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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Give Lilly Wachowski Her 10 Fucking Million Dollars To Make A Movie What The Fuck Is Wrong With You You Stupid Cunts Like Hello She Made The Matrix Are You Dumb? Do You Not Like Good Shit?
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something i think worldbuilders struggle with a bit is recognizing that the world is always changing. nothing remains static. so if one worldbuilds the way a geopolitical landscape (or even just geographical landscape) to how it "is", instead of how it "is in one moment", things fall apart the moment they try to put a story in there
every bit of gold mined is gold is less gold in the earth. every building put up is a number of trees felled. every adult person is the output of countless vegetables, grains, and proteins which all came from somewhere. a person spends a life blacksmithing and develops a new technique to make nails with less injuries that gets passed down to descendants. a sailor gets off a ship in a foreign city and stays there for the rest of his life. we are, each of us, changing the world by our presence and necessarily changing as long as we're alive (and even after if we're being frank).
history cannot be static because life is not static. it's all just processes entangled in each other, and people are waveforms moving through it, being entangled and entangling in turn.
re: fanfiction being the only exposure to amateur writing I also just think people assign higher quality to trad published writing just because they think the gatekeeping system is good at vetting it, instead of coming to terms with the fact that gatekeeping system is in fact GATE-KEEPING a lot of good diverse stuff out of being published. And then they take that and apply to the self-published works.
We gotta abolish the "published means good/better" mindset literally it's feeding into so much of the way people subconsciously talk about art.
Even when you're "the chosen one" by the tradpublished vetting system. It's more of a finding a business partner, it's not about writing quality, it's more like "there is a market for what you're doing and we have access to some of the market. so we want to give what you make to the market while also cashing in on it". More experienced writers understand this of course.
But for an average tumblr user or amateur writer this all sounds like a headpat and validation that they're a good writer or more deserving. People constantly say why those fanfic writers don't put down the deals that come their way. And firstly... money of course whomst wouldn't take it (most would), secondly it is the institutaional headpats. That then feeds back into the fandoms via "if you write good enough you'll graduate into Serious Writing Table" and "your art counts only when it's published" and "if i become popular people will love me".
I can not overstate that you shouldn't get your validation from the same institution that wants to exploit you.
the problem with knowing things about battle tactics is that an ever-increasing subset of popular media becomes impossible to enjoy properly because you have to sit there like 'wow Captain Protagonist good to know all those dead people on your own side are a direct result of your total lack of anything resembling brains'
seriously i'm not talking about anything elaborate, just basic common sense, but common sense is so much harder to ignore once you've got systematized data to back it up, like
what do they even think a fortification is for???
what do you think a shield is for. what do you think ranged weapons are for????
make the other sonuvabitch have a hard time killing you without getting killed first! most basic goal of combat! why are movies so bad at writing characters who actually attempt this on even a very small 'army' scale?
and like i said in the first post, it's not just that it's Dumb, the thing is that once you put the character in a command role, their ability to think their way through a combat situation with some degree of optimization becomes a reflection on their character on like. a moral level.
if your tactics are dumb and reckless but you usually win and it's just you punching people that's one thing. or even if it's you and five guys who've decided they like how you roll!
but if you are put in charge of soldiers. and you throw their lives away because you don't know what you're doing. that's not okay.
it's not always avoidable! one of the basic problems with armies! but when it happens in fiction it needs to be on purpose, to make sure the military elements of the narrative remain thematically congruent.
when you have a bit where Main Character is in command and then makes avoidable bad decisions and people die who didn't have to. either the protagonist has been put in a horrific position by whatever authority figure thrust them into a role they didn't want and weren't competent to handle, without support.
or the protagonist, voluntarily assuming a management job they suck at, has committed a grievous harm against others by not recognizing their own limitations.
even if they win! i don't want to be watching a movie where the main character squanders every tactical advantage and loses 40% of their forces totally unnecessarily for Narrative Tension, but the enemy retreats or gets eaten by a dragon or loses the MacGuffin or whatever, and then there's triumphant music and a party because They Won!!!
no! they fucked it up is what they did! this is some Light Brigade gaslighting shit! shut up. our boy just massacred people who trusted him.
kind of a tangent but this is also how I feel when the good guys mow their way through dozens of faceless grunts and then suddenly the big bad in charge is the life they face a moral quandary over
the random foot soldiers and henchmen's lives matter too! tbh
I think it’s worth noting that history is littered with examples of wasteful tactics. A common element is that often times technology advances while tactics do not.
