Kiss Alien 😘👽

I loved this prompt a lot, and I freakin' finally got around to writing it! (The main hangup was figuring out which of them to do it to. I feel as if I also need to write the other way around, one of these days.)

18 years. this is enough time for the work to grow to adulthood and begin to care for itself

and kinda ultra cyberpunk: huge mega corporations own many of the resources, there's barely any worker's rights to speak of, the recent rebellion being put down brutally in 2258 means everyone hates EarthGov. there's a big military security presence, and things we take for granted like free association and small presses and political associations, are repeatedly cracked down upon

and the Resistance is a mess of true believers who want someone better in with cult of personalities, people who want revenge against Earth and will do anything to get it, hobbiest murderers, corporate false flag operations, EarthGov false flags to delegitimize resistance etc. and these are sometimes all the same cell

oh yeah and security forces brutalize people in broad daylight and EarthGov doesn't care even when the Mars Provisional Government complains. This is canon to Deadly Relations even circa ~2200, by the way, the book has Psi Cops brutally scan non-telepaths in public (two big no-nos) and nothing happens to them. Bester explicitly notes how much he appreciates this lol

everything is cramped and if you aren't working for Earth you've starved in living memory (the 2258 rebellion happened because the earlier food riots were brutally suppressed)

but everyone is walking around with 90s New York accents and with a lot of 1900s New York kitch in the touristy districts in the main city, near Armstrong Spaceport, and in New Vegas

and that's (part of) why Clark thinks Sheridan will support him when he appoints him to Babylon 5.

i think i found my new favorite artist on twitter