#They're using them to pilote spaceship and shit

[duncanor]

I think a post-Trimax show, from earth independents pov, would probably be a mecha Anime ngl

[star-lights-up]

OKAY OKAY OKAY BUT: Cherik "The Martian" AU

So I'm rereading the martian today because i am sick again, so obviously I need hard science fiction to combat the existential dread, and my brain just kept latching onto dialogue bits and going "CHERIK! MAKE IT CHERIK"

My thoughts are:

Charles and Erik were friends at one point, maybe during college, maybe at the beginning of training, IDK, at some point they had a bit of a falling out. They're civil enough to still get put on the mission together but it's well known they don't get along.

Though there was that one night, where they were both kinda drunk, and they got together......... ("We can't do this again." Erik said, angrily, in the morning. Charles left without so much as glancing at him, let alone responding.)

There's a sandstorm on sol 6, and the team is trying to evacuate (probably the first class team because that's just easy. Hank = pilot. I bet you moira is the leader lady, lewis, military trained or whatever. And everyone else is there too, but i'm on my asthma medication so I can't think clearly, so they don't get specific roles)

The radio dish comes off, impales Charles, he blows backward while unconscious (lower gravity or some shit idk physics) and crashes into Erik, who then gets hit by more debris. The thing that impaled Charles also impaled his biotelemetry reader, and Erik's got crushed on impact/by the debris, so both of them read as dead to their crew members, who have to leave or else they die too.

Erik wakes up first, since he's not actively bleeding and his suit's not impaled and loosing air. The sandstorm is over, the HAB (think space station/tent) is intact (yay!), but the MAV (think small spaceship good for like, a round trip to and from a larger vessel) is gone (fuck).

He tries to wake Charles up, but ends up dragging him back to the HAB on his own. He takes out the antenna that impaled him and sews up and bandages the cut, while Charles is semi-conscious. It's painful for now, but he'll live. Erik's exhausted, so he goes back to his own bunk and falls asleep, kinda hoping this is all a nightmare.

It's not gone in the morning. He's still stuck on mars in a glorified tent with limited resources and his least favorite person on the team.

They talk to each other, Charles thanks him for helping him, and they decide that they're just going to have to work together to get off of mars alive.

Charles = botanist, erik is the engineer (basically gonna have them split the original main guy's braincell. They already share one anyway).

Potato farming

Along the way, they kinda sorta start becoming friends again. They're relying on each other to survive, they're the only people each other can talk to... They play chess on the computers and watch Moira's awful 70's television and listen to disco that she brought along with her. They farm potatoes and jerry rig rovers and then oops, they fell asleep in the same tiny bunk watching tv together. Oops, they hugged after the potatoes germinated. Oops, they kissed in celebration when they finally made contact with NASA again.

Just like that, they've fallen into a new rhythm. They still argue a lot, but now there's also a good amount of kissing and little fleeting touches while they work together and they put their bunks together and fall asleep in each other's arms ("Do you realize," Charles says one night, Erik curled against his chest, pressing slow kisses to his collarbone, "We're the only people to have made love on a planet other than Earth?" Erik snorts softly, "NASA's not going to be hearing about that, if I can help it." "You realize that the HAB's always recording us, yes? They'll get the footage when we get back to Earth." "...Right. Huh." Erik frowns, then shrugs, "Worth it." Charles laughs.)

Erik gets stuck inside the airlock when the HAB deflates and they loose all their potatoes. Charles is in the rover and, for a while, was convinced Erik was dead. Until he saw the airlock start to roll towards the HAB, and then he started steering the rover over.

After they got the HAB back up, NASA tells them they're sending a supply probe called "Iris." (Transmission goes like this: [08:31] JPL: Keep us posted on any mechanical or electric problems. By the way, the name of the probe we're sending is Iris. Named after the Greek goddess who traveled the heavens with the speed of wind. She's also the goddess of rainbows. [08:47] LEN/XAV: Gay probe coming to save us. Got it. Erik heads back to the HAB. "Hello, darling. How's Houston?" Charles says, not turning from his soil samples or whatever the fuck he's been doing for three days. "They're sending us a pride-themed probe full of granola bars." Erik answers, shoving off his EVA suit. Charles turns to give him a quizzical, are-you-joking kind of look, then bursts out laughing upon seeing Erik's dead serious face. "Well, it's certainly fitting," He says, walking up to Erik and wrapping his arms around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss.)

