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How is speculative fiction influenced by colonialist ideology?

First and foremost, I continue to write my Magic: the Gathering blog. I'm rather proud that I've kept it up this long.

I'm also working on that Baron Phobos story that I keep saying is almost done. In my defense, it is more almost done than the last time I said it was almost done. So...

Also, I keep meaning to go back and figure out a way to take the suck out of this mission I've been writing. I should do that.

-Phobos

Aka, the pile of files I have open that I could see getting bigger at some point.

- Honors thesis (the experiments are done, I just need to write the thing, due by May)
- An interlude set after the RP in which Kk'kttak fell into HQ (aka, the one where he's been arrested)
- Two short stories
- An effectively abandoned recruitment interlude for Peregrin (like, I might maybe get back to it eventually, but probably not anytime soon)
- A dormant Young Wizards/Animorphs crossover (... there's an outline! I have a plan! Sort of...)

And as to questions, do any of y'all have this problem where you sometimes get a project blocked by fleshing out the middle of a story? Like, you know where you are, you know where you'd like to end up, and you have a general notion of how to get from here to there, but you need much more detail than that to write the thing. If so, how do you deal with it?

- Tomash

If there are no objections, I probably will.

~Neshomeh

Because, I mean... it has fan animé. And KYM is for, well, memes - major social phenomena. It must be nearly five years old now, right? I say go ahead and add it.

I can't take on another mission right now... and I dunno about taking an obvious My Immortal retread at all... but all the same, it's hard to find sufficiently awful crossovers so squarely in my wheelhouse.

So, maybe. But I won't cry if someone else really wants it.

~Neshomeh

(...that would be because I now have a VPN and it was on. Still me. Don't worry. All is well. I'm happy to confirm it's me via gchat or something as well, if necessary now or in the future--so far I've been leaving it off to post on the Board, but there's every chance I'll forget again, so...yeah. Heads up! ~Z)

Seriously, thank you for your comments. Both this set and the ones from the previous prompt session are very nice to read. This one is especially nice because when I came up with the Calaquendi (...five years ago, eek), I originally struggled some with figuring out what they were actually like, what made them distinct from each other. I doubt I'm done figuring it out, but it looks like at least a good chunk of what I have figured out came through here, so...thanks.

The plants...well. I went back to the first place that mentions them (a giant unfinished 50+ page mission that Lily and I were writing, which I might try to edit and finish since it does have a lot of things I like in it and the badfic is even still up)...it doesn't say there, of course, but there are definitely roots on the floor. I'm going to say that some of them are in pots--flowers especially, and whatever's just been brought in--but for the most part they're...well, there's probably a dirt floor? Either that or they really are growing out of the generic surface, which I can't imagine would make the Calaquendi feel at all at home. Either way, they're mostly not in pots.

Also. Um. I'm completely sure it was unintentional, but your one little question about the plants sparked a whole long thing that culminated in a new piece of plot being added to some interludes I was already working on and four pages of writing for it, all over the course of one evening. So. Um. Thank you? It's been one heck of a snowball, and I'm pretty sure it's still rolling, to some extent (beyond the fact that I now have to figure out what happens next...)

Anyway. Thank you.

~Z

For one thing, at the very least it's mixing Grelvish and Sindarin (or maybe it's completely Grelvish--I don't think so, but I still need to go looking. 'Amin mela lle' is most assuredly Grelvish, though).

More hilariously, of course, is that she's the last Elf-witch ahahaha. I needed that laugh. Also, Celebrian (unless her mother is someone else and I missed it) was murdered...by Suron.

I'm sure the writer had fun with this. I, too, will have fun with this :D

~Z

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Hey Thoth,

I recall you've seen my own sort of take-on-the-PPC-that-isn't-a-PPC-spinoff; I've considered rewriting it to more closely resemble the PPC continuity since. Unfortunately, some of the elements conflict too much with what's established and existing to make it compatible with the PPC continuity, so Watanabe & Smith has unfortunately been in limbo for the past little bit and I'd like to discuss the direction I'm going in with other people. I'm currently leaning toward continuing on the road I'm on, and just keeping the disclaimer that it's not endorsed in any fashion by the PPC.

I've also been working on writing a couple essays and how-tos that I also intend to put on my website for different pieces of advice. One that I've thought to add includes a more expansive take on what I'm calling the "micro-story" method of describing a character or as an exercise to brainstorm when building a character. I've mentioned it here before although it was on the tailing end of another discussion. It's a method of using small, short descriptions of what your character does or has done, rather than use adjectives. I find that adjectives are inherently subjective and open to a wide amount of interpretation depnding on who you describe your character to and in many cases can be extrapolated to fit almost any character at all, wheras what they do say much more about them. That's why I champion the "micro-story" method so much and why I like to share it with other people. After that, we'll see what else I have to offer.

