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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In Rimworld I was just contracted to hold onto some prisoners for someone for awhile, very normal circumstance. Except that the idiots decided to stage a prison break one day before it was time to return them and I had to violently subdue them. So my neighbours handed me three prisoners in perfect health and a week later I hand them back with shattered noses and poorly bandaged head and chest wounds like. No this wasn't my fault. We're good people we run a good prison.
I did make them sleep on sandstone slabs and eat nutrient goo but in fairness the rock slabs are to make me need to break their noses less often, and everyone here eats nutrient goo. We're good people we run a good prison.
Prisoners have a prison break internal timer, and when it runs out they will attempt a prison break. The timer depends on things like how many prisoners there are, how healthy they are, and how many doors lead into the cells.
The timer only ticks down while a prisoner is awake -- it is paused while they sleep. So you can increase the amount of time before a prison break (and thus the amount of time before you have to crack them over the head with a mace until they stop moving) by making them sleep longer. This is done by giving them shitty beds made out of stone that reduces their sleep quality so they have to be in bed longer to rest up. Since prisoners only really need to be awake to eat and get brainwashed (I mean, chat companionably with the warden about which faction they should be working for and what they should believe, we're all friends here), there's no reason not to make their sleep as shitty as possible.
This is the kind and gentle way to keep prisoners contained and healthy btw. Mean players will often use the more direct and reliable "nugget pawn" method.
Rimworld is incredibly detailed in weirdly specific areas and incredibly basic and clumsy in weirdly specific areas and these mechanics clash in weird ways that make it... not impossible to Play Super Nice, but extremely limiting to do so. Unless you're specifically doing a Good Guy Run where you're deliberately avoiding most of the game options for personal challenge reasons, you kind of end up playing as a monster in some way or another.
I'm playing a pro human rights, pro individualist, technology-positive settlement, and stuff like the prison break mechanics are just. Fundamentally part of the game and almost impossible to avoid without extensive modding. (Avoiding taking prisoners at all except to medically treat and release them would be an example of a limitation in an aforementioned Good Guy Run.)
Once or twice I've done runs where I try to avoid breaking the Geneva conventions* and it is very hard to do so in rimworld. You need to give surviving enemies access to an alter of their ideology (impossible in vanilla), pay them (impossible in vanilla), avoid holding women in unisex cells (difficult to impossible in vanilla). And give them fancy cells, sufficient food, clothing, medical treatment etc.
It's also illegal to recruit them, you have to release them. And you can't release them normally, you have to send them back via drop pod. The only way to avoid this is to avoid taking prisoners at all, i.e. let downed enemies bleed/starve to death (which I suspect is itself a war crime but the mod doesn't consider it one so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). And then you have to dig them individual graves, because it turns out that cremating enemies is also a war crime unless they consented while alive (impossible in vanilla).
plus there's a bunch of sensible rules about how it's illegal to turn prisoners into organ farms or enslave them or dump toxic waste near other factions or raiding non-hostile work sites or destroy their brain to make a robot that e.g. burns enemies with hellfire.
* using a mod that lists detected Geneva convention violations and encourages you to get them all: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3339044171
I’ve seen a few “Here’s how to support writers” posts, so here’s one for your friendly neighbourhood podfic people!
Podfic is more well-known these days, but in case you haven’t come across it: think of it as fan-made audiobooks for fic.
If you like podfic and would like to help the people who make it make more of it, here are a few easy tips and tricks:
How to support podficcers as a writer:
Post a permission statement somewhere public! That can be your AO3 profile, your tumblr bio, the tags of your works… Preferably all of the above! You don’t have to give “Blanket Permission,” it can be an “ask first but I’ll probably say yes” or an “leave a comment and I will decide on a case-by-case basis” statement. Or even a “Blanket no” statement, which will spare the podficcers the time and energy to track you down and ask you, only to be told no thank you. If you want to be asked, though, make sure you specify an up-to-date way to contact you.