Anyways. Iris doesn't make it, shit keeps going wrong, BUT eventually their team catches wind of a plan -- a risky plan, but one that could save cherik. So, without houston's permission, they pilot their ship on a course back to mars. They'll do a flyby, and if Charles and Erik can get to the site of Ares 5 and the MAV for that mission, retrofit the MAV, make it to their team's ship without dying/miscalculating and shooting off into the depths of outer space, they can get to that ship and on a course back to earth by sol 549.

They spend a bunch of time retrofitting their rovers for the trip, and so begins the classic cherik roadtrip -- martian style!! (I just want to mention that there's like no space, so just picture them cuddled up for a good night's sleep on the front bench of the rover. there. cuteness among the science).

They flip at one point. I could add details but it's been a while of me writing this and my brain is slowly dying and i'm tired so. that's it.

They make it to ares 5, they retrofit the MAV, then they do The Riskiest Space Flight of All Time. Random shit goes wrong, everyone's improvising, it pretty much seems like they're done for...

They get back to the big ship. They're safe!! (well, as safe as you can be in space.) But they get a hot shower and full meals and much more comfortable bunks (in separate rooms, technically, but Erik refuses to leave Charles's side so they end up in one bunk that first night. Usually they'd try to be a bit more discreet, but what the fuck. They've been stuck on mars. They almost just died. They deserve to fall asleep in each other's arms.)

They are HEROS back on earth. They get married almost immediately -- it seems quick to a lot of people, but they're so trauma bonded that, like, it's necessary. they go to paris on their honeymoon and get lots of free stuff. They never go to space again lol (and gladly)

THE END (fucking finally, it's 12:00 am on the dot and i've been writing this for 45 minutes.)

EDIT: some art I did for this au

EDIT: I fucking did it. I started writing it. Oops.

[catboybiologist]

Alright I can't finish this all in one sitting, but here's at least a bit of.... something? A word vomit? A prelude to smut about the eroticism of the machine? For all you robot, mecha, and spaceship fuckers out there. @k1nky-r0b0t-g1rl that means you

Pappy always said that manufacturing biological transportation was nothing knew. I mean, shit, humanity's been breeding horses for how long? To him, not much was novel about what was going on in the shipyards way out by Neptune when I was a kid.

But Pappy didn't know a lot of things. And he certainly didn't meet Roseanna.

The Federation Navy had experimented with biologics for decades. The idea was to create self regenerating ships- something to interface with the hull, move the new titanium plates and particulates into place, have a living, growing mass interfacing with the steel so that the ship didn't have to head all the way back to the yards to patch up after every dogfight.

The first generation... worked. With a full time crew, that is. Full time people on deck jabbin the rigid, chitonous interface with the hull full of growth hormones to get them to set just right. Full time onboard bioengineers to compute what signaling cocktail ya need to hit 'em with to get it to grow back right. Skilled onboard technicians to shave back the chitin when it tried to overgrow the titanium, and slap some new cells in to seed the process in heavily damaged areas. Less input material, less time in the yards, but far more manpower. Great for a Federation cruiser on deep space peacekeeping missions. Far too complex for small craft. Right?

Until some bastard put brains in 'em.

Well. A lotta suits would say that they weren't brains. They were a diffuse network of sensory neurons and ganglia, living inside the body of the ship, integrating signals from a skin of alloyed metal and fibrous protein, calculating power draw too and from various components, and integrating with the mechanical and electrical components of the ship to precisely manage the "wound healing" process of the vessel. And of course, it just so happened that one of those ganglia was larger and more complex than the rest of them, and it just so happened that the computer interfaces with this ganglia exhibit complex, thinking behaviors on the level of human cognition, and it just so happens that most pilots and navigators reported them developing their own personalities.....

