OC-tober day 5: Relationships Aaaaaand a million years later I am finally back to attempting some OC-tober prompts. (A wrist injury made me break my stride, and even though it isn't too serious I've been using it as excuse not to draw much for days.) I'm not gonna do all the ones I missed, but there are a few I was excited for!

I had a different idea in mind for this prompt and even started drawing it before I hurt my wrist, but when I came back to this I wasn't feeling it anymore. But I did just post a brand new OC fic a few days ago, so I decided to draw something for that instead!

Introducing Yuma, a mechanic deep in debt on a backwater asteroid who fixes and salvages junk for a living, and Crowbar, the SecUnit she repairs! I love the relationship between these two and the way it shifts. Yuma takes a selfless risk to set the SecUnit on a path to freedom, and it comes back to repay the favor. They rescue each other <3

I wanted to do this in color, but I reminded myself that I do not have infinite time and not every drawing has to be perfectly polished, so it's just in flat color for now. But I am really proud of how it came out! I settled so comfortably into drawing these two, even though I feel like I've been having trouble with figures lately. It's very reassuring :)

Ask game: 👀✨

Thank you for playing, my friend! 💕

👀 A fic that you love a normal amount

Salvage or Repair by @ilovedthestars lives in my head rent-free, and it's so good I can't even complain about that. It has everything---delightful OCs that you will want to just scoop up and carry around in your pocket, a sweet plot that will give you the warm fuzzies, and humans (a human, anyway) being good for once. I could read 100,000 more words about Yuma and Crowbar, and I would still want 100,000 more words about Yuma and Crowbar. 🥰🥰🥰

✨ A fic you wish you could read again for the first time

The Solicitor and the Secunit by @elexuscal is just...*chef's kiss.* It's a non-linear narrative that weaves through scenes from Pin-Lee's life, most of which relate to either her friendship with Secunit or the foundation that that friendship will eventually be built on. It's everything that I adore about Pin-Lee and the unique relationship she has with Murderbot. It fleshes out her life's story so beautifully that it's basically all canon to me now. There are times I genuinely forget which aspects of her character are actually from the books and which of them come from this fic!

Fic Rec Ask Game

(Edited to include @elexuscal 's tumblr handle---I'm so sorry that I didn't connect that that was you! I'm so bad at keeping Ao3/Tumblr usernames straight! 😂😭)

trick or treat for bardic, who doesn't have a tumblr account:

I know you've read salvage or repair, so you already know Crowbar and Yuma!! here's a little bit from after the end of that fic, with the two of them having a conversation about governor modules (Niri is also there)

---

She frowns. “That automatic shutdown, you mean? That tried to keep me from tampering with proprietary tech?” Niri and Crowbar exchange a startled glance. Crowbar sighs, and gives her a rueful smile. “I wondered if you knew what you did.” “Why? What?” “Yuma, the governor module was more than just an automatic shutdown,” it says gently. “How much do you really know about SecUnits?” “Next to nothing, before they brought you in the box,” she admits. “People said there were SecUnits in the mines, but no one ever came back from the mines to tell about them. They said you were machines that were used to keep order.” There had been plenty of horrible rumors about what happened in the mines. SecUnits had featured in some of them, but they’d only been a part of the nightmare, and Yuma had never paid those stories much mind. “Yes. We’re used for other things other places, but in the mines they used us as enforcers to keep workers in line.” Crowbar takes a breath and makes a gesture as if waving the thought away. “They had to keep us in line somehow, too. We’re stronger and faster than humans. If we decided to stop following orders, we’d be a threat.” She doesn’t like where this is going. “How did they keep you in line?” “The governor module.” Crowbar’s voice is still gentle, but solemn. “It monitors what we do. You saw the software.” “Nastiest piece of code I’ve ever seen,” Yuma agrees, remembering the iron-clad defenses she had to break through and the tendrils that locked onto every other system like a parasite. Crowbar nods. “There’s hardware too. In our heads. If we don’t follow orders, or break the protocols that have been set for us, we’re punished with electric shocks.” It says it so matter-of-factly, and then pauses, watching her reaction. She spends a long moment waiting for more, grasping for a less horrible way to fit the pieces together. “In your head?” she repeats. “Yes.” “That—that must hurt,” she says, even knowing that hurting is the point. “It does.” “But not anymore?” she asks, struck by a new wave of concern. “It’s stopped, right? Since I—” “Since you hacked it. Yes. It doesn’t work anymore.” “Void above and below. I—” She presses a hand to her mouth. “I thought all I did was give you a crowbar and a crate and ship you somewhere a little less terrible.” “No,” Crowbar says. “You freed me. You handed me control over myself for the first time in my life.” It sits back, and allows a smile to break the serious look on its face. “That’s why I came back for you.”

