Fic Update Thread 57: Varieties of Fandom Experience

[Shepherd]

It isn't fanfiction, but Andy Weir apparently wrote a short addition to The Martian early last year to celebrate the story's tenth anniversary.

https://t.co/jj86gMfxly

[Matrix Dragon]

"LOG ENTRY: SOL 488
Well. Fuck me raw."

Yup, that's Mark Watney alright.

[robkelk]

For folks who don't trust link-redirect services: https://galactanet.com/lostsols.pdf

[Mamorien]

Threads of Destiny (OEX) 429-Snowblossom 1.

Today, there were only two others with her, young graduates of the Gold Autumn School, which specialized in spiritual affairs. They were only first realms, but they had endured the longest in the cloying pressure of her mist, and so, they were to be the first dedicated priests of Lake Snowblossom. They would be responsible for the day-to-day duties and upkeep of the shrine, and they were coming to experience the god they would mediate for in person.

She would have to keep them safe. Snowblossom wouldn't mean to hurt them, but like a child with a porcelain doll, she very easily could.

Both were dressed in robes that took on hues of blue, layered and embroidered to resemble gentle ripples and flowing currents. Each bore a treated wooden torch in one hand, held on the side facing the outer edge of the boat. The reagents applied to the burning ends made the torches burn a pale and ghostly blue. Both were young men, which was to say, they were only three or five years her senior. They were putting on brave faces.

Distance began to stretch, and the sight of the swarm of flickering firefly lights began to distort and dance behind them, the shore seeming to grow further away far faster than their boat was moving. The air rippled, and Ling Qi tasted lakewater on her tongue. Her qi flared, and she wrapped their boat in her own spirit as easily as breathing. She did so carefully, a net to filter, not a blade to strike or a shield to defy the powerful spirit.

When the world rippled and they sailed on now through through a copse of water weed whose strands stretched far out of sight above and below, her companions did not drown, though the two of them shivered, no doubt tasting cold moisture in the dense and cloying air that was left inside the thin veil she had made. Their boat sailed on, a tiny marble of pale mist in the depths of the lake. The torches burned brightly, reflecting off the scales of vast schools of fish that drifted cloudlike through their surroundings.

"O great lake, daughter of the distant glacier for whom ice itself blooms, who has accepted the name Snowblossom, as spoken in mortal tongues, and who has generously slaked our thirst and fed our bellies," Ling Qi intoned, pulsing her qi to draw attention, limning herself in silvery radiance. She gazed up into the dark and serene waters around them, and felt something stirring. "We, the people of your shore, come to you now to speak and to know."

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21188/...wblossom-1

[Norgarth]

The Weaver's Web (Worm AU)
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/...-109051568