But of course, the Navy didn't want anyone to have some kind of pesky empathy in the way of their operations. And they certainly didn't want anyone side eyeing the rate at which they disposed of the damn things, and let them suffer and rot after disposal. So as far as the official record was concerned, they didn't have brains.

Like most people in the belt, I found Rosie on a... unsponsored field trip to the Neptune scrap yards. She wasn't a ship then. She wasn't much of anything. Not much more than a vat with the central ganglia and just barely enough of the stem cells needed to regrow a network. But I took her all the same. Brains were valuable. Few pilots outside the Navy had them back then. Nowadays, a black market for "brain seeds", a cocktail of neuronal stem cells and enough structural stem cells to grow your own into the chassis of your ship. They were pumpin' em out, and leaving them to die. It was cruel. They may be vehicles, but they're a livin' being too.

But I digress. I'd never do that to Roseanna. I make sure she gets proper care. And for a good, proper, working ship? That includes some good, proper work.

The asteroid we were docked in was one of my usuals- good bars, nice temp quarters, nice views of the rock's orbiting twin, and a spacious hanger for Rosie to rest in. The chasiss I had imprinted Roseanna to was a 40-meter light skipper, with some adjustments for handling deep space trips. It was pretty much the smallest thing you could actually use to live and work for long periods of time, but it got the job done. The angular design made the entire ship look like a wedge, or the blade of a bulky dagger. It didn't hurt that each bottom edge was fortified with a sharpened titanium blade, turning the entire sides of the ship into axe-like rams.

Those would probably come in handy today.

I approached Roseanna on the catwalk above her, marveling her alloyed scales. I could almost see her shudder in anticipation as my footsteps vibrated through the air above her. I took the steps down, and hit the trigger to open her top hatch.

When the news got out of the Navy scuffling with a rebelling mining station, an electric air raced across the station. Some went about their day as normal. Some resigned themselves to picking at the leftovers after the dust had settled. And some, like me, knew that they could get the finest pickings.

I strapped in to the pilot's seat like it was an old boot.

"Welcome, Captain Victoria."

Rosie could talk, but more often than not, she chose not to. But she understood me just fine. Most of our communication took place using her three prerecorded lines- her welcome statement, affirmative, and negative- as well as the tiny screen showing a small, emoticon face. Many pilots chose to give their ships an elaborate render, but Rosie preferred it this way. It was the first face I gave her, from somewhere out of the scrap heaps, and she refused any offer I made to upgrade. Secretly, I was overjoyed. To me, that was her face. That was her voice. And it was beautiful to see her true self through them.

I brushed my hands across her paneling. Across the switches, the hydraulic controls for the plasma fuel, the steering, the boosts, the comms channels. The thing with biologics was that you were still the pilot. For whatever reason, they hadn't quite gotten to the point where the brains could take over their own piloting. My personal opinion was just that their personalities lacked the ambition to. But whatever reason that was, the best pilots were still the ones that knew both their ship, and the ship's brain. And me and Rosie? We knew each other well.

As my fingers touched the brushed aluminum controls, rimmed with chitinous layers rooting them into the ship, I could feel the walls around me holding their invisible breath. "Do you know what we're doing today, Rosie?"

Her tiny panel flickered on. ...?

"We got a scrap run."

^_^

:)

^_^

Her panel flicked between various expressions of excitement. My finger quivered on the main power, holding for a moment before flicking it on. The primary electronics of the ship hummed to life, and what Rosie controlled pulsed with it. My hands moved across the main functional panels- main hydraulic plasma valve, exhaust ports open, and finally, flicking the switch the start the plasma burner.

My hands gripped the steering. The hanger's airlock doors opened in front of me. My neck length hair started to float as the station's gravity shut off. I hit the switch to unlatch from the supports above. For a moment, we hang there. The dull crackle of the idling plasma burner is the only sound that resonates through Rosie's hull.