7, 9 and 13 for the Writer Asks? 🥰

(2023 in review writer ask game)

Oooh you've picked SUCH good questions. Thank you! 🥰

7. What character(s) captured your heart?

This was a year of OCs for me!! It's hard to believe, but I started posting Old Unit, Young Unit back in January--I think it's going to turn a year old before i finish it. OldUnit and Niri, and the world I've built around them, has become a major focus for me. It's so cool to think about how they've developed over the course of this year. I have so much of their story left to tell, and I suspect I'll still be telling it this time next year!

I'd also be remiss if i didn't mention Yuma and Crowbar, who were actually created this year and made their first appearance on ao3 (Salvage or Repair) as well. I've been a big fan of "A SecUnit and its Human" duos, but they've never clicked for me as much as Yuma & Crowbar did. Their story went from a seed of an idea to several thousand words in like 24 hours (shoutout to WyvernWolf for helping it along <3) and before I'd even finished Salvage or Repair I was writing follow-up adventures. I've got many more stories to tell about them, too!

9. What fic meant the most to you to write?

Oooh. If we're counting meta, I know what my answer has to be--On System Collapse, Sanctuary Moon, and saving one another, my meta about chapter 8 of SC. I won't talk about it in detail so I don't have to tag this for spoilers, but it was an outpouring of all my strongest emotions about System Collapse that I wrote during & immediately after reading it. Honorable mention to the artist's statement for Ghosts of the Pressy, which was similarly written from the heart.

But okay, this question is about fic. I think it has to be Old Unit, Young Unit again. That's the fic that has kept me up late so many nights this year, the one I've been pushing myself the hardest to finish because I'm dying for other people to get to read the story in my head. And it's the one I've gotten the most encouragement and help on along the way, which I am incredibly grateful for.

13. What fic was the easiest to write?

I'm pretty sure Hints (SC spoilers at the link!) was written in one day, so that probably takes the prize. The sequel to An Unexpected Quarter (which is posted as a chapter 2 but feels like a separate project in my mind, because that fic was originally just a one-shot) was written in about 3 days. Fast is as close to easy as I get--I either pour a fic out of myself in a few hours and clean it up and throw it out into the universe immediately without looking back, or i slowly agonize over drafts of it for months, there's no in-between.

🤡🎶👀

Hi friend! Long time no talk, I haven't been reading much fanfic lately but yours are at the top of my list when i get back to it :)

(Emoji asks)

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

There's some fun exchanges in As Your Legal Counsel, in which Pin-Lee talks legal stuff with Three after NE. They were such a fun pair to write about! My favorite might be Pin-Lee joking that "You can trust me, I have more experience representing a SecUnit client than any other lawyer in the known universe."

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

I do! I'm a music-with-words person, even (not always, but sometimes it's the right amount of background processing to keep my thoughts from wandering away from writing.) I haven't been writing a lot lately, because things have been very busy these last few weeks. But my current music on loop is a playlist I made called "Sunny" (i have a matching "Rainy" one). It's got a lot of The Well Pennies on it, they make great writing music!

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

Same aforementioned caveat that I'm not writing much lately, but the things that are at the top of my priority list are mostly OC-related. There's a few more Old Unit, Young Unit chapters, a bunch of spinoffs, a whole sequel story if I ever get around to that, and also some more stories with Yuma and Crowbar from Salvage or Repair.

To talk about a specific one...There's a Yuma and Crowbar spinoff that isn't titled yet that I'm really having fun with. Y&C are just the perfect characters for making up other OCs to throw at them. I'm writing a new pair of secunits who were bought by an owner who put a software block in their language processing centers that prevents them from speaking. They've got a forged-in-fire friendship, and it gets very hurt/comforty, which I love.

