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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Strictly speaking, "ultimate" means "last", not "best". It's often figuratively employed in the latter sense to suggest that the thing so described is the final word on the subject, after which nothing more need be said, but if we're being real technical, describing a game or movie that was so bad it killed its entire franchise as the "ultimate" is in fact correct.
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.
I've been thinking we should consolidate the Clouds Over Culat lore into one place because there's some fun stuff in there. I took down my twitter but perhaps I could find it in the giant zip file that I downloaded before I did so...
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a little obsessed with the story of how giacomo casanova was sharing a gondola with this random guy who suddenly started having a seizure, and casanova had some medical training so he stabilized the guy until the guy’s physician could be called. and then the physician bled the guy and put mercury ointment on him, which caused everything to get worse to the point that a priest was called to administer the guy’s last rites, but then casanova stepped in and washed off the mercury ointment despite the doctor yelling at him not to. and the guy recovered and turned out to be super rich and powerful and in gratitude bankrolled casanova’s debauchery for years until casanova got himself sentenced to five years in jail for blasphemy. also at one point he got shot through the hand in a duel and doctors wanted to amputate it but he said no it’ll be fine and it Was
so what i’m saying is a medical procedural show where the main character is giacomo casanova and he doesn’t want to be solving these medical mysteries but goddamn if he isn’t the only fucker in this room who knows how to not kill the patient. so i guess my date with this prussian chick will just have to wait
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Hi my name is Murderbot SecUnit Eden Security Consultant Rin and I have guns built into my arms and am a heartless killing machine (that's how I got my name) with hair that is definitely a color and eyes that are also probably a color and a lot of people tell me I look like Flight Commander Kogi (AN: if u don't know who he is get da hell out of here!). I'm not related to anyone because I am a bot construct but if I was I wouldn’t care if they were hot or not because sex is gross. I'm a SecUnit but my governor module is hacked and broken. I have vat-grown skin that I never describe the color of because I don’t care. I'm also a security consultant, and I go to a sentient university transport called Asshole Research Transport (Perihelion) in Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland where I'm in the ??? year (I'm indeterminate age because it’s confusing. do you count from my assembly date? or my last memory wipe? who fucking knows). I'm a SecUnit (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly clothes with pockets. I love Sanctuary Moon and I get all my ideas from there.
I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.
Give yourself the treat before you start. I'm serious. And ideally during the task and afterwards too.
Executive dysfunction comes from a lack of available dopamine. Common advice is wrong. You need to provide your own dopamine before you can start. Otherwise you're trying to run your car on empty.
"But what if I still don't do it" well you already weren't getting it done anyway. Now you have a little treat. Try again later.
You deserve kindness and care even when you aren't being productive.
(Also read How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis)
I give my students a LOT of techniques for starting writing when it feels overwhelming or daunting, but one of them is exactly this: dopamine load BEFOREHAND. It may sound weird to people on tumblr dot com, but a lot of people seriously struggle with executive dysfunction when it comes to writing literally anything, to the extent that it can cause such symptoms as panic, depression, and AI chatbot use.
I usually suggest this technique as a "Reverse Pomodoro." In the original Pomodoro, you work for 25 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes (the times vary, but that's the essential ratio). People with executive dysfunction often find this insurmountable, and they get even more frustrated, and then the task seems even more difficult. So instead, flip those times.
FIRST, spend 25 minutes doing something energizing and engaging that you like to do. Not scrolling social media passively, not watching tv, not napping. Try something like colouring, doing yoga, running/walking around the block, talking about your favourite tv show with someone in real time, playing with the dog or cat, making and eating a lovely sandwich, hula hooping, something active. Having a little treat absolutely falls in this category!
(on the subject of little treats: refusing yourself food until you do work is for fucking Puritans and you can be kinder to yourself)
Then, after 25 minutes (or however long it takes to eat the sandwich or finish the yoga routine, it doesn't have to be exact), spend 5 minutes writing (or doing whatever you're struggling to start). Most people can coax themselves into doing something they find difficult for five minutes, if they have already filled up the joy/energy/engagement bucket. You can put a timer on for the 5 minutes if you want, or if you find that annoying, just work for as long as you like.
The other key is: don't push yourself to keep going when you're frustrated or tired—that will just reinforce the negative belief that you already have, which tells you that this task is painful to do, and needs to be avoided. If you've commonly had to force yourself to do this kind of task, that's likely part of why you think of it as painful and have trouble starting it now. Also, you should just, at a basic level, try not to put yourself in pain for the sake of productivity. So just do it till the good feelings run out. Then start hula hooping or colouring again for another 25 minutes. When the tank's refilled, try another 5 minutes of work, if you can. Adjust times to taste.
Not every technique works for everyone, but I've seen this one work for many students who are genuinely and seriously disabled by executive dysfunction. And many people find themselves getting more and more excited and engaged in the "difficult" task—because the good feelings from the hula hooping carry over, and because they're suddenly able to do the task without feeling pain, and feel accomplishment without feeling pain.
sorry to everyone out there who thinks they have the funniest tshirt but i think i can confidently say i just saw the actual funniest tshirt just now. i passed by a beautiful black woman with long multicolor braids blowing majestically in the beach breeze & she was wearing an oversized tshirt that said in gigantic letters "WHITE BOY OF THE YEAR"
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I had another client today get confused and upset at how I labeled their final file.
(If you don't know already, I'm a graphic designer)
The filename was something like "ProjectnameFNL-BLEED-DIE.pdf"
I also named the email "Projectname Final File - Bleed & Die"
Now, for the non-designers out there, a bleed is how you get the picture to the edge of the page in a document. You can't just print an 8.5x11 page in that situation, you have to print a larger page, and trim it to 8.5x11, and that overprint that you cut down is called the "bleed".
Die is short for dieline. If you are printing something in a different shape than a cutter can make (basically anything without straight lines) then you need a die. A die also helps trim things a lot faster, some can do a hundred sheets at a time, as opposed to manually doing it (which I'm not even sure how you'd even do that)
In this situation, I was making a box. They are notoriously tricky, but I've done a bunch before. And the person I was dealing with was new, and she had to send along the final approval to her boss.
She wasn't rude, but was clearly uncomfortable in our meeting today. I really had to explain it to her, and said that these were industry standard things and her printer needs this info. I also have worked with her boss before and absolutely knew that they'd understand the terms.
This is a kind of sample of what I mean. The dieline is the pink line. It is where things will be cut. You can see that it is a special shape that can't just be cut out regularly.
Everything blue outside the pink line is the bleed. you won't see any of that in the final folded box.
And the white lines you see are just the fold lines. They are usually part of the die line, but have a different process to use them.
So yes. I had a client today assume I was telling her to bleed and die, and I had to explain that it was just print terminology and I'm not a psychopath.
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