Share the podfic! If someone makes podfic of your work, the most helpful thing you can do as a writer is share it: accept the related work notification and add the “podfic & podficced works” tag on AO3, but especially share the link on Twitter, reblog the podficcer’s post, etc. You don’t have to rec the podfic or even listen if you don’t want to-it’s not expected of you! You don’t have to say anything but “Look, this exists!” Your audience as a writer is almost always much bigger than the podficcer’s own audience, so by sharing the post with your followers, you will help increase the podfic’s visibility and chances of getting feedback, which in turn will probably motivate the podficcer or inspire other podficcers to record more of your stories/your fandom.
How to support podficcers as a listener:
Give feedback! If you think writers get little reward for their efforts, oh boy do I have news for you about podficcers. There’s a bunch of reasons why it’s logistically harder to leave feedback on podfic (we’ve all downloaded and listened to something & then… forgot to come back….), and readers sometimes don’t know what to say. If you’re looking for inspiration or a place to start, here are some ideas for leaving podfic feedback: Podfic Feedback Toolbox by KLB, and some useful vocabulary to comment on podfic by yue_ix. Feedback on podfic is so rare that I guarantee you that every single kudos notification, comment, tweet, squeeing tags on a reblog, ask or nice AO3 bookmark is cherished forever.
Share the podfic and/or rec it! Maybe new people will be intrigued and give it a try, which will increase the demand, which will motivate your current podficcers and attract new ones, you know the drill.
In general, the more podfic-positive and responsive a fandom, the more podficcers will be attracted to it. So if you love podfic and would like there to be more… You know what you have to do :p
And if you’re new to the idea of podfic and don’t know where to start: There are more than 22,000 on AO3 right now, in a multitude of fandoms, ratings, lengths, voices and styles. You can usually stream them right on the page, and you can always download them to listen to later. It’s never been easier to have a fluffy ficlet keep you company while you do the dishes or to have someone tell you your favourite AU as a bedtime story.
And that’s it for me! Please share this post and feel free to add your own tips or ask questions if you have any. :D Thank you for reading!
#talking lettuce#naniteposting#chaoter 6 is done and its another kinda nothing chapter. but thas ok cuz 7 is gonna be a bigun i think#listen sometimes you have to have 1-2 thousand words putting your dominos in a row before you get to the fun part.#is what i hope is happening. i dunno. shurg.
there's something so deeply dystopian to me how tech companies don't understand that a forced convenience is not a convenience at all. i'm sure autocorrect is helpful for many, but a function that forcibly changes my actual written words and punctuation is taking away my language. photo filters can be nice but i need to choose using them myself or else i have lost the ability to take the picture i want. i don't want a machine to draw or write for me. taking away the option for me to do things manually feels like violence!!!! all this talk of endless opportunity, why are you RESTRICTING me
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Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.
Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.
I want you to understand this. I NEED you to understand this. My mother read me the hobbit as bedtime story, and I started pushing myself to read before pre-school so I could in fact read the hobbit for myself instead of having to wait for bedtime.
I didn't do so right away but jesus wept I PUSHED myself to learn to read SPECIFICALLY so I could read The Hobbit! It is, in fact, a children's story! And children only see page count as 'there is a lot of this fun story to read!'
{ID - tweet from mitski @/mitskileaks reads:
"life w mental illness=
50%act normal act normal b cool
15%if I jus went full crazy will they finally get it+let me b?
35%I'm in a hole I dug"
not a good person but not a bad person either. I can be a bitch but I’m very kind too. I’ll just never be as kind as I wish I was, but also not as bad as I fear I am
I think the best type of mutual is someone with whom you have 30% stuff in common about your preferred ship or preferred character but don't actively hate the rest of their their opinions. Have the same NOTP but you have kind of overlapping but different kinks. It's enough room for each of you to have your own thing and you come together to cook some filthy porn and end up with two very different fanworks. I call this enabler4enabler.
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The soundtrack to writing the latter half of Autonomous Systems includes a lot of techno, but the one I've listened to the most is Ben Prunty's "Respect the Crush Depth".
Why? Because aside from being really good techno, it's fucking stupid how quickly my executive function runs out on me at these lengths. It's a little like in climbing, when a difference of a few degrees can be annoying as fuck. In this case, a difference in complexity.