Go time.

I punch the boost.

[ask-postcrash-curly]

Hi cap.

Okay, stories about my parents... let's see...

Well... my mom's stories are mostly.... depressing, to say the least. I would kill to hear fun stories that aren't tied to darker aspects once in a while from her.

Okay, let's focus on my dad — his are mostly lessons on what not to do

So, my dad used to be a heavy drinker. This sounds bad, and I mean it was, but this was wayyy before I was born. Like... the 80s? I don't know, I'm failing math. And he isn't as bad now, so it's alright

But he used to drink and drive, and when he was a teenager, he got into a real nasty wreck. I think that was the one where he was t-boned? His car got totaled, and he had to have these metal parts put in his leg so he could get better. When he was discharged, the nurses told him to be careful and not come back so soon. So he went home, and he got a new car.

.... and ended back up at the hospital within 24 hours.

I don't know how he managed to survive that second crash. He was speeding and, obviously, drinking, and there's this ditch that usually you drive into it and the front of the car just gets fucked, yeah? Well, apparently not when you're a drunk southern boy speeding down the road.

Car fucking flew. My dad told me he didn't know what happened at first, but he saw the top of the trees just go under him and then the car landed. I won't go in depth with the injuries, obviously, but I am just baffled it didn't kill him or worse. New car he had, too. He sounded more upset over that more than anything. I think it was a new firebird.

My dad has very lovely luck with cars if you haven't noticed, haha.

Also, there's a chance the stories are reversed, but I mean, they're linked anyways — I think at least.

Also, once his friend got drunk and stole a plane?? And landed it fine ???? Wild shit, man. What was it with drinking and crashing things in the 70's/80's? (For ref it was one of those private planes you can fly, not a commercial aircraft. At least, I hope it wasn't)

My dad kinda sucks as a person - or did? He seems way nicer than he used to - but dad wise, he's pretty good, I'd say. He kinda reminds me of like.. Swansea, I guess? With the alcoholism and being a mechanic and all. I think he might be older, though. I don't know how old Swans is.

Anyway, I hope the stories are amusing any. Way to pass time, yeah? Sorry if it's not the silliest of tales. Most of the stories I get told are usually lessons on to be careful who I'm around, careful with drinking, and don't drink and drive

Hope everything's holding up, captain

⁰❄️

Hey Snow.

Lessons on what not to do? Hah, okay.

Jeez. Glad for you that he made it. …24 hours? How the fuck—? Oh for fuck’s sake. (Thanks for not going into depth. Appreciate it.) Yeah mate I don’t think that’s luck…

A bloody plane? Damn. Still a better pilot than Jimmy, amirite—? (Jimmy’s a fine pilot actually. Only crashed a spaceship that one time.)

Mm yeah. Swans is in his late fifties I think. Which… oh God, this one time a week before the crash I overheard Daisuke telling him that it was okay to be fat because he had some family member who was fat who lived to be “like, sixty.” Makes me wonder how old Daisuke thinks Swansea is… Fuck’s sake, Daisuke. Haha.

Yeah no, they are. Good distraction. I doubt I’ll be driving or drinking anytime soon, but if I get them both back I’ll be sure not to do them at the same time. (As always.)

It’s… eh. I’m alive! Can say that much.

[cherrybombfangirlwrites]

Galaxy Destoryer ; a WIP (Re)Intro

(New and Improved!)

Genre and Setting

high sci-fi, space cowboys, outerspace millions of miles away from earth, about 50 years after the earth overheated and became uninhabitable, humans have integrated into the rest of the galaxy/universe for the most part, the repurposed battle cruiser- the FU-BS.

