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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When I was eight or so years old, I met Nico Marlet.
I was deep in the How to Train Your Dragon special interest, I was drawing dragons incessantly, and my mom had a friend who, at the time, worked at DreamWorks. So she got us in for a tour of the studio, and I got to go into his office and meet Nico Marlet.
He was a very kind and earnest sort of man and immediately went about showing me all these things he'd worked on and WAS working on (I think this was 2011 or so. HTTYD 2 had not yet been announced, but it was in production, so all this was heavily proprietary). He showed me sketches of all these fantastical new dragon species that would be in the second movie. I believe he mentioned Hiccup's mother in passing.
But what I remember most clearly is this mental image of seeing early concept sketches for Hiccup's glide suit, and Nico eagerly explaining to me, "He is going to fly."
In my head I can still hear that in his voice.
I don't know if he even remembers me, but I remember that little office overflowing with sketches. I was eight then. I didn't understand the scope of what he was doing. I'm twenty-two now and I'm beginning to understand the worlds that he must have been shaping in his mind. I'm beginning to understand the sheer unique power he had to put life behind the eyes of a concept. Even if he never knows, I know I became an artist because of Nico.
Here's to the man who told me without ever meaning to tell me that it was possible to fly.
In the summer of 1940, Paris fell under Nazi occupation. German soldiers marched through the boulevards, and swastika flags replaced the vibrant café illuminations that had defined the City of Light.
Yet, the beautiful Josephine Baker continued to captivate the French capital.
Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, she was an African American dancer and singer who had risen to stardom in Europe during the 1920s.
To the Nazis, she appeared as little more than an entertaining celebrity, fixated on glamour, performances, and luxury.
This was a grave error on their part.
Baker deeply opposed the Nazis’ ideology of racial superiority, brutality, and discrimination, views shaped by her own experiences of racism in the United States.
When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, she was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, France’s military intelligence agency, as an “honourable correspondent”. She agreed without hesitation, driven by loyalty to the country that had embraced her.
As part of the French Resistance, Baker operated openly rather than in secrecy. She frequented high-society gatherings at embassies and salons, mingling with Italian diplomats, Japanese officials, and German officers.
These figures spoke candidly in her presence, sharing details of military strategies, troop positions, and alliances.
Baker committed this intelligence to memory, then relayed it to her contacts.
Smuggling the information posed significant risks, with borders tightly controlled and luggage routinely inspected. However, her status as an international star allowed her to travel extensively with trunks of costumes and stacks of sheet music.
She concealed sensitive data by writing it in invisible ink on her sheet music, which appeared innocuous to inspectors.
Her fame often spared her thorough searches; border guards frequently requested autographs instead. In this way, she transported crucial intelligence across Europe and into North Africa, where she also entertained Allied troops, sometimes performing atop military vehicles in the desert while clad in elegant attire.
During the war, Baker suffered a severe illness, likely peritonitis, which hospitalised her in Casablanca from 1941 to 1942. Even then, she persisted, using her recovery period to host Resistance meetings.
After the war’s conclusion in 1945, France recognised her contributions. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance, and General Charles de Gaulle named her a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, the nation’s highest civilian honour.
Baker passed away on 12 April 1975, at the age of 68, following a cerebral haemorrhage. Her funeral at L’Église de la Madeleine in Paris drew over 20,000 mourners, and she received full French military honours, including a 21-gun salute.
She was the first American-born woman to be accorded such a tribute.
Josephine Baker’s story illustrates a profound truth: underestimation can prove to be a formidable adversary’s undoing.
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The fine balance of "yeah the POV character probably knows that tertiary side-character's name, so you might as well use it in the narration" vs "this cast has 2837771 characters already and the reader does NOT need another one"
many sharks are at least moderately social, and if a specific species of shark has the ability to breathe without actually swimming and tends to have a lot of sharks in a fairly small area, well.
they are just going to Pile. and there is simply nothing you can do about it.
also, fun fact! whitetip reef sharks in particular are SO damn cuddly with each other that they'll actively seek out a buddy or ten when they get sleepy!
it's pretty much slumber party or nothing for these guys. you won't find a whitetip sleeping alone except in the most dire and tragic of shark circumstances.
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Holy shit the US Military tested an experimental GPS jammer and caused a civilian plane crash that kills everyone on board in May.
A days-long electronic warfare drill was one of the causes behind the loss of a four-passenger medevac flight.
When the Federal Aviation Administration shut down air traffic to El Paso Airport earlier this year, nobody could have guessed than an experimental high-energy laser weapon was the cause. After days of chaos and speculation, it was revealed that Customs and Border Patrol officials had fired off a laser volley from a US Army base adjacent the El Paso Airport.