For example, in the American Civil War, the tactics used of soldiers, marching into open fueled, and exchanging musket fire was not all that different than the tactics of the American revolution a little under 100 years prior. However, the rifles that infantry men were armed with were significantly more accurate. As a result, casualties, both in terms of lives lost, and soldiers, injured were horrific.
The concept of trench warfare in World War I was not all that different from wars, fought all over the continent in the century prior, and were designed to try and curb advantages of cavalry. But again, of mortars, more accurate, rifles, and chemical warfare meant that charging trenches resulted in truly grotesque numbers of casualties.
There is certainly evidence that World War I era generals were fairly callous when it came to casualty figures. They were more interested in territory gained. And it mattered very little how many lives that cost since soldiers were replaceable.
I agree that there should be some narrative coherence when protagonist squander advantages due to bad tactics, but when you look at actual history, it’s very clear that even if there are “good guys“ and “bad guys“ in war, there’s also just a lot of waste. That doesn’t make for a very sexy narrative, but it’s the nature of the beast. Militaries in particular are conservative institutions slow to change. you do things a certain way because that is the way they are done. That will always get people killed. But that’s also excepted as the way things are done.
At the end of the day, I’m just not sure there is a good way to organize two groups of people trying to kill each other.
I think the more interesting question is, should there be?
i mean maybe, but that's not what the post is about, it's about fiction that places warfare centrally, but then engages with it only on an aesthetic level.
thereby creating major ruptures in the narrative logic and characterization for anyone who knows (for example) what the point of a wall is.
this is a writing complaint, about failure to adequately situate motive within character and maintain internal consistency.
i'm not going to ask every piece of fiction that wants to have swords in it to engage in a meditation on the nature of conflict. that sounds boring, and also like it's asking too much of people. i'm aiming way lower here.
the problem is a general failure to care enough about the battle as an event within a narrative to make the pieces go together according to an internal logic. people being dumb is fine as long as they're dumb on purpose. people not doing The Most Winning Thing is fine as long as the priorities they're supposed to have are the priorities they're actually displaying.
There's nothing more frustrating as an audience than being told "this person is a Good Person who Cares about their men and is also a Genius Tactician" and being shown a clown that never thinks before getting most of their people needlessly killed.
It turns out that if you do good research on an interesting topic, and write about it in a good and accessible way, and publish it where other people can see it, those people might develop an interest in your topic, and some of them will be inspired to seek out original sources and do their own research and build upon your work giving you due credit, but taking it in directions that would not have occurred to you, and then potentially eventually those new works might get published and end up in the public eye next to you.
If this happens, you can panic and tell everyone you've been plagiarized, or you can remember that this was the entire point of writing a book.
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Puck tells Guts that the death of two innocent bystanders wasn't his fault. Guts' reaction:
This is good shit! This is the point of writing and reading grimdark shit! (I have a strange horseshoe theory about how highbrow literary fiction gets to be dark if it wants to, and fairly lowbrow fiction gets to be grimdark as hell, but inbetween, in most subgenres of mainstream entertainment, it's much harder to justify.)
Lancelot Biggs' larynx descended suddenly and clopped me on the pate. I climbed out of bed weakly, bathed the resulting goose-egg in arnica, and spent the rest of the night studying, thoughtfully, the life history of an ancient sage known as Procrustes.
look i WISH more horror movies were just the directors thinly disguised fetish. instead we got all these horror movies that are just undisguised reflections of culturally hegemonic values and anxieties. like if we got some weird fetishes up in here it would probably add some variety thats all im saying.
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