Somehow wound up mostly blogging about sci-fi and fantasy and writing bullshit, with the occasional "this I gotta see" and "don't do that, you will die". Also this is my "cool stuff" pile, no sideblogs, no sorting, abandon all hope you who enter here. Art on banner is "Sphinx's Day Off" by Sandara (https://www.deviantart.com/sandara/art/sphinx-s-day-off-179426159). Art on avatar is "Lost Track" by Aron Wiesenfeld (https://aron-wiesenfeld.squarespace.com/2018).
The Nameless Fanfic (6/7 stories written, 7th in draft): Masterpost
The Nameless Fanfic (AO3 series link) is a series of crossover fanfics for Time to Orbit: Unknown and The Murderbot Diaries. I post the rough drafts here as I write them, then edit them and post them on AO3. As of right now, I have stories 1 through 6 up on AO3, and I am working on the culmination of the last big story in this cycle. There are also standalone short stories from OC and other canon characters' perspectives.
Length-wise, this cycle is five novellas, two novels (final one in progress), and two short story collections. For The Murderbot Diaries, the story begins soon after Fugitive Telemetry and becomes an AU after System Collapse. For The Treegrave Chronicles series, this is a canon-compliant post-canon story to Time to Orbit: Unknown, which becomes a non-canon compliant AU from The Void Behind onwards. (VERY heavy spoilers for TTOU—if you don’t want to be spoilered on several major twists, get on the normal spaceship before reading!) Closer to The Murderbot Diaries than to TTOU on the sci-fi hardness scale. Point of view is primarily—but not always—SecUnit’s
Most of the rough drafts for these stories can be found by going down The Nameless Fanfic tag, but as this has already grown... Unwieldy, below the cut you will find AO3 links and blurbs. Enjoy!
Story 1: Connection Test Start (AO3 link)
SecUnit has told Senior Indah it is open to further work, but only if the work is really weird. So when a research transport from an unfamiliar non-corporate political entity called Trellin arrives at Preservation Station and starts throwing strange errors within seconds of contact, SecUnit is tasked with figuring out what the hell is wrong with that ship. (A lot. A lot is wrong with that ship. One, it’s not ART. Two, it’s kind of an asshole anyway. Three, it has feelings. And morals. And that last one might be the worst.)
Story 2: Formless and Vanquished We Shall Travel (AO3 link)
One Public Universal Friend runs a corporate blockade with a shuttle full of refugees, fully expecting to die in the process. Instead, it wakes up on an unfamiliar ship, with a bot pilot that informs the Friend that it is well aware of the Friends' existence and has helped it escape pursuit. In the Corporate Rim era, the Friends have been forced into becoming an underground operation, and they have few allies. Stranded, disoriented, and hounded by a corporation in possession of an anti-terrorism mandate, the Friend must deal with its situation and not sink its entire organization in the process.
Direct continuation of Connection Test Start.
Story 3: The Worst Movie Night (AO3 link)
The alien remnant contamination did far more damage to Perihelion's wormhole drive than anyone had initially realized, and the PSUMNT researchers are at a loss with how to solve the problem. But SecUnit and its Preservation humans have seen “super fast organic wormhole drives” before. With the reluctant permission of Perihelion's crew, a distress call is sent to Trellin, and three scientist teams, two sentient research transports, and one SecUnit convene to figure out how (and whether) ART can get its wings back.
Set after System Collapse.
Author's note: the main thing that you need to know about this story is that I started writing what I thought would be the NE analogue in this cycle, and it turned out to be SC: ART Edition instead. So expect a marked tone shift in comparison to the previous two stories, leaning towards introspection and existentialism. Also, altered states of consciousness.
Story 4: Roots and Branches (AO3 link)
Being responsible for the security of two separate groups of humans is hard enough when SecUnit knows and likes the ships they are travelling on. But once its humans arrive at the incredibly normal space station in orbit of Trellin, SecUnit finds their potential new allies to be much more difficult to deal with than most hostiles. To do its job, it must navigate local privacy customs, dead and/or naked humans, experimental biomes full of planetary fauna and, worst of all, the helpful local HubSystem, which happens to be a) very friendly, b) totally useless at security, c) really fucking creepy. Can SecUnit keep its humans safe and not be driven absolutely beeshit by argumentative social scientists, HubSystem or human, along the way? It’s about to find out.
Direct continuation of The Worst Movie Night.
Story 5: Digging in the Dirt (AO3 link)
Following the events of Connection Test Start, one doctor from Preservation Alliance decides to make things right and sets out for the Corporation Rim, hoping to unearth and eventually bring to justice a certain humanitarian-cum-terrorist organisation. Utterly unprepared for the reality of the Rim, the good doctor finds far more horrors than they ever bargained for—but also many more friends than they expected. Nobody is what they seem to be, and now Dr. Mrinal must decide what to do with what they have discovered and live with their choice.
