grammarpedant

[grammarpedant]

Short tales from the hangar.

Yes, infantry do get crushed underneath the feet of the 'mechs, and yes, the pieces do have to be hosed off, but sometimes there is a frankly statistically improbable number of limbs grasping at you from the slurry of gore.

Everyone knows the one about opening the cockpit and finding the pilot had to have been dead for hours. That's nothing. Sometimes you find pilots who are alive, horribly alive, howling and laughing through teeth like a jackal's, drooling blood.

I hated that 'mech. Hated how many had died in it, and it still alive, each shine of joint or gunmetal suggesting a smug little grin. It got repaired. Pilots can't be. "I came back and they didn't," it seemed to say. But hearing it snickering to itself, one night, alone in the hangar, that was too much. And they can keep me locked up, call me psychotic, but that 'mech will never laugh at anything again.

Mercenaries don't size each other up. They sit down and eat together, share tales and trade trinkets of old campaigns. Then a week later they blast each other into charred scraps of flesh for a thick wad of bills, and just keep sharing coffee and old tales with the next ones they meet, without so much as a flicker in their eyes.

Do not open the cockpit on that one. I mean it, orders straight from the top. Keep it sealed, replace compromised armor, refill ammo, standard reactor check, but do not open the cockpit. If the pilot asks you to, ignore them.

One officer comes through for an inspection. Then another. Then another. Each one, it seems, with a firmer set in the jaw, a prouder tone, a cheek sunken deeper with long nights of command. Some with more medals, some with more eyes, some with opalescent wings or grimy foot-long claws.

They said he was a curse. Every 'mech his hands touched ended up as so much scorched shrapnel. So they chained him up, hands fastened in place with makeshift cuffs, and they fired up that reactor as high as it went, and they watched while his cursed hands cooked, roasted, to bones and ash.

If anybody leaves the hangar, whether it's a single patrol 'mech or a full strike force, and then- a little while later -a 'mech comes in (dusty, grey-white), hose it down, refill the ammo, and flag it back out. Whoever went out died in their cockpits; at least they fought instead of ejecting.

If you work in a hangar for too long, it starts to follow you around. Metal fork in the mess hall staining your meal with joint oil. Armor plates falling off trees in autumn. Stare into the mirror as you brush your gleaming autocannon shells and see a pair of smooth ball bearings staring back at you.

You load a missile pod, and feel childhood homes bursting in a spray of vaporized brick. You rewire the lasers and feel each scything burst, each wound, each widow. You polish the viewport. You can't see your own face in it; a decrepit, jawless skull looks back at you. Things make more sense now.

[grammarpedant]

Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head.

[grammarpedant]

“Do not unsheath me without reason. Do not wield me without valor.”

inscription on the sword of a Giovanni della Bande Nere statue on the facade of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

[grammarpedant]

Today, the Federal Trade Commission launched a public inquiry to better understand how consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about “gender-affirming care”, especially as it relates to minors, and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing. In a Request for Information, the FTC encourages members of the public to comment on any issues or concerns that are relevant to the FTC’s consideration of this topic, including by submitting any written data, advertisements, social media posts, disclosures, or empirical research.

The public will have 60 days to submit comments at Regulations.gov, no later than September 26, 2025. Once submitted, comments will be posted to Regulations.gov. Individuals wishing to submit confidential, non-public comments should reference the alternative submission guidelines in the RFI. 

[grammarpedant]

hikawu

[grammarpedant]

*said with so much love in my heart that it's full to bursting* hey I had a lot of fun last time would you like to hang out again sometime soon? :)

[grammarpedant]

one of the most important things, perhaps the most important thing I have learned in my life is that nice people can fuck each other up in monstrous ways. people can be bone deep kind and loving and self reflective and still lash out under pressure. people can be earnestly neighbourly and charitable and hospitable and generous and still find themselves in situations where they become selfish. people can be well meaning and easygoing and gregarious and hold deep seated opinions that turn them into vicious little bullies under the right conditions. nobody is just one thing, and nobody stays one way. every person is a kaleidoscope and they will surprise you. you will surprise yourself. it's not a warning and it's not a judgement and it's not an excuse, and it's certainly not a reason to stop trying or to stop trusting. it is just a fact.

[grammarpedant]

i’m gonna say something that doesn’t feel good but you might need to hear it: bending over backwards being a people-pleaser, being conflict averse and not telling anyone your needs, and then being resentful and upset when your needs aren’t met is a You problem first

[grammarpedant]

to combat the growing sentiment that adolescent sexuality is unnatural or somehow damaging can we all be honest for a sec about jerking off

[grammarpedant]

Mensah and mb in exit strategy r so fraught but also so tentative with each other and it gets me so goofy floating facedown in a pool.jpg

[grammarpedant]

murder is ok

[grammarpedant]

new tag game: the thing you most often pretended to be as a kid—whether it was a horse, a bride, a queen, a specific character, a knight, a lawyer, a baby, anything—is symbolically representative of you currently. what is it for you?

