#nullverse

[flipspring]

fanfic self promo:

do you like legitimately fucked up people doing legitimately fucked up things under legitimately fucked up circumstances? do you like to have fun and be yourself (murder and mayhem)? do you support women's wrongs? do you like trauma, and recovering from trauma, and then driving the knife right back into that tender healing wound, and then surviving it and going on? do you like laughing and crying and winning and losing simultaneously? do you like friendship bracelets and combat-grade stim toys?

good news if so. we're back!

NULLverse: The Bot-Construct Disaster Squad Installment #18, 9131 words, chapters 1/3

Statements NULL: Fall Out Bot 🌱🎸💬

#the canon divergence occurred like a whole in-universe year ago at this point and we just keep trucking #my other honor student is a hacked agriculture bot #buying a used car but the used car is your shared custody killer offspring uploaded into expensive critical infrastructure contaminated with mysterious alien protocols #while you reluctantly relationships-counsel each other in the wake of mutual murder attempts #and your new neighbors are watching all this unfold with professional interest #get treasured IDIOTS

[shorroh]

An update of my most favorite au.

I made some art for 1 chapter👉👈

[dendrochilums]

HELLO MURDERBOT FANS!!!!

after finishing the books, have you found yourself wishing that you could immerse yourself in three hundred thousand words of fanfic so deliciously written and so masterfully constructed that you will NOT be able to stop thinking about it, ever? then i have GREAT NEWS FOR YOU:

NULLverse: The Bot-Construct Disaster Squad by @blessphemy

this series is a canon-divergence AU from the moment in Exit Strategy when Murderbot narrowly escapes the clutches of the Combat SecUnit it's fighting. In this AU, it is captured by Palisade (the security company running that whole showdown), experimented on, and forced into death matches with that very same CSU. That's the premise of the first installment! I'll tell you for free that they escape.

What follows is a few hundred thousand of the most riveting words I have ever read, an incredibly carefully woven story following murderbot and the machine intelligences and humans that it meets on its journey. note that this series does NOT closely follow canon--all the same characters will come back one way or another (with the addition of the CSU as the most delightful and deranged technically-canon OC you will ever see) (plus you will get LOTS more ART screentime), but it does not retread the path of the canon series. i truly cannot overstate how FRESH, CREATIVE, and UNIQUE this AU is.

To quote the series description on AO3: Consider this series if you like: feral shit, disaster, continuity of identity+memory, societies of people with divergent needs/wants, chaos, robot creation ethics, violence vs security, suffering, healing, bad puns.

there is no murderbot shipping here. there are a few short installments with some robo brain sex involving other characters, but those are also designed to be skippable if that's not your jam

I'm making this post because this series is STILL updating and the latest chapter was possibly the greatest thing I have ever read. It has filled my mind with electricity in the most fireworks way possible. The payoff you will get for reading this series is exquisite, and you will have so much fun along the way. Come join us!! Weekly updates await you if you catch up before the latest installment is complete.

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?? GO GO GO READ THE FIRST INSTALLMENT

[wolfietoonzz]

Idiots…I love them.

Og Killer belongs to Rahafwabas

Null!Killer belongs to me

Umbra belongs to me

[oddozz]

Whoof! Last post 2017. It's dusty in here lol

Fanart for "Parameters NULL: Our Fractured State" by Flipspring. The disaster squad circa Lab Hell

Was originally gonna have ART represented by some big ol' eyes but it was turning out mildly extremely eldritch so instead we have a camera-esqe aperture thing

[waffles-xd]

Did a thing based on @blessphemy ‘s NULLverse

[blessphemy]

hi I’m thinking about nullverse!Iris again for no particular reason

in No Familiarity and Hot Bot Summer she’s basically consistent with what we saw of her in Network Effect. ART’s favorite. Augmented human. And then expanding on it—

she is familiar with complex machine intelligences. a bit more augmented than usual. she is curious and not easily shaken. she has a sense of humor that echoes ART’s but is a bit gentler. she’s a grad student.

but Properties NULL: Intel Warfare demanded a lot more screentime from her as the only human/augmented human in the espionage squad featuring in a much longer plot with developing character relationship arcs. just on a structural level. The story needed Her, and for the whole thing to succeed She needed to be a significant player.