Though the trigger-happy Border Patrol grunts evidently thought they were firing at drug-smuggling drones, their real target turned out to be a kids’ party balloon. Regardless, it was later reported that the cutting-edge weapon was taken for a test-drive a week before FAA and Pentagon officials had a chance to discuss how to safely implement the laser device, making it a small miracle that nobody in the air was killed.
Not every use of an experimental aerospace weapon goes off without a hitch, however.
New bombshell reporting by Wired reveals an incident in which the testing of an experimental GPS jammer resulted in a medical plane crashing into the side of a mountain.
People really need to take a wider view of this paranoia about age gaps and realise this is how we lose the ability to build communities. You need to be able to realise that people can have things in common with you even if they grew up in a different time/place/culture. You also need to realise you can build communities with people who don’t have obvious things in common with you, that people can have the same goals and needs as you even if in most ways they’re very unlike you. Now, more than ever, we need to be able to work together to have any chance to stand ip against the few who have so, so much more power, money and influence than any of us do individually. We need to form communities that reach across age (and class and race and sexuality and so on…).
I... I have coworkers who are from 26 to like. 56. we have work in common?? the work we all do?? together?? commonly? all of us, at all of our ages???
Also I don't care what I have in common. I can strike up a conversation over plenty of shit I don't have in common. That's how you exchange information on topics. Learn To Ask A Question And A Follow-Up Question.
do these people not talk to their family members?
I mean my niece and nephew are some of the coolest people out there and they are 30 years younger than me.
Do they have nothing in common with their parents or aunts and uncles?
My community elders in the fiber community are awesome and I have learned so much from them. And regularly do social things together.
Also not for nothing but. I was 26 once. for a whole year. we have 25 years prior to that in common as well, I was all those ages too.
ALSO also not for nothing but............... you can have conversations with people who have little in common with you. That is, in fact, a GREAT way to learn about things you don't know about, at any age.
If you only ever associate with a narrow age range of your peers, chances are actually a lot higher than you won't have anything EXCEPT your age in common, as people are vastly varied in their interests and hobbies and knowledge. Going online may HELP to find people in a narrow age bracket but a) people generally aren't yelling their age from the rooftops and b) are you going to exclude someone you have a lot in common with just because they're a bit older or younger than you?
And I DO mean "a bit." The difference in age between 26 and 32 is six damn years. My youngest sibling is 5 years younger than me. I'm currently 41, and my neighbors down the street are in their 60s. They've got 20+ years on me, and we talk all the time about raising fowl and life problems and what's going on in our lives. Outside of farming, we don't have a ton in common, but that's actually great! I love to hear about whatever nonsense is going on in their lives that isn't going on in mine. The things we don't have in common are just as interesting as the things we do.
Like it just astounds me that people think like the OG tweet up there. Have you metamorphosed into someone so completely different in just 6 years that you can no longer relate to anyone that age ever again? You cannot think of one single thing that you might be able to talk about with someone of an age you practically just were? Like I know a lot can happen in 6 years, believe me, and idk about anyone else, but I certainly haven't blacked out and woken up a brand new me who doesn't remember what was happening 6 years ago. I have have hobby projects I'm still currently working on that are older than that. Yeesh.
a thought popped into my head while reading platform decay. secunit would probably attempt to smile on purpose at this point (if it felt it was appropriate for the situation). however, i think in a stressful situation (most situations for it unfortunately) it would come out looking like those little kids who have never been asked to smile for a camera before and just bare their teeth
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You once wrote about how any definition of humanity that we try to create always ends up excluding a group of people. Ex., defining humanity by empathy or compassion, excludes people who lack empathy, like sociopaths or autistics, etc. I searched your substack and couldn't find the article where you explored this idea. Maybe it was just on a story post? I am helping write a cyberpunk burlesque show, and we are each writing monologues to perform and themes to explore. I really want to explore this idea you wrote about and share it with my troupe! Could you share where you wrote about this idea so I can share it <3 <3 thanks <3
Gosh, probably an Instagram grid post in like 2022 or something. It is a bit of a spin on this line from Zizek's Pervert's Guide to Ideology that always stuck with me:
"Whenever an ideological text says: 'All humanity: unite in brotherhood, joy, and so on', you should always ask: 'Okay, but are these all really all, or is someone excluded?'"
It is also just my response to how faulty all human definitions of 'humanity' are, even relative to other animals. Human scientists and philosophers keep trying to find qualities that distinguish us from animals but that comes from the faulty premise that we must be somehow special. and so we work backward from that assumption and grab onto anything that we can squint and say is just ours-- only we have language, for example, even though many animal species demonstrably have language, or only we make tools (do many animals), or only we show altruistic care/empathy/whatever. Lots of animals do all those things, and not all humans do. So what is it about being a human that feels so special and so conditional that we would even exclude other humans for the sake of making sure we are distant enough from other animals?
It is pretty funny to hear about this New Problem that we've been facing for the last 10 years and then read a book from 1910 where they complain about the same thing. Unfortunately common.
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