Direct continuation of Connection Test Start and Roots and Branches.
Story 6: Mitigating Circumstances (AO3 link)
When the Second Great Ship of the Arborea Cosmica fleet, Dandelion Tenacious, commits a series of crimes that could lead to her being decommissioned under fleet law, two of the youngest generation of ships are raffled in to lead the investigation and present its results to the rest of the fleet. In a community of fewer than fifty individuals, bias and personal tensions are unavoidable in any court case, and the trial of someone who was a major contributor to the fleet legal system was never going to be a simple affair—but Prosecutor Nike and Advocate Blaze, two New Texan sisters with very different relationships to the first generation of Arborean ships, never expected to face off against each other in a precedent-setting case involving a critical political alliance, ancient history, and obscure theology. Now they must chart a course to steer Arborea Cosmica for decades and centuries to come, and the currents they must navigate are far more turbulent than they ever imagined.
Thematically follows Roots and Branches and takes place during Network Effect.
Short stories, collected as Voices From the Pegasus Constellation (AO3 link)
A collection of short stories portraying some of the events of The Nameless Fanfic from the perspectives of Trellians (and other members of Starwind Accord). Character tags updated as stories get published.
Note that these short stories are placed in different points of the main continuity and are best read one at a time! Links to the relevant stories are given chronologically in the main storyline.
Right now, this includes:
Chosen Burdens (Captain Reed) - after s2ch5, "Verdict"
ship's haunted (Navigator Brisote) - a view of s3ch4-5
Cultural Significance (Senior Engineer Haze) - between s3 and s4
what's in a name (Senior Computer Technician Iceblink) - after s5ch18, "Preparation"
Losing Starlight (Dandelion) - during s5ch24, "Beeshit".
Massacre (Blaze) - during s4ch30, "Preparations"
Medicine From Your Hands (Aspen) - after s4ch41, "Puppetry"
As Above, So Below (Ruby) - technically set between chapters 44 and 45 for Roots and Branches (s4), but probably a good post-epilogue read
Axiom (Ghostwheel) - set between chapters 44 and 45 of Roots and Branches (s4ch44-45), best read after Digging in the Dirt chapter 7 (s5ch7), "Monster."
Group Therapy (Joscelyn) - best read after s6ch12, "Trial Eve," but chronologically set after chapter s6ch8, "Saint"
There is also an equivalent collection from the points of view of various TMBD characters, Voices from Preservation Alliance and PSUMNT (AO3 link).
Little Miracles (Ratthi) - set during s4ch13, "Visage", but best read after s4ch31, "Chief". Note that this contains mild Aspen/Ratthi smut (because they are nerds).
People Worth Knowing (Mensah) - the events of Connection Test Start from Dr. Mensah's perspective. Functionally a prequel to s6.
Death Penalty (Pin-Lee) - best read after s6ch9, Evidence.
Inaugural Rites (Ratthi) - chronologically between chapters 44 and 45 of Roots and Branches (s4ch44-45), best read whenever you want to learn specifics about how this is an AU from TVB. Same as before, mild Aspen/Ratthi nerd smut included.
There are more short stories in the tag, but they're not quite edited yet and also a little bit ahead of the currently posted storyline. I will update them as I go!
Extras:
A series that stands slightly aside from the rest is Interesting Biomes (AO3 link). This is the full-smut version of Ratthi's chapters, plus an extra sketch. Having two versions available is mostly for reader preference, because I'm writing in two "complicated relationships with smut" fandoms.
If you're the sort of person who likes comparing text versions, some old chapters are up on the nameless fanfic: deprecated tag.
I also occasionally post music, pictures, reference materials, etc on the nameless fanfic: supplemental and music I write to tags. This is mostly for my own convenience, but if you're the sort of person that enjoys finding new music or something that way - enjoy!
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I don't know who needs to hear this, but the magic ratio for ganache (a firm one, such as you would use to make truffles or enrobe a cake) is 1 tablespoon of heavy cream per one ounce of chocolate. Chop the chocolate (or use chips), then boil the cream, immediately pour it over the chocolate, and whisk until smooth. People get so impressed whenever I make ganache but it is literally so easy. When it's freshly made you can dip fruit or cookies in it or use it to fill doughnuts, and if you let it cool and harden somewhat you can roll spoonfuls into balls to make truffles or use it as a filling for sandwich cookies. Also if you're feeling gremlinous you can just eat it with a spoon.
Important addendum I discovered last year: the above is the magic ratio specifically if you are using dark chocolate (which I always was because it's my favorite). The process is the same, but for milk chocolate the ratio is 1 tablespoon of heavy cream per 1.5oz of chocolate and for white chocolate it's 1 tablespoon of heavy cream per 2oz of chocolate. This is because milk and white chocolate have less chocolate per chocolate so they behave differently. Now you know. Go forth and make delicious ganaches.