Playlist

POV

Third person limited, multiple characters

Status and Length

Drafting, less than 1k ; 3 books or a duology, we'll see

Tropes and Themes

Found family but they're a bunch of criminals and fugitives, cyberpunk, found family but they're all dumbasses, androids and cyborgs, space pirates and bounty hunters, spaceships and laser guns, The Mandalorian and Guardians of the Galaxy vibes, a little to no romance, humans are space orcs, a bunch of criminals accidentally adopt a baby, accidental and reluctant heroes, the "we fucking hate each other but a paycheck is a paycheck" to found family pipeline, main characters avoiding the main plot like the plague ; questioning and exploring morality, choosing between two evils, forgiveness and finding people you can trust, a little touch of space politics but it's mostly background noise, the dangers and harm of capitalism in the background but the characters avoid the main plot so it's background noise as well

Warnings and Rating

sci-fi typical violence, some mental health issues and trauma, possible torture and blood, angst galore ; Teen and Up

Main Characters

Corie (she/her)

The bounty hunter cyborg who just wants some peace and quiet, really good pilot

AroAce, mostly Earthling with brown skin and curly blue hair

lost eye, arm and leg due to bounty hunting business

1000% done with this shit and just wants to be left alone

Knox (he/him)

the self proclaimed team leader (no one listens to him), and former PIE mercenary

The token straight that's on thin ice, full Dlakoonian with purple skin and pointed ears

the oldest crewmate and surrogate tired uncle/chaperone who did no ask to supervise these kids and a baby

NOVA (she/her)

the grumpy android with faulty wiring and wanted smuggler

Bisexual, epileptic (due to faulty wiring), silvery chrome skin with blue lights in the cracks between plates

easily pissed off and fite you

Astra (she/her)

the thief and lovable rogue flying by the seat of her pants who is reckless and cocky and smug af, resident comedic relief

Lesbian, full Earthling and black with very short curly hair, plus sized

rivals with NOVA, they are constantly butting heads just kiss already

Pandora (he/she)

the former PIE scientist who has done questionable projects and now sells his work to the highest bidder

Cis Female, Part time Wheelchair user, autistic and adhd (medium masking), tourettic, full Earthling with brown skin and hair, Muslim (coded?) and wears a hijab

scientist and talented bio chemist, sunshine personality

Aries (xey/xem)

the engineer and mechanic, private contractor and former Black Hole

Agender, half Earthling with brown skin and half Alltinian with pointy ears, social anxiety

Really bad at opening up and being vulnerable and communicating xer needs

Hades (he/him)

the baby, a literal infant, adopted by a bunch of criminals

full Froshether with blue skin and horns

telekinesis powers

mischievous little shit

Antagonists

P.I.E. - Peace Intergalactic Expansion. the micromanaging intergalactic republic government. they used to be better, but in the last couple of decades they were slowly taken over by their "all life and everything must be perfect and pristine" science division.

Black Holes - space pirates that are the extreme opposite of PIE. they claim to be the resistance and rebellion against PIE, but they're not much better in the long run, hurting whoever they need to without remorse to get what they want.

Plot

A bunch of criminals are hired for a job by PIE, the Peace Intergalactic Expansion of the galaxy. The job is top secret, and all they know is that PIE wants them to retrive some kind of weapon- but if they do follow through, their records will be clean and they'll get a thick paycheck. The rag tag team thrown together for this one job hate each other, but they figure a paycheck is a paycheck and decide to tolerate it for this one job.

But as they continue on their job, the crew starts to think something is off. The Black Holes offer them something huge to bring them the weapon instead, and no one even knows what this weapon actually is. Meanwhile PIE is breathing down their necks, reminding them constantly what will happen if they fail or try to betray the huge organization.

Then they find the weapon, and it seems that maybe no one should have the weapon. And that weapon isn't really a weapon at all.

Extra Stuff

Specifics on Corie's cyborg parts: her right eye, right arm from the elbow down, and her left leg from the knee down are prothstetics. She lost her leg to a job that went sideways, and her eye and arm to pirates attempting to exact their revenge on her.