I didn’t want the story to only be the 3 MIs, because damn we’ve already seen them on a road trip. It’ll be over saturated. It’s done already. I wanted to see MB kind of coming into its stride more as a free agent in this one, but also working through the interpersonal and professional challenges that comes with that freedom. And, diverging slowly from canon, MB starting to become someone who on both a professional and interpersonal angle can directly verbalize and act on its own needs/wants. And Iris also becomes the axis of that.

She starts out as ART’s lifetime sibling/bestie and a new friend of the new CombatUnit (this is alarming to MB and ART and is also a way of like. Showing how she sees and understands a somewhat different side to CSU than the others do). She gets off on the wrong foot with MB in a legit pretty bad professional/emotional disagreement but she slowly wins it back as the road trip continues.

she is calculating, intelligent, a little ruthless and not always sensitive to everyone’s feelings in a way that legitimately causes some problems, she is playful and a little frivolous sometimes. And unhesitatingly, unrepentantly loyal.

So over the course of Intel Warfare, Iris kind of turns into the lynchpin of the spy team dynamic. idk how obvious it is from MB’s perspective but like. Here she is, apparently a normal-looking human from the outside. But by the end of the story she’s basically inside the protective crosshairs of three overpowered machine intelligences who will go to horrible lengths for her sake. low key the whole team is villain-coded by the end of the mission, and Iris is the one at the center of it, and as the stakes start climbing she’s the one that forces the rest of them to start to face what they all mean to each other.

[flipspring]

Chapter 3: Mensah: Dance With Me, Walk With Me

Statements NULL: Fall Out Bot 🌱🎸💬

And that's a wrap for installment #18 of nullverse <3 until next time! and there Will be a next time. where we get back to having some Fun >:3c

[shorroh]

Mercy. <3 If you don't know what it is, you must read this wonderful fic. https://archiveofourown.org/series/2217708

[blessphemy]

[ID: tweet by twitter user "@DaaftLimmy" handle "twitch.tv/Limmy" verified checkmark. Text reads: "I'm feeling a bit self destructive at the moment. Not suicidal, just a bit off my nut. And I mean only a bit. Not full off my nut. a bit angry at fuck all, yet sort of flatliney. Frustrated. Certain sounds are annoying me. Feel like I've been waiting ages for something. /end ID]

Limmy deleted best tweet of all time I'm so mad

[blessphemy]

you ever go though the same somewhat harrowing experience with a person, and then they come away showing signs of Trauma while you come away like “so that was a bummer. anyways.”

[blessphemy]

2024 ao3 wrapped [writer's edition]

original prompt post link

How many words (of fanfic) have you written this year? 234,231 words. all murderbot. shut up. This was my second biggest year. I'd like to thank the time on my hands, posting a longfic I had in the works for a while, and participating in a Big Bang. (2021 was my biggest. I'll thank back pain and unemployment for that one lol.)

How many works did you publish this year? 42 fanfics.

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)? Networks VOID + Networks VITAL. Took me over two years to write and I finally finished it and punted it into the universe this year. fucking monster roller-coaster of a fic capping off a monster roller-coaster of a series. probably the most technically challenging thing I've written to date, by merit of all the balls in motion and all the emotional beats crammed in over the course of 99k words, with the majority of the action taking place during ~48 in-universe hours. i'm so proud of it. it deserves all the love it's gotten LoL thanks everybody!!

What work of yours has the most hits? Via Solitude is a perennial crowd pleaser. Wide audience appeal. Slow and long-running multi-chapter slice of life. ("Slice of life" whilst stranded and surviving alien wilderness.)

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected? idk I'm honestly pleasantly surprised every time people comment at all. but I guess SecUnit Feet got hella reactions, for a borderline gag fic for April fools.

Favorite title you used Stranger (manic pixie dream killing machine) ^ honestly i've peaked with this one

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? I don't.