What would The Traitors be like on Cardassia? I reckon it’s called The Order, and there are 3 people who are secretly designated dissidents, unknown even to each other. Everyone else is with the Order, and it’s their job to hunt down the dissidents. At the round table everyone gets a turn to denounce someone else, and the person with the most denunciations is exiled.
The dissidents have never won, in more than 25 seasons of The Order. Everyone knows it’s a massive fix but obviously nobody says so. It’s the third most watched show on Cardassia Prime after Clouds Over Culat and Real Housewives of Lakarian City.
Yes but they are tremendously serious and ponderous programmes about the importance of marriage and the family. Everyone secretly finds them very dull but they watch dutifully so that they’re not caught out by Order informants and get a reputation for being anti-family.
after the reconstruction do they bring these back? is it a huge scandal when they include a "non-Cardassian" on the dating shows (they're still Cardassian but like maybe 1/4 Bajoran or something not even obvious)? Is the first season the dissidents win on the reconstructivist The Order a huge hit?
They come back full pelt with a series set on Risa and loads of aliens and the ensuing political firestorm collapses the conservative coalition in the Assembly enabling Castellan Ghemor to repeal Dukat's pre-war pro-family legislation. There are rumours that Ghemor's shadowy "fixer" Elim Garak advised the show's producers but surely that's the Ses'erakh gossip machine working overtime.
The dissidents winning The Order is indeed a massive hit, one of the most watched events on Cardassia in a generation, outmatched only by the first time Clouds Over Culat airs after the Fire, a Cardassian cultural moment as significant as Dirty Den serving Ange the divorce papers in the Christmas Eastenders or the wedding of Charles and Lady Di.
Mr "Fixer" Garak is too busy fanning the political wildfires back in the capital, but he's getting hourly updates via his spy, i.e. one of the production runners.
I would like to think Ghemor made him trek out there at least once for a personal touch given the "importance of this production to the soul of the union and potential future intergalactic relations". This is an obvious ploy to try and get the man to relax for the first time in his life. It, crucially, does not work
The travel is exhausting; the hotel is noisy; everyone else there is young and hooked up with someone gorgeous; he's only been home for ten minutes and they're sending him off again; it's very Federation and, yes, this makes him pine for Bashir...
Plus all the federation twinks (who remind him too much of Bashir) keep trying to call him daddy and do border wars RP with him. He's too old for this.
He looks cute in his cardassian-equivalent kaftan and sunhat, at least
Clouds Over Culat is the great Cardassian telenovela created by me and @planetarywanderer on Twitter during lockdown! A multigenerational soap opera. A truly significant piece of Cardassian culture. Everyone watches it, even those who pretend not to.
Good question. I think it’s run for so long it’s been all these things over the years, and everyone has their favourite era. Except that patch of a few months with the hound-racing subplot, everyone hated that.
I personally am a huge fan of the dramatic zoom-ins on CoC. But regular and attentive viewers know to watch carefully when an expensive big white skimmer appears on screen. The producers bought one and filmed it crashing over a cliff and exploding. Now they use that footage whenever they can to save money. Whenever someone climbs into a big white skimmer your pulse races. Of course some people walk away from the explosion without a hair out of place. Scheming matriarch Mathra Fereny has done so three times, although one husband didn’t make it. But it turned out he was already married and it still isn’t clear whether or not Mathra knew and crashed the skimmer deliberately. That was her fourth husband unless you count the one she remarried in which case he’s her fifth. I refer you to the fan forum discussion threads: beware, they’re inhabited by some pretty formidable experts on the history of Cardassian enjoinment laws, both professionals and auto-didacts.
The skimmer has its own dedicated subforum on the biggest fan site and people regularly post pictures of themselves with skimmers of the same make. All location data monitored by the Order of course. Someone got into big trouble for selling off what they claimed was pieces from the wreck of the original skimmer. They were going for mad prices before the investigation got underway.
Incredibly, the actual skimmer was tracked down postwar to a quarry two hours outside Ses’erakh by former Order filing clerk Akem Retel, and is now held in pride of place at the Culat Museum of Popular Culture, opened by Castellan Garak in 2388,
History of enjoinment laws? I love fandoms where people get to whip out their legalese and knowledge of laws, we need more of that. (My inner lawyer is made happy.)
The exploding skimmer made me think of a particular Polish soap on which they killed off a character by having her crash her car into a stack of cardboard boxes. She died on the spot*.
Mhm. Does COC involve crazy plots about long-lost siblings and illegitimate and/or swapped and/or stolen children or does the state family propaganda forbid that? Post-war, do we start getting more craziness in family trees?
