Fic Request/Bunny Farm

[Rajvik]

holy shit, someone actually did that,

[classicdrogn]

While reading MP3.1415player's latest Terminator/Mass Effect/multi fusion and listening to Alestorm I had an idea for a first contact gone either amazingly wrong or horribly right, I'm not quite sure. The basic idea is that humanity found a decently low-cost way past, under, or around the lightspeed barrier and has been expanding long enough for the initial systematic exploration and colonization programs to bloom into a far more chaotic second wave, with various ideologically or morally marginalized groups heading to the fringes whether by choice or necessity, including actual goddamn space pirates. Naturally, it's likely that these far-flung outliers will be the first to encounter any alien civilization that may exist, a thought which has provoked many a sleepless night you may be certain.

And then, it seems to have come to pass - a small fleet of damaged warships with hull designs and markings not matching any known human designs arrives, a known major pirate obviously no longer spaceworthy but recognizable under tow and then moved to the fore as the newcomers take up a formation emphasizing its central location. It looks very much like something approaching the worst case has come to pass, with an alien military force come to demand an accounting after running across human outlaws. Radio signals are broadcast simultaneously from the fleet, hundreds or thousands of voices singing something fierce and aggressive sounding at once.

Except...

Once the song ends, further communications are opened, the aliens' programmers and linguists apparently having been good enough to arrange for translation from recovered computer data, and it turns out that the fleet is here as an honor guard, returning the remains of the ship and crew in respect for their valiant battle, and to share the song of their glory. Diplomatic staff previously trying to decide whether they'd need to be shocked and dismayed by the foolish and criminal actions of renegades or grateful and congratulatory for bringing them to justice have a whole new spin they need to adapt to.

Obviously, the aliens are sort of Klingon-y, and while I have no clear idea of the actual encounter itself it was probably something along the lines of Yesterday's Enterprise without the time travel, though probably not quite so planet-of-the-week -- perhaps the pirate crew had actually discovered an outlier alien colony some time before, made relatively peaceful contact (for not-Klingons and pirates; a goodly amount of alcohol and brawling were certainly involved) and started using it as a home port since they'd been getting a little too well known to easily approach human worlds with their shit even slightly together, and then some third group attacked?

This would also provide a more reasonable basis to have already worked out human language and comm formats, though the longer interaction before hand has other impacts on the premise as well. Maybe it was planet-of-the-week after all, with the third party attack coming a few days after initial contact? Just long enough for the humans to have found some reason to stick around and fight rather than book it, even if that's just having sent a shuttle load of booty down to trade for alcohol and not having finished loading it yet, and/or the captain needing to be retrieved from an intense session of, ahem, "diplomatic" relations in the spaceport

The aliens don't even have to fall into the classic "warrior race" pattern, I suppose - it would probably be easier to justify a single ship with a lot of bodged up jury rig kludges due to an outlaw's poor supply situation being a decisive factor if the locals aren't particularly warlike and battle-focused, and would in no way impede the desire to honor them after the fact.

I find myself torn over whether it would be best told from the viewpoint of the official group receiving the visit as initially outlined, a pirate crew survivor returned by it explaining things to them after the fact, or as it happens. It's basically just 70s SF flavor HFY, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be a fun read if executed with at least moderate competence.

[itsune9tl]

Sound a lot like Captain Kirk's Court Martial, where all of the Supposed Negative Witness accounts back fire as all they want to do is say "thank you" for your help.

[Star Ranger4]

I dont know if I'd go with Yesterdays Enterprise, but maybe the ship in question is actually the Arcadia, and the reason the aliens are returning her, her Captain, and her crew is because they died protecting them from yet ANOTHER alien group.

[Black Aeronaut]

Nah, not the Arcadia. Because the idea with the Arcadia is that if someone were able to kill Harlock and the Arcadia, then your shit is officially fucked in a most profound manner, even if you won't admit it, because Harlock and the Arcadia was the thin line standing between your "civilization" and the horrors of the deep beyond.

For this, you want to go more along the lines of a "Dread Pirate Roberts" archetype. Dread Pirate Roberts is the Pirate's Pirate - he takes no prisoners, steals from anyone, and generally raises hell wherever he goes. However, from each generation to the next, it's secretly a different man under the mantle, and as such there are certain small exceptions - such as the one young stable boy who professed of his love so eloquently that he was made into the current Roberts's cabin boy instead of being killed. Which, to the rest of the crew was acceptable, as press-ganging is a time-honored tradition among pirates.

