but he's aroace and has no desire to be "officially" married. They're getting tired of people not understanding how important he is to them and treating him as an afterthought to Arada and Overse's relationship.

[aspec-tmbd]

Thank you everyone for your prompt nominations for Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025!

Nominations are now closed, and the AO3 collection is ✨open✨ to fanworks submissions until April 30th. We got some fun last-minute prompts added, so be sure to check out our prompts list again!

We will be posting a roundup list of the fanart-specific prompts to this blog soon.

Even if you didn't nominate any prompts, you can create aspec fanworks and submit them to the collection!

This event has rolling submissions. So any fanwork you post to the event collection will be immediately viewable on the AO3 archive, and we will start queuing them to this blog soon. The era of instant gratification is upon us!

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

We are one week into our tag set and prompt nominations for Aspec TMBD 2025. Thank you for all the lovely prompts so far!

There are two more weeks left until nominations close on March 7.

The flow of time can be weird. Submit your prompt ideas now before you blink and miss it!

And maybe check out the prompts we do have already... they're pretty neat 👀

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

Hiya!

Reminder that the prompt nomination stage of this event will close tomorrow. (And the submissions phase will begin!) If you’ve been sitting on prompts ideas, waiting for the perfect moment to relinquish them to the world… now is that moment.

Even if you won’t be making any aspec fanworks for this event, you can still nominate tags and prompts to the collection. Please do! But who knows, maybe if you take a peek at the prompts we’ve gathered so far, one of them will spark your interest…

[aspec-tmbd]

A few days belated, but here is our closing announcement for Apec Murderbot Diaries 2025:

The Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 event AO3 collection has closed to submissions. Our deepest thanks to everyone who posted prompts, fanworks, comments, or who simply came along for the ride and enjoyed the fun with us!

If you still are working on fanworks inspired by this event and its prompts, you can post those to the weird wide web anytime you wish. On AO3 you can tag it #Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 to connect it to the event even if it isn't in the collection. (Or leave it untagged — as you prefer.)

We are delighted and amazed by the enthusiasm put forth for this event: 50 works were posted to the AO3 collection, plus there are a few fanarts posted to tumblr that you can check out under our #fanarts and #fanworks tags. This blog will continue to post collection works on a queue until they run out.

Again, many thanks! Y'all are the best.

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

TOMORROW is the last day our AO3 collection is open to submissions. After that the collection will be closed. So now is your last chance if you have a final fanwork to submit. (Though you can continue to post fanworks with the #Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 tag if you like. These works just won't be part of the 2025 event collection, and event mods might not see it to post to this blog.)

Thank you everyone for celebrating aromantic and asexual themes, characters, and perspectives with us! We're so glad to share a fandom with all of you. 💚 💜

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

There's only two and a half weeks left in our fanworks submissions window for Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025! Remember our AO3 collection will close submissions at the end of April.

If you've been working on a fanwork, now is your chance to bring it in for the home run. Or perhaps if you can draw/write/sing(?)/create quickly, and couple weeks is the perfect amount of time to pick up a prompt and try making something!

Don't miss out on joining in on the fun: come read, admire, and comment on the many lovely fanworks we've got so far 💜

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

Reminder that prompt nominations for Aspec Murderbot Diaries fanworks are open now, and will close in a week (on March 7).

You don’t have to be a fanworks creator in order to nominate tags and prompts. Just let those prompts flow free into this collection.

Submit your prompt ideas while they’re hot!

[aspec-tmbd]

We're over two weeks in and about a third of the way through our fanworks submissions window! Remember that submissions will close at the end of April.

Come join the fun! You can check out our prompts list for inspiration, comment on fanworks, browse our blog, and submit your own aspec fanwork to the event collection.

Thank you for your lovely prompts, fanworks, and reblogs so far!

[aspec-tmbd]

About ☆ FAQ ☆ Rules ☆ Timeline ☆ Announcements ☆ Fanworks

Even more prompts that were submitted to the Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 event, pasted onto the Thai All Systems Red edition cover. (These have been shortened to fit the poster—for full text and even more prompts check out our collection here!)

Conflicting needs in an aspect relationship: character caught feelings after agreeing to not be romantic.

Characters on different parts of the aro & ace spectrums interacting! Loveless Are, Gray-Are, Gra-Ace, Demi, etc.

A fic where a mashup ship name is used for a character… because they’ve touched alien remnants that fused our two beloved characters into one entity with mixed memories and traits, a la Star Trek Tuvix.

A touch-starved character seeks nonromantic, nonsexual physical contact.

Ratthi and Murderbot have to pose as corporate marriage counselors for a mission and have a 100% success rate at persuading marital groups they counsel that they’d be better off separated.

A ComfortUnit observes its human clients falling in love/lust and wonders if *that is what makes humans *human*