Unrelatedly, I might add some musings on the (extremely sad) state of computer security at the consumer level and some tips to stay safe at a later date.

Even though things have been going much more slowly than I'd like, I wanted to mention that they're still going.
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I'm a little unsure as to whether it still meets the required "five in twenty" Google hits for the past year, since a lot of the returns are Know Your Meme and various video hosting sites that seem to contain the fanime? I think there are still sufficient hits of people talking about it, but you have to go back a few pages to find them in all the garbage.

I don't need this to be acknowledged to stoke my ego or anything—I've waited this long, it won't change my life one way or the other—but maybe it's a good test case?

~Neshomeh

And by that I mean I'm stuck in the World Builder's Syndrome, unable to even write an opening, but spending hours nitpicking every possible aspect of my universe.
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Send help.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's a feasible one. First because of all the practical concerns, and second because I'm with doctorlit: any book of mine with particular sentimental value attached to it is one that I want to keep. Sending off ones I don't care about that much is not quite what you had in mind, I think. {= )

Plus I don't write in my books, that's sacrilege.

~Neshomeh

I'd be interested in reading the essay and reflection, if you're able to share it.

Also interested in writing advice!

~Neshomeh

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It is more than possible to annotate ebooks, but at this moment it doesn't look like most software quickly and readily supports saving those annotations inside the books and sending them to someone else, unfortunately, which is pretty inconvenient if you ask me. I haven't seen this use case officially supported by any of the Ebook readers yet.

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The first bit of this popped into my head almost fully formed while I was in the shower a few days ago, and the second bit followed fairly easily. Then I spoke about it with a friend of mine who is a songwriter, and she's going to help me make it into an actual song next month. Apparently February is album-writing month. ^_^

First two verses on my dA. I'm holding off on sharing any more until I know what the final form is really going to be. The title (new today!) may not be the final title, either, but it's what I like right now.

Also:

- 1 active cowrite
- 3 dormant ones (one of which will become active again whenever hS can work it in; dunno about the other two)
- 1 interlude set in the near-ish future
- 1 regular mission, barely begun
- 1 epic sorta-filk
- Been thinking about working on my Skyrim stuff again. I chugged out many, many words, some of which might not suck!

All the irons. All the fires.

~Neshomeh may be slightly overextended, but doesn't care.

The term 'Legendary Badfic' is exactly that - a story that is widely known for being so bad there is little to no people saying good things about it.

(Granted, before joining the PPC, I myself only knew 2 out of 15 stories listed on our wiki...)

I'm all in for finding new gems who can be considered "oh, so terrible", but I think the Legendaries we have now are pretty much a closed chapter and a piece in our Hall o' Fame.

I think the most important bit is that lots of people have to be talking about it across the fanbase. It doesn't necessarily mean everyone will have heard of it—that's why we came up with the criteria we did, to get around the problem of most PPCers going "well, I never heard of it, it can't be that big a deal." But we don't all share fandoms, and we're not all active in fan communities outside this one, so that doesn't necessarily carry much weight. {= )

It's possible, though, that godawful badfic doesn't create the kind of buzz it did ten, fifteen, twenty(!) years ago. Perhaps fandom at large has grown jaded to that sort of thing?

~Neshomeh isn't active enough in other fan communities to know.

This came up in the chat, and seemed worth posting about here.

Most of the Legendary Badfic list is missioned or being missioned. A good portion of what's left seems to have fallen off the Internet (see, for example, Cho Chang's Desires, where almost all the Google hits lead to ... us).

Is this just because there's no more Legendary Badfic left out there, or that the criteria are a bit strict? Maybe.

However, a much more likely possibility is that we just haven't gone looking. The list hasn't been added to in years. (It probably doesn't help that fandom has moved from where it used to be years ago, and we as a community/broader movement within fandom didn't move with it all that much, IMO.)

So, what's Legendary these days? If anyone, especially some of the newer Boarders, has some insight, please do post, even if it doesn't quite meet the standards we set back in 2016.

- Tomash

It was more about how colonialist ideology in our world has impacted specfic writing, particularly colonialist ideas about race and ethnostates.

Yes, really. I know I haven't actually edited the document in over a year, but Real Life happened and then I decided to get rid of one character because they were pretty flat. I'm just trying to think of a good character to replace him, then I'll have to re-do the prompts.

I haven't been writing much lately, and nothing for here, but I'm definitely thinking about the problem and hope to have a few concepts down Soon(tm).