Thus, very much pirates indeed, but enough of a sense of integrity that it's not much of a stretch for most to accept that perhaps the Legendary Pirate did something good, because to do so otherwise would have been far beyond the pale.

Although this would spin the narrative such that it's more like, "Humanity: they may have their own outlaws, but dammit all, even their outlaws have standards."

[classicdrogn]

Hm... Itsune, Star, BA, do you mind me quoting you (or reposting your comments yourselves) to follow up the version in the SB HFY thread?

[itsune9tl]

Hm... Itsune, Star, BA, do you mind me quoting you (or reposting your comments yourselves) to follow up the version in the SB HFY thread?

My usual Disclaimer is that as long as it is not used for Profit, or against the Grand Duchy of Fenwich, any thing I write may be used as content elsewhere.

[Star Ranger4]

Go for it

[Black Aeronaut]

Have fun with that.

[STMPD]

Okay, I've got one. Crossposted it to SV, too. We'll see what actually comes of it - I don't really want to abandon my screenplay thingy, but I'm just kinda burned out, want to toy around with something else, and I'm making my way through Ah My Goddess! and thought hey, what if?

So I was digging through my old Google Docs folder and found a reference to an Anime Addventure sub-sub-storyline where Ranma and the gals all become telepathically linked. It was quite adorable - whoever wrote it had each character's thoughts in different colors and had them argue with each other's deepest internal monologues. Anyway, Belldandy, of all people, managed to tamp down the curse or whatever it was so they could communicate with more discretion. It turned out Ranma knew the AMG! norns because Urd was his divine patron, he her 'hero', destined to go on epic quests to do her bidding. Of course, Urd had decided all of his fiancés were ruining love for him, and so those assignments ended up being various dates with other girls she was trying to hook him up with. Thread ended there because Anime Addventure, but I guess I found the idea so charming I copied the text down on a doc and mulled over writing a fic about Urd and Ranma doing, you know, stuff.

So now I've got an actual setup:
It's 1996. End of the manga was a few months ago. Keichii and Belldandy are married - Keichii is now a minor patron saint of the Japanese automotive industry or something funny like that. They're really, really cute. Skuld has moved on, grown up a little. Oh, and Urd is incredibly depressed and basically drinking herself into a stupor day after day.

What's her beef? Well, her little sister is happy as can be, just as she 'planned', so that's all well and good, but what is she supposed to do now? She's depressed, lonely, bemoaning her circumstances as the lovechild of Hot Satan Mom and Big Daddy God. But, Skuld reminds her, she has a contract she never picked up!

Turns out sometime in 1988 Genma helped Urd out with some minor task she had to do while he was travelling with little Ranma, and in return she agreed to become the boy's patron once he turned 17. Patronage is basically that 'hero' system, where a deity finds things that needs doing and endows their hero with the tools to do it. Jason and the Argonauts, Heracles, etc.

Well, it's some interminable time before the disastrous wedding, Ranma is watching Dragon Ball on his birthday - Akane remembered it was his birthday, tried to bake a cake, but his own dad forgot about it because Genma - and out of the TV pops Urd, who promptly declares she's running his life now. Hijinks ensue - Urd tries to resolve the whole marriage situation, fails miserably, tries to cure the curse, also fails miserably, and ultimately settles for periodically popping up and setting him up with other 90's-era anime teens. I don't know why, but I keep thinking Ami Mizuno as one possible date? There was this one other Anime Addventure where he and Nuku-Nuku knew each other somehow? That was amusing enough.

It would not involve Ranma actually having a relationship with Urd, of course. But they'd learn to tolerate each other and help each other well enough. It'd be cute in that sort of Wholesome Harem Comedy Fanfiction way.

Thoughts?

[classicdrogn]

Sounds like it could be fun, at least. I'm not sure if it was from fanfic or something pointed out about canon, but there was something about how Urd's comical disasters mostly happen when she's trying to sneak one past the system somehow, while when she's following the rules it usually works out, which I always did like as an idea.

It's not really related beyond involving her (or developed at all really) but I keep thinking a Mass Effect fic that somehow justified the title "Urd, Not Wrex" would be funny.

