So in a roundabout way that involved Argonians and some very questionable biology Speaker for the Dead came up in the Discord today. And... well, Speaker for the Dead... Well, we can safely say it's the second best Ender book. I think. Any Xenocide fans in the audience? :-P

Anyways, that got me thinking. The best part of the SFTD, IMHO, was... y'know. The actual speaking. And the leadup to that. Which gave me an idea:

We have a lot of universes with interesting humans and aliens and civilizations and opportunities for those cultures to mash up in interesting ways and create planet or realm-local cultures and worlds. Heck, inventing one could be fun. The idea is what comes after: a series of fics documenting the travels of an itinerant speaker, traveling from place to place, learning their customs, doing their best to understand every world and person as they try their hardest to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves (because, y'know. They're dead). The actual excitement would come from seeing all these different ideas, and places, and people, but cast through the lens of an outsider whose job it is to understand their perspectives.

You could do a lot of really cool stuff with that! Even the most boring and basic setup is interesting in and of itself: interpreting the wishes and desires and intent of the dead is pretty hard. But combined with other interesting aspects... just... man, I want this to be a thing. So much. I might actually write it. I dunno.

Also, yes, I was kind of inspired by Kino's Journey when coming up with this, why do you ask? :-P

I was also inspired by Kung Fu, which more people should watch, if only to know the origins of the line "patience, young grasshopper." Why that show? It's just the first one my brain jumps to at the words "man travels around getting into trouble."