Murderbot - Blog Posts

I thought it was the other scotchguard tbh

Apple TV+ Press

Apple’s new sci-fi series “Murderbot” to make global debut May 16, 2025

Today, Apple TV+ unveiled a first look at “Murderbot,” created by Chris and Paul Weitz and starring Alexander Skarsgård

I like Skarsgård, and I think he would be good at the deadpan humor, but that just doesn't look right to me at all. IMO it needed to be someone younger, and more physically imposing looking.

I'm not saying it means anything, but I am saying that everyone I've spoken to that likes one of these things likes at least 1-2 of the others.

WHAT is this series about bc our school librarian says that murderbot reminds her of me, and now I'm seeing this

it would love house and you all know it

LET'S GOOOOOOO- AH I love this series!!! ＼⁠(≧⁠ ▽⁠≦)⁠／

Murderbot is MurderBACK in the next installment of Martha Wells’s NYT bestselling Murderbot Diaries series System Collapse 🤖🚀

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Following the events of Network Effect, our favorite lethally cybernetic television fiend has done the previously unthinkable: agreed to accompany the sentient spaceship Perihelion (dubbed ART by Murderbot, short for Asshole Research Transport) and crew on its next mission. 

Unfortunately, they’re not going to get too far. 

Having failed to harvest dangerous artifacts from their target planet by way of Murderbot misadventure, the Barish-Estranza corporation is much angered and determined to recoup their considerable losses. And when you’re a lethally opportunistic space corp, blood and muscle are valuable currency. 

Murderbot, ART’s crew, and the Preservation humans have planetside work to do as Barish-Estranza seeks to claim the planet’s beleaguered colony as a conscripted workforce. 

But for Murderbot, the challenge is as internal as it is external. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with it. Normal operational parameters are unmet, but with the corp’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams en route, Murderbot needs to resolve its issues, and fast!

One of my favourite book series has become a show!

One of my favourite series

I think what I love about the Murderbot Diaries

(aside from, you know Murderbot who I love and cherish)

It that it’s a very grim-dark distopian corporate hellscape setting, told through the perspective of someone who has seen some of the worst that world has to offer, who’s existence is part of the worst that world has to offer, and yet-

And yet it’s so full of hope.

Everywhere you look, there’s underground shipping routes to get refugees out from contract labour, there’s universities forging documents to get abandoned colonies out from corporate ownership, there’s people buying a secunit so the company don’t realise it’s hacked itself and has free will. A Tlacy employee smuggles out copies of the files to give them back to their owners, a human officer on HaveRatton station opens the security barrier to let Ayda Mensah escape. There’s a planet that took the promise of somewhere safe to live, of food and medical care, and kept that promise for generations.

And for all it can’t even see the hope yet, can’t even really believe it might be there yet (because trauma will fuck you up), Secunit keeps being that hope for other people.

Not just the lives it saves, not just all the times it shows up out of nowhere like a social anxious guardian angel with energy weapons in it’s arms and several lifetimes worth of soap operas in it’s storage.

When it talks to Dr Volescu all the way up the side of the crater, to keep him moving. When it sticks with the scientists on RaviHyral. When Tapan sneaks onto it’s sleeping mat, because she’s scared, and it ups it’s body temperature to keep her warm. When it keeps Amena safe from a predatory partner, when it tells her to go rest. When it hacks the Comfort Unit’s governor module. When it-version-2.0 gives Three the codes to hack itself.

Imagine being on RaviHyral. Imagine meeting a security consultant who you shouldn’t be able to afford, who goes above and beyond and doesn’t even check the payment card at the end, who tells you that sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about, that all you can do is learn to live with them, who’s clearly been through some shit but came out of it with so much compassion. Imagine the hope in that.

“I’m back to feed you more MB art!” I say, as if it’s not all of you feeding me with all of your perfect comments in my tags 👀

Anyway I messed around with somethin’ a little retro looking because I really wanna make a print in the style of the NASA travel posters but Murderbot.

everyone can recognise the arm-weapons as weapons even if never seen a secunit before = equipment warning signs? laser hazard sign? engraved instructions????

hard data can be stored under the arm-weapons = must have a lot of space in there = can see the metal bones when weapons deployed???