[STMPD]

Well I did it. 4k words of Ranma and Urd arguing with each other.

I'm actually really warming up to Ah My Goddess as a sort of perpetually wholesome un-harem manga. It works uncannily well. Really works at the same 'hijinks ensue' wavelength as Ranma.

Of course, no one can agree on Ranma's characterization here, so I need to balance his 'misunderstood abused martial arts idiot savant' archetype with his 'hypercompetitive cagey dickweed' archetype. Bit of good, bit of bad. No clear heroes, although the personalities of the non-fiance parts of the Ranma cast may be a little flanderized for the sake of humor.

Erpdert: Chapter 2!

[Bob Schroeck]

I like it. I was particularly struck by how well you manage what over at ATT we call "Sophisticated as Hell", AKA bathos. And I would love to see where it's going.

[STMPD]

I like it.  I was particularly struck by how well you manage what over at ATT we call "Sophisticated as Hell", AKA bathos.  And I would love to see where it's going.

Wow, you like it and it's racked up views on AO3 faster than anything else I ever put up on there. My ego is inflated - flattered? Inflatterated? Whatever.

Can I bounce a big long list of ideas off y'all? I'm thinking once I get Ranma and Urd all settled up in the next chapter, from there - eh. My best idea is to just have Urd interview all the fiances and find them wanting, and then to have them all pursue Ranma even more aggressively because of the usual 'AND JUST WHO IS THIS WOMAN TO YOU?!' shenanigans. Somewhere down the line, maybe immediately after that, Mara pops up to manipulate all the girls at once, it goes well until they realize they all contracted with her and proceed to beat her senseless with Magical Kung-Fu Powers.

Other Things I'd like to do:
- Have Ranma call Hild 'Hot Mom Satan' or something like that after she tries to turn him to the Dark Side (tm)
- Of course Hild actually puts that on her throne room’s door in a little brass plate
- Bounce Ranma off of a pubertastic Skuld newly obsessed with heavy weaponry and SUPERIOR GERMAN ENGINEERING
- Render Lind a psychotic hoo-rah drill sergeant, maybe make a full metal jacket reference or two
- But play Belldandy absolutely straight because she is too pure to be corrupted by my awful attempts at comedy
- VALKYRIE HARDSUITS
- Get Peorth in there somewhere
- Make Keiichi a minor god of Japanese Motorcycles
- Maybe have Sayoko kidnap him to build the Mishima Group the Best Motorcycles Ever No Seriously
- And then somehow her Mishima Group is the same as the Nuku Nuku Mishima group so of course Ranma meets Nuku Nuku and she falls in love with him because of course she does
- Somehow involve Sailor Moon and company, have Urd and Setsuna time-travel fight, which is actually a catfight in the time of the dinosaurs or something stupid like that
- Urd hooks up Ranma with a few lonely girls who may actually be Senshi (Ami and Makoto?) and this makes his harem problems even worse
- Blow up the status quo of the Ranma gals
- Maybe have Mara give them all wishes to set them against each other
- Have Mara reveal her undying love for Urd - not sure how she’d react but it'd be cute
- Elevate Kodachi to the status of Actual Romantic Competition
- Prove once and for all that Ukyo is Best Girl anyway
- Reveal that Kasumi is actually a Bodhisvatta from an adjacent pantheon with a bone to pick against Belldandy
- Watch Nabiki goad Ranma into doing coke (but fail, this is a wholesome fanfiction)
- Enslave poor Mara to a progressively corrupted Nabiki's whims
- Basically make Nabiki the new goddess of Neoliberalism
- Bring back Skuld's little robo-gal because she was so cute
- Make Rally Vincent somehow Urd's bastard daughter (They’re both brown anime girls!) and have an entirely senseless and extremely short arc where Urd and Ranma interfere with the events of the Gunsmith Cats manga once I read more of it
- 'Bean Bandit - Him Drive Real Good'
- Confluence of the harem protagonists - Ranma and Keiichi meet Tenchi and re-enact the events of a stoner comedy or two
- Maybe not Tenchi? What are the cosmic implications of crossing over the Norse Gods with interstellar space aliens?
- Of course there has to be a D&D or video game episode
- And of course someone has to say the phrase ‘NOT ON MY CHRISTIAN MINECRAFT SERVER YOU SONOVABITCH’ completely seriously
- Get Skuld hooked on the prototypical internet, or 2chan, then turn her into an evil meme-spewing gremlin who makes Umaru-chan look wholesome by comparison
- Or, I dunno, have Skuld join Hokago Tea Time and turn it into a techno act because that’s all she listens to