^^^ The arm does have a laser gun attachment and her eye does have a little interface with aiming and targeting

NOVA's model was originally going to be a new line of military androids for PIE, but Nova- the first prototype of her line- failed all her diagnostic tests and they had her scrapped and abandoned the project

The ship they use and fly around in is an old military battle cruiser- called the Fifty-five Utility Battle Starcruiser, or the FU-BS. (I'm think i'm hilarious)

Hades's powers are mainly telekenisis, but he will straight up catch on fire or freeze everything within five feet of him if he's angry and throws a big enough tantrum

Astra and Nova have a rivals to lovers romance that's mainly in the background and for comedy purposes

Pandora and Aries have a kind of cute and fluffy friends-to-lovers romance happening in the background too

Dlakoonians and Alltinians are two alien specis in my worldbuilding that I'm currently working on developing

I took a ton of inspiration for this WIP from the Mandalorian and Guardians of the Galaxy. PIE is based on the Xandarians in GotG and The Black Holes are based on the Ravagers. The plot is inspired by the first two seasons of the Mandalorian (with my own fun additions and twists of course!)

Knox used to be named Lannie but that name was too close to a character from another WIP so I changed it

Memes for your viewing pleasure:

GD Taglist: @fiercely-raging-writer @aesa @thatprolificauthor @writeouswriter @rose-bookblood (send me a message to be +/- from the taglist <;3)

General Taglist: @enchanted-lightning-aes @thatprolificauthor @wip-nook @writeblrsupport @outpost51 @dustylovelyrun (send me a message to be +/- from the taglist <;3)

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 4/11/2023

more concise than usual. don't get used to it.

listening

the trombone is an underutilized instrument in indie rock. this is a delightful music video, the vocals bother me a lot less now that i know they're deliberately going for a robotic effect.

if you liked the Killing Eve soundtrack (largely brought to you by Unloved and Junoire), that sort of very smooth lightly psych-rock flavored thinking woman's music to smoke clove cigarettes to while slouching around used bookstores, you may like this song! reading this back it sounds kind of snotty but sometimes you need a french woman main character song to make doing errands feel like being on a secret mission

i found one of their previous albums, Psycho Tropical Berlin, sort of a one-hit wonder with Hypsoline (the credits song for As Above So Below) but it really is a fucking banger

i want the album art as a shirt So Bad but not enough to pay $25 shipping from france about it.

i think this was off the spotify weekly discover playlist? can't imagine where else i would have run across it

-

reading

remember the vampire-adjacent private detective novels i was reading? not the ones from last week, the earlier ones. the author alexis hall chucks you a free short story Sand and Ruin and Gold if u sign up for his mailing list.

i think the orca comparisons are a touch heavy-handed at times, but the imagery in this thing...i really am a sucker for the rot of a coastal tourist trap. i bear no fondness, but i do give them a weary nod of acknowledgement. this town is a construct for other people to enjoy. i typed out a very long thing about how the economics of tourism shaped the town and everything about the civic calendar down to the school year, but--it was not really meant to have real residents or be a real place. there was absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to hang out without paying for anything in the off season.

It was just after closing on Reunification Day, the last of the stragglers gathered up and banished back to their world. A spiral of faded, plastic bunting from the celebrations had blown into one of the pools. I went to get a pole to hook it out but heard a splash and turned in time to see Nerites leap from the water in a gleam of skin and scales. The wind whisked the ribbon from between his fingers, and he reached after it, his body twisting sinuously in the air before he crashed into the pool again.

I’d never seen him—or any of them—move like that before. The jumps and slides we taught them were supposed to mimic their natural behaviours, but they rarely performed them spontaneously. And this was something else again: a wild leap and an ungainly splash, more beautiful to me than the most perfect bow or spin because it seemed so absolutely heedless.

He surfaced again, almost vertical, spinning in the pale-grey spray, one hand catching for the bunting’s tail. A tug, and it tumbled from the sky, nothing but a lifeless piece of string.

i am beginning to remember that all the shit that really sticks in my brain is in short stories and novellas you (general, including me) have never heard of.