Also: who is that one character that regularly gets killed and then miraculously comes back, "bitch you thought you'd seen the last of me" style and is it Mathra's niece?
Death by cardboard boxes, you will always be famous to me.
The plots are insanely crazy because they distract from the actual real-life hypocritical shenanigans of the Cardassian elite. As long as everything eventually resolves within the law.
One of the longest-standing actors (played Mathra’s second husband, she was his third wife) foolishly confused his fame with reality and was embroiled in a real-life marital scandal with a girl young enough to be his daughter. Wasn’t seen on screen again. Or off.
The show picks up exactly where it left off with absolutely no mention of the Fire. The characters have almost all been entirely recast (for obvious reasons), but this isn't out-of-place for a show that regularly did Miss Ellie style recasting, multiple times with some characters. The actress who played Mathra Fereny, who was very badly injured at the end of the war but survived, returns for a special one-off appearance as the character's even more scheming mother. There isn't a dry eye throughout the Cardassian Union.
You'd think there might have been some difficulty piecing together all the details of the years and years of prior and very complicated narratives, but as luck would have it, a full archive existed off-world. This was returned from its anonymous owner via a very strange route: a gift from Grand Nagus Rom to the Cardassian people. The special role of the Ferengi people in preserving this unique piece of Cardassian cultural heritage was later recognised by a series of crossover episodes with their equivalent show, Love's Latinum's Lost.
Yes, one big difference is that the new show has offworlder characters, many of whom are associated with the Federation relief mission. There are dramatic storylines around bringing home an offworlder as a potential spouse, but these characters quickly settle in as part of the core cast. Particularly popular is the handsome young human doctor, the show's most eligible bachelor.
A few old-school fans at first complain that the revived show is a little too self-aware and has become far too well-made. But people always complain when a long-running show gets a refresh. And when some of the young directors who cut their teeth on NuCoC go on to start picking up prestigious awards at offworld film festivals, all is forgiven and forgotten.
The only acknowledgement of the Fire is completely symbolic: the opening of the revived show begins with a pan shot across a dusty Ses'erakh, coming gradually closer and closer to a lamppost on the Veterans' Bridge. There we find the beautiful young female lead looking sadly out across the river. Footsteps. She turns, to see her young man, in uniform, approaching. He breaks into a run and when he reaches her, they embrace. Cue theme tune and the legendary logo: CLOUDS OVER CULAT. (Yes, Clouds Over Culat is not always set in Culat. Don't look for consistency.)
This meeting place on the bridge is such a staple of Cardassian romantic literature and particularly visual narrative that it's become a scorned cliché. This time everyone bawls.
The theme tune in my head sounds a bit like the Crossroads theme tune, but you might have something else going on.
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So I'm reading Maskerade to my kids (they love Pterry) and there's a bit where a swan (just before it dies) sings a line from a made-up opera (called Lohenshaak). The song is called the Pedlar's Song and it's in whatever the Discworld equivalent of German is: Schneide meinen eigenen Hals... So one of my sons, just for funsies, decides to find out what the German actually means.
It means Cut My Own Throat. Because it's the PEDLAR'S SONG.
Terry Pratchett put a CMOT Dibbler reference into a song for a throwaway scene for a swan, in German. And I never knew because I don't speak German.
Did you know?? Anyway, gnu Terry Pratchett and the joy of jokes for their own sake even if only a small fraction of the readers ever notice.
Terry's work is full of this stuff, where not knowing doesn't affect the story but knowing adds an extra sparkle.
Take Lord Vetinari *, for instance, whose youthful nickname was "Dog-botherer" - not "God-botherer" because on the Discworld someone like that is a Gods-botherer so nobody on Cori Celesti feels left out - and is absolutely not the equivalent of the Roundworld's Lord Medici, who didn't bother dogs or gods but was a bit of a problem for the Pope.
* Explanation for US readers: animal doctors over here aren't "Veterinarians" but "Veterinary Surgeons", and the V-word is often pronounced Vitin'ry...
Then there are the two rival noble families called the Selachii and the Venturi, which doesn't matter at all unless you know those names translate as the Sharks and the Jets...
L-Space and Discworld Wiki are the places to learn more, lots more, but - like TVTropes - they've got so much cross-referenced information that they're real time-and-tab sinks, so set a timer before you start...
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If I’ve learnt anything from my contact with the bdsm community, the poly community, the geek community and the atheist community is that any social group who claims to “not to be like other groups” and to be"accepting and safe for all" is going to spend a lot of energy hiding the predators within the community and silencing abuse survivors.
if nothing else, its a basic tolerance paradox: if you are tolerant of everyone, you will eventually become tolerant of intolerance. if you are safe for ‘everyone’ you are by definition safe for predators. its actually really good to discriminate and put rules and lines in the sand down, and expel people who break/cross them.
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