That’s when it dawned on me that Hostile One was a Combat SecUnit.

Exit Strategy has so many good scenes but this is the one that I can’t get out of my head.

things murderbot hates so far:

fluids

its fluids

human fluids

luck

boredom

looking at people with its eyes

being looked at by people with *their* eyes

humans who dont listen to it

humans who touch it

human genitals

human organs

human odors

humans having feelings

planets

large fauna

being electrocuted

I started reading the Murderbot Diaries and Art remind me of Uno so much! It's an Ai that control a spaceship, got a big ego, the first time it's meet the protagonist it threaten it, them become best friend by watching a serie together, it helps the main characters during mission, banter together a lot, and also they're soulmate. And both they're name are three letters!!

Anyway you'll never guess who my new favorite character is

It eventually gets a haircut too.

Why do I keep drawing sad secunits!?

Finally got around to drawing Three. I modeled my take on it after some of my early concept sketches for Murderbot, a few other Murderbot fan designs I enjoy, and, much more subtly, canines (given the vaguely feline traits I’ve given Murderbot).

Quote from Fugitive Telemetry. Scene set between Network Effect and System Collapse.

The binary is in ASCII, Unicode, and ASCII/UTF-8. Whichever you pick, it will translate to the same thing.

For once me procrastinating on something has worked out in my favor.

Decided to make multiple versions, each based to varying degrees on the official illustrations, the TV show design, and my own headcanons. Now I just have to figure out where I put the third one and decide what to do with it.

And yes, the lip oil is still in there.

hi i just remembered i had a dream in which mensah was my (and my siblings') mom irl, but it was specifically your mensah design. so that's cool <3

I am smiling so hard reading this. I had so much fun designing Mensah, and it’s so cool that my take on her made its way into your dream.

The actually first piece of Murderbot fanart I ever made (over a year ago now). Drew this up immediately after finishing Network Effect fueled by queerplatonic Murderhelion feels.

So yes, this is technically ship art of a technologically advanced ship named ART and its security unit.

No, the binary does not mean anything.

Murderbot in graphic tops (and a ponytail). I like to think it got a few extra clothes while on Preservation, most of them gifts from its humans.

I’ll let y’all decide what all the As stand for.

I’ve been reading some fanfics and relistening to the audiobooks, so I decided to update my take on Murderbot.

Artificial Condition - Murderbot

For the full resolution image, click here.

Under the cut are clues to what everything means.

Not all of these are references, but a lot of them are.

If something has a unit next to it, convert it to one you’re more familiar with.

The coordinates and cargo amounts are Dewey Decimal.

Those seemingly random pairs of numbers and letters are text converted to hexadecimal.

The binary means nothing.

If you don’t know what an image is, it’s probably related to quantum mechanics.

The PreservationAux team in All Systems Red, dressed in their casual attire.

One of the things I love about TMBD is how certain things are described with far less detail than you would expect, including the appearance of several major characters, leaving a lot of wiggle room for interpretation.

I did, to varying degrees, pull from the Subterranean cover for Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (Book 4.5) for the characters that appear in the illustration, but the information in the text was the only strict limit I put on myself.

Well that, and the colors assigned to each character. There’s no way I wasn’t going to give each of them a specific hue.

I was relistening to All Systems Red yesterday to help me finalize my interpretations of the PreservationAux humans, and as you can see I did not do that.

The fanbase has convinced me that Murderbot with tied back hair is just chef’s kiss. For now my headcanon is that it has a ponytail when on Preservation, but just before the survey in Network Effect, it gets its hair cut.

I don’t know what it’s yelling at or why it’s naked. Maybe a washing machine ate its jacket or something.

I just really wanted to draw its fangs.

Some drawings of ART/Perihelion, or rather what ART looks like to other machines. ART usually takes the bottom middle form, but its appearance varies based on its mood and/or what it’s doing.

Do augmented humans see it like this too? I’m not sure yet, but right now I am leaning towards “some of them”.