-

watching

star wars resistance. i am finding this far more enjoyable than the bad batch or the mandalorian bc it has something of a storyline that it sticks to, even though most of the runtime is a teen... he's not really a teen, he was a new republic pilot so he's probably like twenty but in my heart he's like fifteen. part of the appeal of ds9 for me was a very consolidated set of recurring background characters and getting to see that there are other things/factions/people all working for their own ends. baby's first practice spy mission.

the ship design is really killer: it asks and answers the question "what if a pirate spaceship was also a galleon?"

i find myself excited to watch the next episode, which is not a familiar feeling when i watch star wars stuff. i really hope s2 holds my interest as much as s1 did.

why am i doing this? i have seen all the star wars except for: most of the LEGO stuff, most of the addendum and errata for tcw (including the crystal crisis arc), the holiday special, and most of the droids and ewoks animated shows. like i am Really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, even though i'm not really sure why this show fell into such obscurity.

-

playing

a bit cranky with weird west, bc i think to get past this stealth level i will have to dismiss my companion (can't seem to knock out guards unless i'm standing up, the companion AI has a very loose definition of "staying close" and is only "invisible" if you're also crouching, and you can't direct your companion to stay put in one place OR to stay close/stay crouched permanently. i may have exhausted most of the appeal of the world on my first fifteen-hour run through the first story. i am more than a little disappointed bc i did have a fuckton of fun in those fifteen hours and was expecting the good times to continue.

-

making

still halfheartedly poking away at the baby blanket, less than half a repeat this week and i don't feel like getting up, digging the blanket out of the catproof bag, and putting enough lights on for a real photo. this is repeat 7/10 tho so we are slowly approaching the end

[selfspinninglies]

Ever just get paranoid about a possible plot hole in an au of yours and think of a long winded explanation for it that nobody asked for? No? Well I did that's what this post is

Aaanyways so something that I've been thinking about with yetd is why doesn't raph go through the same thing donnie does with still being connected to the kraang and everything, periodical possessions and whatnot since he was under control of it too? (Putting the rest of this under the cut just incase nobody wants to hear my dumb dumb rambles also general tumblr etiquette. This is so disorganized im sorry i am terrible at explaining things)

Anyway x2, I'd say this is because of the difference in circumstance. With donnie, they aren't put under control but rather merged with the technodrome. I imagine that it communicated with them in some form during that time since it is literally a living spaceship from my understanding (might be wrong idk. Imagine having a conversation with a spaceship though. Crazy shit) so it could probably do something like that. Besides this is probably one of if not the first non-kraang piloting this thing so it'd probably take interest in that fact.

Also donnie comments on how close they are together. Like intertwined mentally. I don't remember the exact quote but yk. Something about them being in perfect unison with the ship. I feel like that's deeper than regular possession somehow ? It's certainly different (at least in my head.) I mean like this they're basically one being instead of one being piloted by the other. (Also I don't think that being ripped out of the console would take off all of the kraang goopiness. Have you seen how sticky and gross it looks? It's meant to stick to things really hard. There has to be at least a little left. The kraang are kind of like parasites/those mushrooms that take over antsafter all with how they operate. Taking over things for a specific purpose and making the subject do things for itself. If it can't stay, what use would it be?)

Anyway to why raph wouldn't experience what donnie is in this au.

The difference between possession and connection (? I guess? Don't have a better word) that I mentioned earlier. Definitely different circumstances with entire brain control (although I think raph would still . Yk . Have thoughts during that. Kind of like watching a movie . Can't do anything about it but you sure as he'll can react) and "hey we're one thing now".)

Also how I mentioned the kraang disgustingness would probably be hard to get off and latch on pretty hard. I mean raph straight up rips it off (and I'm pretty sure his ninpo gets the rest of it out? Rewatched that scene and I'm still not sure tbh) but if a little bit slipped somewhere on donnie and got ingrained (? Again don't have another word) into them and stayed for long enough without notice it would probably be a lot harder to remove

Oh god this post was so long and disorganized I am so sorry but I had to or I would go insane kill me

[bloodgulchblog]

Did this take me a month to get through because reasons? You bet, buddy.

Anyway, as promised, here is your single post on the topic of Andre Norton's Star Guard (1955).