[grammarpedant]

Signups are now open for the October 27 issue; the text deadline for the issue is Tuesday, October 14 and the art deadline is Saturday, October 25.

Please reply to this post if you plan to submit a story or artwork for this issue, indicating whether you are interested in contributing to the issue as an author and/or artist, and whether or not you are looking for a collaborative partner. As always, you don’t have to sign up to participate, and you’re not creating an unbreakable contract by signing up, but it’s always a good idea!

This issue’s theme is The Old Ways: Is that a wicker man in your pocket, or are you just happy to see our traditionally spooky October issue enter the realms of folk horror?

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THIS ISSUE: While the general SSBB vibe is always one of happy endings, we ease off that a little bit for our October issues. Of course, warm fuzzies and happily-ever-afters still absolutely have a place in this round! But if you feel like taking things to a slightly darker/more ambiguous place for a change, this is the issue to do that.

Quick Answers: Interested in participating but don’t know where to start? Bring your quick questions here!

Submission Guidelines for Fiction: All the specifics for text submissions. READ BEFORE SUBMITTING.

Submission Guidelines for Art: Whether you’re illustrating or submitting a standalone piece, here’s what you need to know.

Find the Shousetsu Bang*Bang community on Discord! Join us on our very own server for discussions, inspiration, shop talk, silliness, and other behind-the-scenes fun.

For related nonsense, announcements, and various goings-on, find us at our main website, Bluesky, Mastodon, Plurk, and Tumblr. We have pages at Smashwords and Itch.io where you can download ebook versions of past issues for free. Check our Linktree for all these links and more!

Receive reminders and deadlines by email by signing up for our newsletter! We promise: no spam, only porn.

To make sure you don’t miss a single deadline, click here for our Google calendar with the dates pre-loaded.

[grammarpedant]

Visual novel where the central problem is that the narrator is too reliable, and you can only pursue courses of action which conform – however thin the technicality – with what they say is happening.

[grammarpedant]

Ice Age Story vocabulary of the day: ésha, shaba, and na’íni.

This Paleolithic community has three clans: the Cave People, the Water People, and the Forest People. Each clan typically has 30-some people at any given time. The clans spend winters apart, and then in the summer they converge on the shore of the sea and spend summers together. They each have specific history and rituals and stuff, but clans are also the primary structure of social/familial organization. 

Children born into a clan are raised communally by the clan. Clans are matrilineal and matrilocal. Having sex with anyone born to your own clan is hugely taboo: it’s incest.  Thus, clans are exogamous: you marry someone from another clan.

Well, “marry” is… a difficult word. It’s a committed sexual/emotional partnership*, but it’s not marriage per se. But there’s a promise of loyalty, affinity, and more than anything, switching clans. And that’s where the words ésha and shaba are significant.

*except in the free-love summer reunions where you can do what you want, have sex with other people if you feel like it, and decide whether to stay in your partnership or dissolve it and do something else.

The ésha is the spouse that stays with her clan. The shaba is the spouse that leaves his clan to join his ésha’s clan.

And usually, the genders do break down this way: the man is expected to move to live with the woman’s clan. There are gendered expectations to the terms ésha and shaba, but they aren’t hard and fast rules. Same-sex partners, for example, are freely accepted, but there is still an ésha and a shaba because someone has to decide where to move. Multi-partner groups are also freely accepted, usually consisting of an ésha and two shabálé, or a setup of two éshálé and two shabálé in a sedoretu-like arrangement (called a nákosha). Weirder arrangements, like a female shaba who goes to join her male ésha’s clan, or a pair of partners who both leave their clans to join the third clan (and are thus both considered shabálé to each other), are also known, but considered, well, kinda weird. But who was born into this clan and who joined it through marriage is a more significant cultural category than the genders or even number of the partners.

​Someone who joins another clan for reasons other than marriage to a clan member is a na’íni.

[grammarpedant]

sophus helle - gilgamesh (essays) // the storm of his heart

[grammarpedant]

I think probably what gets to me most on the "Murderbot is an extremely unreliable narrator" discourse is that, aside from the fact that Murderbot's not that unreliable, it's not even that unreliable about its emotional state either! Murderbot's periodic "It's not like that hurt my feelings or anything, b-baka" is nothing compared to Breq Ancillaryjustice, who at several points in her books will narrate events completely calmly and rationally and give absolutely no hint that her narration is hiding any kind of emotional reaction until another character goes "Hey you good? You were like bawling your eyes out back there"

And Breq overall is a fairly reliable narrator all things told!