This is the origin story for my OCs Yuma and Crowbar, who i've posted some art of before! It's a story about a human who's down on her luck making the choice to help someone that she's not even sure is a someone, at risk to herself, and that someone turning around to help her in return. These two will be back, sooner or later--I have more stories to tell about them!

trick or treat for petwheel, who doesn't have a tumblr account!

you mentioned the other day that you were hoping to see more of Yuma and Crowbar (🥰) so here's a snip from a draft of one of the spinoff fics featuring them that i've been working on! after spending some time on Preservation, the two of them end up back in the CR, secretly working to repair discarded SecUnits just like Yuma did for Crowbar.

cw for mentions of blood, injury, and suicide (none described in detail). this is the first time that a damaged unit comes in to their new home base. (the fic gets a bit Angsty in the middle but the secunit will be fine in the end, i promise!)

---

“You know, this is how you showed up,” she tells Crowbar, as she shoves the crate across the floor. “Care to help me open it up?” “This seems appropriate,” it says, and lifts the crowbar with the flaking yellow paint off the wall where it hangs, a memento. It takes the crowbar that freed it to the lid of the crate. “Gods,” Yuma says when she sees the limp form inside, “that’s a lot of blood.” “We’re going to need the equipment that Niri set you up with,” Crowbar says grimly. “Can you get the legs?” She helps it heave the SecUnit up out of the crate and walks it to the padded worktable in the back room. “You were cleaned up when they brought you,” she grunts. “I didn’t expect….” “So much bodily fluid? Neither did I.” They lay it down and Crowbar begins to start up the partial MedSys installed in this room. “I’ll get this going. You work your magic.” She leans over the body. It’s not hard to find the wound. “It’s been shot,” she says. “Looks like multiple times, right in the stomach.” “We don’t have a stomach,” Crowbar reminds her. “That looks like the power cell.” Her heart sinks. “I don’t know how to fix one of those.” “We can get replacement parts. But if you hook it up to an external power source, then maybe…?” Crow gives a half shrug and a twisted smile. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it got hit anywhere else.” “Multiple gunshot wounds in the same spot. Someone did this up close.” She starts pulling tools off of the rack on the wall. “Do you think…they ordered it to stand still?” “Maybe.” The MedSys beeps to life. “Or it was self inflicted.” “You mean—“ She turns to look at Crow. Its eyes are sad, but it nods. “It happens. It’s…not common, because it’s not easy, but I’ve seen units try.” “Might explain why it was sold off so quickly. Damn.” She looks down at the unit, lying lifeless on the table. “I hope not. But either way, I hope we can get it fixed up.”

Ask game! 3, 26, 30

(2023 year in review fic writer asks)

Thanks Hummus!!

3. What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer?

Hmm...I've learned a lot about how the writing process works for me, how my inspiration ebbs and flows, how to push myself and get words out even when I'm not feeling inspired. And also when it's okay, and sometimes better for me, to take a break and not put pressure on myself to write more words.

26. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?

Oh, wow, thinking back, it might have to go to posting chapter one of Old Unit, Young Unit allllll the way back in January. I'd been working on the fic for months already for that point and it was so satisfying to get to the point where I could finally share it.

No, wait, I have a better answer--the two weeks after I read System Collapse, in which I posted not one, not two, not three, but four new works/updates to Ao3. I was just full of so much creative energy that I churned out an OU,YU chapter that I'd been stuck on for weeks, a meta about SC, a fic with a missing scene from SC, and a follow-up to An Unexpected Quarter, a year-old oneshot that I was inspired/encouraged to revisit by a really lovely comment from @whirlpoolleaf. That last one was particularly satisfying. It was so fun to feel so inspired and write so much in such a short period of time!

30. What’s something that you want to write in 2024?

There is SO much more in the Polaris universe I want to explore!! I'm dying to finish Old Unit, Young Unit, because once that fic is done I have many many more stories about these units. Aybee, Hope and Enigma haven't even appeared on Ao3 yet!!! And I'm fleshing out more side characters and spinoffs every day. Yuma and Crowbar have also been super exciting to me lately and they've got several spinoff stories that I'm working on (here's a sneak peak of one that I posted to Tumblr a little while back). It's OCs all the way down and I'm having a blast!

Trick-or-Treat Snips Masterpost

All the Murderbot fanfic snips i shared for the trick or treat ask game, in one place!