It was okay, but there's this thing a lot of really old SF does where you spend the whole book being shown a bunch of weird stuff while trying to understand what's going on, and then the solution is dumped in your lap in the last 20 pages. And then the story ends.

That's what Star Guard is like.

Our Boy Kana Karr is an arch, a swordsman who has enlisted to fight as part of a Terran mercenary legion. You see, when humanity first ventured forth into the stars, they got smacked down by Central Control, an alien organization that determined Terrans are too violent to be permitted unrestricted access to space travel. 300 years later, Terrans are only permitted to leave Earth as mercenaries under the hire of aliens (who are thus responsible for them.) This is now Earth's primary vocation: producing legions of archs (who fight with swords and space guns) and mechs (who pilot advanced machines).

Kana joined the legion because he is naturally curious with a deep desire to see the stars, and this is the only way. He is also unusual because he chose to get XT training and is, though inexperienced, his unit's AL (alien liaisons) man.

Kana's legion is deployed to the planet Fronn, where they are being paid to fight for an alien (one of the Llor species) who wants to beat out a rival with a slightly better claim to inherit a chieftainship. Unfortunately for the legion, something shady is going on. Rogue mechs gun down both the legion's employer, his rival, and their upper officers, then frame the legion for killing the aliens. The legion is stranded on a hostile alien world where the native Llor, the rogue legion of mechs in the planet's biggest city, and lots of dangerous wildlife all have it in for them.

Luckily they still have one of their smartest officers (Trig Hansu) and between him and Kana (using his XT training) they manage to get help from the planet's other species (who are traders, and who were disinterested in what was going on until Trig points out all the evidence that the Llor are planning to subjugate them).

With most of the legion left there, Trig takes a small team (including Kana, obviously) to steal a mech spaceship and get back to Earth to warn their leadership about what the fuck is going on (because they're reading this as a definite red flag that humanity is being Framed For Shit). Trig has contacts in the secret underground human rebellion on Earth, and he hopes to reach them. Also, Trig is impressed with Kana and Kana finds out that part of why Trig is so sharp is he's a very experienced AL man himself, he's really good at figuring out aliens and blending into cultures.

Upon returning to Earth, Trig and Kana get turbo arrested and sentenced without trial to a work camp. Kana manages to escape and, while trying to figure out what to do, he gets picked up by some grim-faced men who steer him secretly out of the city.

In the last chapter, he is brought in by the human rebels. Trig is there, and extremely proud of him. The human rebels tell Kana about how they've been undermining Central Control and secretly sending human ships off to explore and find new worlds of their own. Kana and Trig have been welcomed to the rebellion, and they have a plan in motion to rescue the abandoned legion from Fronn.

And that's how the book ends!!!!

It was okay, it's one of those things where reading really old scifi can be tough because ideas that were exciting and fresh to the writer/audience back then are pretty tired by now. Interestingly for a piece of 50s scifi the two most important characters (Kana and Trig), who are valued most by the narrative for their intelligence and curiosity, are expressly stated to be dark-skinned men of color. The author tells us specifically that Kana's Australian/Malayan/Hawaiian and Trig Hansu is African/Middle-Eastern. I'm not gonna hold it up as GLORIOUS REPRESENTATION (Norton does kind of talk about it in this weird ~blood~ way) but I was like hey, nice, while reading it.

Norton also has this bit she goes into (through Hansu talking about the history of Earth) about how a civilization is bound to fall if it loses its desire to do battle, which was kind of eehhhhh for me, but you know what whatever. I'm through it now. I won.

Also, there's a lot of fun 1950s retrofuture. Spaceships travel on routes programmed onto tapes that you can't edit if you don't have the skills! You can direct brain download information recorded from a record pak that is very like a tape! Swords are viable weapons! People are sent into space on rockets that launch vertically so you gotta lay down before it goes up!

I wouldn't super recommend it? But it was short and reminded me of a lot of really old roots.

i ran out of halo novels so i'm gonna start reading old milsf, thus expanding the borders on the genre topics i can be insufferable about