Pairing you wrote the most for this year? I don't really write much as far as pairings go. The REAL talk is that I posted another entry for my niche obsession: re-writing the Exit Strategy Dock Showdown from the point of view of "Hostile One" the Combat SecUnit. Surrender/Please is my fourth one in this microgenre, and does it just as fresh and fun and different from the preceding three. ^_^

Favorite pairing you wrote for this year? Well I did write one ship fic: Stranger (manic pixie dream killing machine). In which 2 characters that never interact in canon suck face. It's pretty good makeouts if you're into that. Honestly I do love this fic I did a good job on it. Took me a long time to iron it out. Alternatively, if you stretch the definition of "pairing" to mean "self-destructive murdercule" there's the squad from Networks VOID/VITAL being patently insane. Together. Heart Emoji.

What work was the quickest to write? Funny you should ask. I gave myself 30-minute limits to write the daily Febuwhump prompts and timed myself. equivalent exchange took me 11.25 minutes, and it's not bad considering the time crunch. Mensah POV of killing that SecUnit in All Systems Red :)

What work took you the longest to write? Aforementioned Networks VOID/VITAL. I cannot overstate how insane I was making myself writing this thang for 2 years before posting it to the internets.

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year? I think I made a list of some ideas I've had knocking around, but they've been backburnered a bit since I've been noodling other writing stuff lately. (I say, while succumbing to banging out random fics for a prompt event during December -_-)

What’s your longest work of the year? Networks VITAL again, at 99.8k. Maybe I should edit in a couple hundred more words to bring it up to a clean 100k. that would be funny. maybe. eh.

What’s your shortest work of the year? I've written a few drabbles. (drabble = 100 words.) 🦎 herping 🐍, Handoff, Sugar

What WIP are you taking into next year with you? Via Solitude. She marches on.

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? I'll do top 3 since the top 2 are tied to a prompt event: Febuwhump 2024 (18), Whump (12), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (6)

Your favorite character to write this year? Take a Wild Fucking Guess (*uses my foot to push 29 fics tagged #Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries) under the bed*)

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year? I find ART kinda challenging. It's a multifaceted lil gremlin. But really everyone is fun to write.

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year? idk. maybe i'll make 2 bots make out again.

Which work of yours have you reread the most? again Networks VITAL. like just from the editing process alone.

Which work has the most comments? Via Solitude again. She's killing pretty much every popularity stat.

Did you do any collaborative works this year? Wrote a meta with ArtemisTheHuntress: [Meta] Name Dropping about the ways Muderbot refers to other bots in the series. Surprising little nuggets of realization such as: Murderbot only refers to bot pilots generically or with nicknames, and the only named ships are A) Holism the supership and B) Lalow, which has no bot pilot. Also participated in a big bang with every_eye_evermore to create Plastic Plague. I did the writing, every_eye_evermore did the awesome illustrations and helped me work out the kinks. If Networks VITAL hadn't stolen the show in terms of the man-hours and heart I put in, I think I'd have named Plastic Plague as my pride and joy. Kind of surprised myself with how fast I wrote it given its length. But also it's one of those fics that's like 2 degrees removed from being a whole ass original novella. lol. If you're interested in getting your heart broken and then pulled back together, come check out this post-apocalyptic pandemic fic. owo.

Did you write any gifts this year? Yeah! The yearly gift exchange let me create a pretty fun one: HELP WANTED: decryption key needed before half my brain gets locked behind a paywall #paid #ManticSoft #semi-urgent And the lil fluff of🦎 herping 🐍 for musicofthespheres :3

Did you receive any gifts this year? Also yeah! Once again the gift exchange gave me a fic I Adore thank you isilee: what to do when your friend is a victim of organ harvesting. pod AU. i love pod AU. and more??? everyone is being so nice to me. The Great Slug Migration and debugged [comic] by musicofthespheres. and Sing Your Feelings by ArtemisTheHuntress

What’s your most common category? Gen. I'm a 97% gen household lmao.

What do you listen to while writing? Bathroom fan white noise. Neighbors noise. Sometimes noise muffling headphones. I usually can't listen To Stuff and write at the same time, there's barely enough space in my head to have 1 full thought per second. It's like 0.6-0.8 tps in here.