---

murderbot's govmod is turned on at the end of ES

murderbot is rescued from the company, with a wiped memory and a functioning govmod that thinks it broke its distance limit

crowbar and yuma have a convo about govmods

meet my secunit OC flower, it's having a very bad/very good day

mysterious ghost ship appears near preservation, MB and indah check it out

murderbot has a murdercat

murderbot got rescued from the company but isn't sure it's real

more yuma and crowbar, fixing up a new badly damaged secunit

murderbot shows up at gurathin's door a la "i didn't know where else to go"

---

Thank you so much to everyone who sent me asks, i had a blast digging through my drafts and finding fun things to share 💜💜💜💜

And by the way: Some of these wips are actively being worked on, some are semi-permanently abandoned, but a lot of them are in the zone of "i'd love to finish this, but i haven't had motivation in a while." If there's one you'd really like to see more of, let me know! That might be enough to kickstart me into working on it again :)

✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

I was tagged by @dendrochilums and @blessphemy !

Words and Fics On AO3

29,868 words, of which 27,560 were actually fic (excluding meta and fanart image descriptions)

12 fanworks, of which 8 were new fics, 2 were fanart, 1 was meta, and 1 was a new chapter to a previously existing fic.

All for Murderbot, except for Things in the Shadows, my Witch King fanfic (and first foray into non-murderbot fic!)

My lifetime AO3 wordcount (since spring 2022) is 55,365

My lifetime actual written wordcount of Murderbot fanfic is somewhere on the order of 250,000 (give or take some duplicate drafts that are getting counted twice in scrivener)

Top Fics by Kudos

My actual top fics by kudos are mostly from 2022

Of the ones published/updated this year, An Unexpected Quarter wins. This is the one that I originally published in 2022 and updated with a surprise second chapter in 2023, so I think the age bias for kudos is still showing

The highest fic originally published in 2023 is Operation Parsec, which is 10th on the overall list. It's also the literal first fic I posted that year, as it was written for the New Years gift exchange. Yeah, I think my kudos rankings are almost entirely based on age

Fics and Fanart on Tumblr

By my count I made 12 fanart posts in my #stars art tag! This includes Many-Colored Strings and Ghosts of the Pressy, the two fanart pieces that I posted to AO3. (Ghosts of the Pressy is technically from 2022, but I didn't share it outside of discord until 2023)

Because I didn't have a tumblr until this year, I decided to go back through my list of ao3 works and post links to them under my #stars ao3 reruns tag

I posted snips from nine unpublished Murderbot fic wips for the Trick or Treat ask game (which are all linked in this post)

And had fun with lots of other ask games, tag games, and rambling about my wips in general! More can be found in #stars fic, #stars wips and #stars ocs

Fandom Fic Events 2023

Last year's Murderbot Diaries New Years Gift exchange ( @mbd-gift-exchange ), for which I wrote Operation Parsec for Lillow and received this gorgeous artwork from @acornwizard!!

The Aspec Murderbot Diaries event, for which I created Many-Colored Strings based on a prompt about platonic soulmate AUs

The Murderbot discord's AUpril event, for which I created several snips and small artworks that were shared only on discord

And several other less formal events/collaborations on discord, like the fictional art exhibition in the future of the MBD universe (i should get around to archiving the snips i wrote for this, I don't think I ever posted them, but I did help organize the ao3 collection)

Upcoming 2024

My gift project for this year's New Years gift exchange!

At least a dozen wips I'd like to get finished, and have no idea when or which order that will happen in, but among my top priorities:

The final 3-ish chapters of Old Unit, Young Unit

Several follow-ups to Salvage or Repair, ft. Yuma and Crowbar, particularly an immediate follow-up fic and a spinoff fic featuring two new OCs with an angsty past

Various other Polaris things that I can share after I finish OU,YU, including Niri POVs, some past & future spinoffs, and OldUnit's official company file

maybe that "Murderbot has a cat" fic that I already wrote most of but have been wanting to polish up for months now?

A revisit to my semi-abandoned Three time travel fix-it where One and Two live, perhaps? I'm low on energy but SC did give me some new ideas...

This was very fun, thanks for the tag! Rules copied below, I added some new categories but the main ones seem to be Words and Fics, Top Fics by Kudos, Fandom Events, and Upcoming 2024.

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.

I'll tag @specialagentartemis, @every-eye-evermore, @all-all0s-eyes, and anyone else who's interested!