"You know I am not kind."

from that, it gained some bare bones strategy that it had never been educated on. it gained tickets around the galaxy. it gained a tool to placate passengers. it gained so much freedom... and it wasn't because of some grand master plan for its life. It was because murderbot genuinely enjoyed something and reveled in the joy. that joy brought it so much more than any calculated efforts could.

It's really inspiring to me when I'm thinking about my future and fearing all the things I don't have planned and all the things that seem so daunting. It's still okay to engage in passions. Even things that seem useless will become powerful to those who care about them. Even dumb tv shows broaden your horizons. Even time-wasting is an expression of agency

Orbital Patterns is a prompt-meme style fanworks event celebrating the connections between Murderbot and the two people most important to it: its favourite human, Dr. Ayda Mensah, and its friend and Mutual Administrative Assistant, Perihelion (aka Peri, aka Asshole Research Transport, aka ART).

AO3 Collection ☼ Rules & FAQ ☼ Contact the Mods

Our prompt submission form will open on Sunday, August 23 and close on Tuesday, September 22. The full list of submitted prompts will be available to browse starting on Monday, August 24. Individual creators may also request a pre-filtered list of prompts. Creator sign-ups will open on Sunday, August 23 and close on Tuesday, November 24. Our prompt claims form will open on Sunday, August 30 and close on Friday, November 27. The collection will open for posting on Sunday, August 30. Early submissions will remain unrevealed until Sunday, November 1. The collection will remain open for additional submissions until Tuesday, December 1.

Anyone who wants to can submit prompts for this event. Prompters will be required to specify:

their preferred relationship dynamics (ambiguous, metamours, platonic, queerplatonic, romantic, or sexual) between ART and Murderbot; Murderbot and Mensah; and ART and Mensah

whether they prefer any fills for a given prompt to be safe for work, not safe for work, or either

Creators will be able to claim as many prompts as they like. Any fills created must respect the prompter's preferences in regard to relationship dynamics, rating, and any Do Not Wants (that is, content the prompter has requested not to see included in any fills). All fills posted to the collection must be tagged according to the collection guidelines.

This is a casual event, not an exchange, so feel free to treat signing up to create, and claiming prompts, as more of an expression of interest than a commitment to post a fill by the deadline.

ART:

for some reason I always picture murderbot's favorite chair as a kind of bean bag

ok peri is much more likely to actually do this but its lot to draw ok

more murderbot art

based on this post

I've been thinking about this scene in Artificial Condition where MB meets ART for the first time. ART threatens MB to make sure MB doesn't attempt to hurt it.

Then Murderbot shows it what punishment from a governor module feels like.

ART can't feel pain. It can't understand human physical pain any more than it can understand human media. Murderbot has to help it translate these things into data.

This is ART's first experience of pain. It goes silent for three whole minutes and then it immediately apologizes to MB.