Favorite work you wrote this year? I couldn't POSSIBLY pick a favorite out of all my precious children. I would never. I love them all equally. 🏆 Networks VOID/VITAL 🏆

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year? Listen I wrote 234,231 words worth of bangers. Girl I forget. I'm not rereading all that to find my fave passage. Here’s one from Surrender/Please: “I’m chasing you, my mental crosshairs locked on you, which is how it’s supposed to be, but something is so wrong, so wrong, so wrong with you, so wrong with me. The ghost of your presence in my feed digs its ethereal fingers into the back of my neck, where my data-port is, and just above that, wedged within the shriveled heart of a stripped-down medulla, is my governor module.” Here’s one from false pulse, ComfortUnit POV: “I want to cut the mimic heart out of my torso, that lying little device in the center of my chest put there for the sole purpose of broadcasting a false pulse to a sentimental human audience, that races loudly now, unbidden.” From Suns Out Guns Out: ““SecUnit. Where are your arms?” SecUnit shrugged its armless shoulders. The gesture made its empty sleeves flop a bit. “Planetary customs has them. I’ll pick them back up when I go up the elevator.”” From illucid: “The systems swerve uncertainty, the missile misses its mark, the mote floats free.” Also I think spousal privilege does a great job burying the lede. But I won’t paste the whole thing here.

Biggest surprise while writing this year? How did I write so many bangers? uwu. (Actually I spent a month or two having forgotten how to write good because I went outside and touched too much grass. (Read: went backpacking for a while and didn’t have access to writing.) It was a little agonizing. Then Surrender/Please knocked the cork loose and I was able to write again everyone say thank you Surrender/Please.) At this point writing is kind of a near-daily compulsion for me.

[blessphemy]

murderbot brain rot

What if Murderbot metamorphosed in a pod

It’s raining. What if it were raining on Murderbot

Nullverse but it’s the American south and Murderbot. has a mullet. CSU jean booty shorts. ART is. busted ass rusty school bus with vines all over it. they’re still cyborgs and AI but is modern America I will NOT explain . ARTbus can drive around but the vines are fine don’t worry about it

washes my face. What if Murderbot washed its face

[ad break from your faithfully scheduled brain rot but instead of ads my head is transcendentally empty because im looking at a slug]

AU where murderbot has no face

Murderbot has a tail with a knife on the end. This is called the “Achilles knife” and MB doesn’t know why. (It’s because the knife is for slicing the Achilles tendon) (10 uninterrupted minutes thinking about tail mechanics and making a little tail knife sheath)

how to make Murderbot talk to Mensah about is emotions [5000rpm brain cycle, smoke coming out]

self actualization of the bot. Media? Man I tend to drop the ball about media themes, ironic. What is it heading towards? What is its character arc? speaking of which idk what I’m doing work myself either I just live here. I should check my email

via solitude fic story boarding

[redacted] fic story boarding

Nullverse but let’s focus on [redacted] you need to rewrite that paragraph in the drafts lmaooooooooooo I’ve connected the dots !!wait. Never mind that doesn’t make sense

Ag bots. Ag bots?

what is a circadian rhythm for constructs. subject Murderbot to regular cadence of physical self care

[ad break from your faithfully scheduled brain rot but instead of ads my head is transcendentally empty because I’m staring at the mist rising from the boiling water on the stove]

how does Murderbot get water. It sweats. is that water sweat. What the fuck was that solvent aboard ART in the shower Wells I demand an explanation WHAT solvent is virtually indistinguishable from water but not water and it’s being used in a shower? Why this detail? WHY

[blessphemy]

hi! ur v cool n ur nullverse fics r fun

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *rummages around in my extensive drawer of nullverse bullshit* i made this drawing while writing Properties NULL!

[blessphemy]

murdercule_interactions.png

[blessphemy]

[ID: A series of screenshots. Image 1: A flow chart. The first bubble reads, "I want to do this." A bubble flowing out from the first reads, "do it." A second bubble flowing out from the first reads, "but I'm scared." A third bubble flowing from the "but I'm scared" bubble reads, "do it scared." Image 2: harashsidhu posts, "this is gonna take 3 years." ashmanaathletics (creator) responds, "the time will pass anyways." Image 3: @TageErlinger posts, "Haha, what a wicked and ironic comment bro. Now try saying something true and beautiful." Image 4: jb-blunk posts, "I want it back = I drag its dead weight forward." Image 5: Common-Landscape2676 posts, "no you are fucking alive do what you want." Image 6: sentientobject posts, "Okay... nice dichotomy, IDIOT !! what lies outside it???" /end ID]

Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.