Thoughts? I know I should keep working on that screenplay, but my attention span is limited and my desire to get feedback for something a bit more accessible to the average internet person is driving me forward here.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, some of those ideas have already raised their heads -- Keiichi as god of motorcycles and Skuld being blessed by the puberty fairy immediately come to mind. But it you want to discuss this more thoroughly, start a new thread for it so this one doesn't get derailed, please.

[ECSNorway]

I love the whole "reality is a badly-managed IT project" vibe you have going there, because I've been in far too many such projects and it really does just fit everything I know of high-end physics so damn well.

[robkelk]

Here's a fic request for anybody who's currently suffering from writer's block: Tell me a story about this person. It doesn't need to be a long story.

She's an original character, according to the image tags, so all that we know about her and her life is what we can see in the image.

(Yes, I'm already coming up with my own idea for a story, or at least a scene, but I want to read other people's stories about her, too.)


EDIT: I was debating posting this in The Forum Competition subforum, but not all of the writers read that forum. Bob, if you think it belongs there, feel free to move the post.

[Bob Schroeck]

Nah, it's fine here.

[classicdrogn]

Hey kids, guess what time it is? That's right, it's Wacky Dream Time!

This came at the very end of a particularly incoherent one, so the context is barely there and mostly irrelevant, but still kind of interesting when developed from the immediate situation - recently a bunch of root-like things appeared throughout the area and generally caused a disaster or at least disrupted normal life, as they are thin (about the size of two fingers together) and look sort of like scaled-over red flesh, but nigh-indestructible and a glowing energy crackles slowly over them, which turns people to stone but not their clothes (or possibly just freezes them Clockblocker style) for a few seconds to a few minutes if touched on the glowing bit, mostly depending on how brightly it's glowing. The local idiot teens have made a game of this, calling it "snakes and sticks," using the body of one of those pen style erasers and a d6 to determine how many scales away the next person can touch from the previous and keep score, with the first player after a freeze getting to pick freely and the last player before the one frozen getting to do whatever the rest will accept to the loser until they thaw. Being teens this ranges from silly pranks to what would be sexual harassment if the subject wasn't temporarily a statue and unquestionably is when they thaw in the middle of it, to outright cruel or criminal behavior like robbing and/or stripping them and leaving. The energy that causes the effect crawls along the surface slowly and somewhat unpredictably, so there is some skill involved as well as luck.

Even without powers, post-GM Taylor is very good at playing Snakes & Sticks, for whatever reason she has to do it. It was a dream, it's not like logic was a major factor, but either getting close to the local rowdies and/or studying the weird power manifestation is one possibility, and probably why David is involved. As in Eidolon.

"What-- Eidolon!? But you died! Wait, if you're here, the Endbringers...?"

Yes, that David. Well, sorta - back in the early days, even before Hero died, he tried to find a power to do dimensional shenanigans in the lack of or to not be solely reliant on Doormaker. The one he got created a copy of himself, healthy but without powers, in another world and let him control it, but when he dropped the power and the connection, the copy stayed and was just him, healthy but without powers. There are probably a few more in other worlds, but I woke up very shortly after this point, with the only other idea that stuck being that no, no Endbringers have shown up (This David doesn't need any more challenges than making a life after suddenly appearing with no records and no contacts already provide even years later, because again, no powers, though that might have changed after the original died I suppose) and is quite shocked to learn Levi-tan and Little Zizter joined the battle against Zion in the end, but not in the same headspace for the logic bomb that did in the original to have the same effect. It seems likely that far less time has passed here than in Bet, so he's closer to her age, and/or possibly transformed himself into a new, younger identity if he got his powers back after using his previous one to set it up to be much more solid than what he'd been able to make the first time.

I don't really have anywhere to take it once they get past the meeting, but that's why it's here instead of in my notes file for further development, like all those crossover fic ideas that die at basically the same point for the same reason, but maybe it will inspire someone else? Cynical post-series unpowered Taylor and a young, re-powered, idealistic Eidolon is not a crime fighting duo you see too often, if nothing more.