Case in point: me--forgets a line she's been setting up, spends two chapters writing without it, then a week trying to figure out if I can cram it in or if I need a major rewrite, only to come to the decision that no, probably not, at least not until the editing phase when I will need to take a look at this line and see if I'm keeping it at all, so I need to rewrite again. For fuck's sake!
But anyway. Good problem to have, I like having complexity problems. :P
I watched a bts clip on ST: Picard about how expensive things were and that’s why we get such short seasons now then the next clip was about how the starship prop models were plated in real gold.
Okay so step one: don’t plate props in actual gold. This will save at least several dollars.
Rewrites the night before filming happen and presuming the writers "did not have their shit together" shows a lack of understanding how tv works. These productions are behemoths with a cascade of moving parts and while sure, it could be because writers didn't have their shit together, it could also be because another facet of the show shifted for any number of reasons (lost a location, someone got sick, exec notes came in late, etc etc). I'm not here to defend the quality of the writing, I haven't seen Picard. But new lines the night before is not super abnormal. Unfortunate? Absolutely. But not unheard of. I have a lot of empathy for actors because of this, tv is typically go go go and shifts and changes will inevitably happen with time constraints that suck.
As for the budget, talent and marketing is where most of the budget goes. Gold foil is less expensive than one might think and isn't going to break the bank. Making specefic props with more care with the intent to sell them off is a way for the production to earn money back. In fact, selling off used props and whatnot happens for a bunch of different departments across the board. Hell, in LA, there's a secondhand clothing shop for clothing from film/TV sets. This is not inherently a bad thing.
If a studio or network complains that shows cost too much to make, they're usually pouring a good chunk into talent and marketing and then hating that they have to pay other labor costs (the horror of paying union workers fair wages!) Another reason is that they're not investing in assistants. Not only do these folks literally assist their departments, they gain valuable experience so that they have the right skills when they move to more senior positions. As assistant positions grow fewer, so too do we see a skill drain long term. So if you end up hiring a less than ideal person for say, line producing (tracking line items in budget), they may not be your first choice and just don't have the experience to do this well. We also see this on the studio/network side as it's become more common for assistants to juggle multiple bosses so these companies can "save money" so there are fewer people gaining the skills to one day run these departments and those who do have these jobs burn out and may even leave the industry entirely. I have friends both who have reached creative exec positions and also who have burnt out and left the industry entirely. All bright people who should have been treated more fairly.
The bloat of budget for above the line workers, particularly talent, creates rippling consequences. So too has the glut of money for C suite execs without support for their support staff.
Sorry if my response derailed what was essentially a shit post, but as someone who has worked in film/TV for the past decade, it's a bummer when people don't understand the complexity of how the industry works and place their ire towards departments who may not wholly deserve it. Of course, YMMV, and if any other film/TV people have differing experiences, I'd def be interested in hearing them.
in elementary school i figured out how to customize the classroom desktop's autocorrect to make Word change whole sentences. this made it appear almost like the computer was responding to you. you could, for example, type in "where did i put my keys", hit enter, and watch it switch to "you put them under the couch". this was before chatbots, and we were all 9 so i considered it closer to a magic trick than a tech one.
i immediately scripted out a dialogue exchange between me and a girl who had died by the swings (classic). i invited another student over and told them i had found a ghost, then proceeded to type out the pre-scripted exchange. i was immediately pulled into the counselors office. the kicker was that none of the adults could figure out how i did it. i had to show them the menu and everything.
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a folk song from chapayevka village, chornobyl region
this type of song is called голосіння (holosinnya — "keening"), and they are usually sang by women over the dead body during the period between death and funeral. in this song, the woman is mourning both her dead son, and the land that they were forced to leave due to the chornobyl disaster.
Tbh there is an overabundance of media about a nonhuman creature's deep desire and journey to become human, and so very few of the opposite
Many of those movies/shows are very good and I like them but the whole time I'm feeling like it's tragic in a way. The thought of a creature giving up its otherness to assimilate into humanity is really fuckin sad to me. Or a human getting the chance to be something else freaking out and rejecting it.
Just makes me feel all the more alienated, y'know. Like "damn why don't I relate to this allegedly universal enthusiasm for being human" and "why is the desire to be anything else always wrong"