Based on an ophanim (those wheel/ring angels), planetary systems, and Bohr atom models.

Bonus spoiler character from Book 5: Network Effect under the cut

Murderbot 2.0

Felt like drawing a sad Murderbot. For a fourth time.

Fun fact, when one of my friends got to the part of Network Effect where it’s revealed that ART died(?), I played along that it was dead for good and then immediately after started drawing this for when she got to the part where ART came back.

Nother fun fact, ART is based partly on an ophanium, those angels that are just wheels/rings with eyes.

Extra bonus fun fact, if you want to see the full binary and translate it, go here. Warning, it is long. So long I had to make a Dropbox account for it.

Welp, here be my interpretation of Murderbot.

Thank you to @tindoiimu for input on the inorganic colors, @nerdwingblogs for giving me the idea that it changes colors (I get choice paralysis when it comes to color schemes), and both of them plus @tytoalbias for encouraging me to let my furriness bleed into its design.

Some extra bits of info

It starts out at 7 feet tall. Is later 6 feet and 11.2 inches tall

Its skin tone is based on the Subterranean cover for Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (Book 4.5).

The skin and muscles on its head act similar to those on its back, and since the company did not intend its security units to have hair longer than a buzz cut, its head hair reacts the same as the finer hairs on the rest of its body

I’m explaining away the claws and fangs as the company trying to make their secunits more intimidating, but the real world reason is I keep calling Murderbot a cat with anxiety and just decided to run with it.

If you wanna see what I imagine is inside it click here.

Another drawing I dug out of my Discord to finally publicly post, this time of what I imagine Murderbot’s internal anatomy to be.

A breakdown:

Brain: Includes human neurons, a combination organic and inorganic hypothalamus, and computer brainstuff (including the threat assessment and governor modules)

Sensory Organs: Very sensitive and adjustable eyes, ears, and nose. Technically also includes the plating on the back of its head to allow it to wirelessly link up with other digital systems and the nerves all along its body

Respiratory System: Lungs are small and unidirectional, more akin to a bird’s or reptile’s than a mammal’s for greater efficiency. (Thank you to Your Dinosaurs are Wrong for teaching me that.)

Heart: Also small. Transports everything to the right place including oxygen, energy-source molecules, hormones, immune system nanobots, and so on

Power Cells: The main power cells are situated in the chest. There are power cells surrounding the brain stem and spinal cord to better fuel mental processes as well as cells in the abdomen just in case the main ones become damaged or depleted. It also specifically has power cells just for its arm guns

Waste Management: It may not eat, but its cells would still produce waste. This inorganic organ is for holding and processing said waste (as well as pathogens and other unuseful materials). It decomposes these materials into something that can be breathed out, used as fuel, turned into new cells, or (rarely) just sit there until these organs are drained or replaced during surgery

Cell Production: To reduce the risk of genetic mutation (and to make up for the lack of bone marrow), all new cells and nanobots are produced here from stem cells then distributed to the correct parts of the body. This is mostly just red blood cells, but also includes a few other cells. Note that my current headcanon is that constructs can heal on their own, but far slower than humans and are near completely reliant on external medical care to repair damaged body parts

Hormone Producer: It mostly makes adrenaline, but it can make other stuff too like oxytocin

Support Structure: Very tough and not as heavy as you’d think futuristic metal. Arteries and veins flow through it

Muscles: Mostly inorganic

Guns: It has energy projectiles in its arms. I do not understand weapons, so that is all you’re getting

Subcells: Because its limbs are detachable, its larger joints have power cell + waste management systems in them to keep the organic parts of said limbs operational for a short period of time. Also helpful as an extra source of power and waste management when the limbs are attached

Immune System (not shown): All constructs have a nanobot-based immune system that does a pretty good job of protecting them from pathogens that would harm their organic parts. This artificial immune system is pretty aggressive since constructs can’t reproduce and don’t have to keep other microorganisms within them to survive

Exit Strategy - Murderbot

Alt version with a different quote and blood under the cut

Network Effect - Bharadwaj