[STMPD]

So apparently SEGA's attempt at turning Sakura Wars into a gacha game went badly. Very badly. Wah wah wah.

So much the better, says I. A century of Taisho makes no goddamn sense, even more so than Sakura Wars usually refuses to make sense. So last night I thought it might be an interesting time to drag out an old concept I'd toyed around with but never got around to actually writing, see if anyone finds the concept interesting because lord knows I'll never write the thing.

Call it SAKURA WARS SHOWA - THE DAY OF THE ANGELS

Yes, it's the Showa period, not the cheerful days of Taisho magic. The middle of the Great Depression, to be precise-ish. A few years before WW2 really gets going. Japan is sliding into fascism - Germany's already there - the Soviets seem unstoppable - and FDR is up for re-election and under fire from both sides of the political spectrum.

Our heroes are mecha-pilots by night (the mecha being about the size of a Titanfall mech instead of those gnarly-looking trash-can motherfuckers) and actors for some middling Hollywood studio by day, playing various roles in various film serials like the kind of stuff Indiana Jones was based off of. My original idea emulated the harem shtick the other games so eagerly embraced, I even wrote up some waifu archetypes, but I guess I could toss that aside if having a gender-even cast would make more sense.

The bad guy would be a sort of Charles Lindbergh mixed with Ronald Reagan more than Trump / Huey Long - explicitly political, yes, absolutely a fascist, but with ruddy cheeks and a winning smile and a radio show that made him famous in the 20's. It was tempting to involve a spinoff of the real-life Black Ocean / Black Dragon Society working with this creep, but I scrapped that idea because it would become too yellow peril-y. (Would another story involving such a society be more interesting if it took place in Japan, with the Teikoku Kagekidan's former members struggling against a series of soft coups? Maybe drag ol' Shinjiro Taiga back from America, caught between his 'samurai honor' and his personal morality? Hrm.)

Musical bullshit would be involved. At least one chapter would involve the cast fighting Cuphead monsters instead of the usual Slimy Horrors From Beyond. So on and so forth.

[hazard]

To my knowledge Japan slid down the fascism slope earlier than much of Europe, at least in part because of their culture.

[classicdrogn]

Huh, well, on one hand Sakura Wars would be a sad franchise to take the hit, but on the other hand the more gacha mobige trash decisively fails the more likely we are to keep seeing effort put into things that actually offer more gameplay value than a damn slot machine. From the article it sounds like the real games in the reboot/relaunch did well, so that principle at least seems to have a solid example set. I don't really have anything to say about the bunny itself, unfortunately, but I'd give it three chapters to impress me at least.

[classicdrogn]

YuGiOh and Digimon being outside my usual interests for fiction I've read barely any fanfic involving them let alone watched the source material, but it occurred to me while rereading Gabriel Blessing's Sword Arts DxD that either would be a natural fit for an SAO crossover. Trying to go blind into a fandom is a great way to hit all the worst end of Sturgeon's Law and be put off from it, though, so anyone know some good ones you can recommend?

[classicdrogn]

writing-prompt-s: You’re an ancient Greek man coming home from 4 months of war to find your wife 3 months pregnant. Now you’ve embarked on a solemn quest: to punch Zeus in the face.


hermdoggydog: Soon after you begin your quest, you encounter another man in a similar situation. You decide to join forces, as two mortal men stand a better chance at punching Zeus than one.

Two villages over, you encounter a woman who had relations with Zeus and was left with a highly aggressive half-boar half-man offspring. She too feels your anger and offers to join your quest.

By the time you reach Mount Olympus, you’ve amassed a large and formidable army of cuckolded/ravished mortals, demigods with daddy issues, mythical creatures with scores to settle, and a seamstress who you’re pretty sure is Hera in disguise.

Zeus never stood a chance.

deadcatwithaflamethrower: I wanna read this book.

Found here, though since I think that's just someone's front page and their BnHA fics are popular it'll probably slide dowwn pretty quickly.

(The fics are honestly pretty good, if a little anvilicious on the social justice sometimes. Not as bad as some on AO3 though, and my general feeling is more often that they're just avilicious enough.)

[Rajvik]

Geth asks Tali (ME) "Does this unit have a soul?" this led me to posit, "Evangelion X Mass Effect crossover" the Geth are the first to reach instrumentality by putting all their instances into one unit