I'm writing up an ATT page for Jack Staik and Lady Tesser's Tales of Ranma and Ranko, and there's this little throwaway bit that is driving me nuts. At one point -- no need to worry about the context -- Nabiki sings out "We've got hot water in our space ship's bathtubs", and the narration explicitly notes that it's from an "anime movie sequel" without identifying the movie.

Google turns up nothing with that line (or variations, like "starship" and so on).

Given the period when the story was written -- 2000 +/- a year or so -- should narrow things down a little, you would think, but I'm still not able to find anything. I'm hoping someone remembers the lyric or a possible translation variation and can remember from where.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

The Name of the Game by literalsin

How to put this... it's not actually a recommendation, because the fic has approximately all the red flags, waves them proudly, and does its best to live up the their philosophical ideals, and yet it somehow kept me going past all the roll-your-eyes-and-scroll-the-page moments through thirty four chapters and ... holy fuck, 688,855 words!? And it only barely gets MC past canon's trailers and backstory into early episodes. Crikey.

Right, so, those red flags. They start strong right out of the gate with the premise being a RWBY/The Gamer/pornworld fusion Jaune In Name Only harem SI, where the sibling fetish is so all encompassing that literally the only ones who (apparently) aren't banging or pining are Qrow and Raven, with a possible exception for Winter due to only appearing in another character's flashback to Atlas' Specialist program training, which is deep into the Nazi Science long grass of mustache twirling evil complete with super-soldier experiments and Dust and drug assisted brainwashing from day one, with removing all previous emotional ties as an explicit goal. Also, out of eight of canon's female antagonists I can think of off the top of my head, three are core members of the waifu squad and one is headed that way if she lives, after being seduced for infiltration purposes.

On the other hand, one early love interest who gets ignored too long calls JINO out on it, breaks up with him, and finds another relationship, which was stable the last I remember seeing it, and is treated IC and in narration as justified and in the right to do so, if overly complacent to a related spy-subplot threat. Leaving the waifus behind to go fight the big bad for their own safety is likewise called out and accepted as having been arrogant and disrespectful and the direct cause of nearly getting killed and not-quite-apocalyptically botching the quest.

Next is the author's tendency to toss in RL politics every two or three chapters, starting at right wing and making bold attempts at achieving incel cuckoolander status, though the affection and tenderness displayed to the waifu squad (who are actually decently believable individuals with their own wants and quirks, not a list of names and haremette tropes) and sincere-at-the-IC-level attempts to just have some female characters be friends leave it falling short of that ... lofty goal ... in practice. The closest I got to dropping the fic was a visit to a Schnee company town where dose happy Faunus singin' in de mines ran off the party with a crowd throwing tomatoes and cabbages followed by rocks, for daring to come and try to offer white- human-folk jobs in de big city, which I am blatantly, shamelessly spoiling as the "savvy" characters (meaning everyone there but Blake) and the narration all treat this as if it was the only expected result. Not phrased so blatantly, and with the justification provided being semi-plausible in context, but considered without narrative immersion that may just make it all the worse after the fact. Honestly, the only good thing about that part is confirming that I still find right-wing stuff as cringey as left-wing stuff, when hanging out on mostly left-leaning sites and getting annoyed by their enthusiasm had me worrying about drifting too far right out of contrariness.

A Penny copy is a literal bind-on-equip Epic Loot quest reward, but JINO assures her that she's her own person who can do what she wants right after equipping her to a pet system slot. (Again, though, IC she gets treated very humanely and like a real member of the team, and not even waifu'd into the harem, though there is some non-sexytimes daughteru going on.)

It's a Gamer fic, so threat escalation is less a matter of power creep and more a power turbolift ride, with frequent soliloquizing about quests, skills, stats, and how quickly they're engorging his clout and/or the best ways to make them bigger faster, with a mysteriously all-encompassing and occasionally directly responsive System driving it all. Inventory based quick-change disguises enable over-complicated multiple identity shenanigans, while Instant Dungeons trivialize a lot of theft and item duping with the copied area's contents. Gamer setting elements are largely absent except for the System itself, and Instant Dungeons/Illusion Barriers are for once nicely integrated into the fusion setting's lore as being the interstitial space where negative emotional energy collects to form new Grimm along with restless spirits too attached to move on. One of which also gets attached to a pet system slot, and is the subject of a long-term quest/subplot to get waifu'd.

And yet.

Despite that.

Despite all of that.

I still want to recommend it, because the technical quality of the writing is decent, the actual plot is engaging, and as long as the fictional character incest and MF/FF bisexuality doesn't squick you out, the porn is pretty hot.

I can't bring myself to do so, but I can give you a couple links, to make up your own mind about.

NSFW, obviously.

Chapter index on AO3
The FFnet version has one less chapter, but a higher word count. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Previous thread is previous.

link

Where the Wild Roses Grow / Kylie Minogue

They call me The Wild Rose
But my name was Elisa Day
Why they call me it I do not know
For my name was Elisa Day

From the first day I saw her I knew she was the one
She stared in my eyes and smiled
For her lips were the colour of the roses
That grew down the river, all bloody and wild

When he knocked on my door and entered the room
My trembling subsided in his sure embrace
He would be my first man, and with a careful hand
He wiped at the tears that ran down my face

They call me The Wild Rose
But my name was Elisa Day
Why they call me that I do not know
For my name was Elisa Day

On the second day I brought her a flower
She was more beautiful than any woman I'd seen
I said, "Do you know where the wild roses grow
So sweet and scarlet and free?"

On the second day he came with a single red rose
He said "Will you give me your loss and your sorrow"
I nodded my head, as I lay on the bed
"If I show you the roses, will you follow?"

They call me The Wild Rose
But my name was Elisa Day
Why they call me that I do not know
For my name was Elisa Day

On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he knelt above me with a rock in his fist

On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
And I kissed her goodbye, said, "All beauty must die"
And I lent down and planted a rose 'tween her teeth

They call me The Wild Rose
But my name was Elisa Day
Why they call me that I do not know
For my name was Elisa Day
My name was Elisa Day
For my name was Elisa Day

Effect: Summons the ghost of Elisa Day. She's just a normal person, and mostly intangible despite having a fully formed body, but her rose is solid. While not particularly combative she can do a decent Tuxedo Mask impression with it if needed, with extra effect against evil spirits or humans who have committed murder. More generally usefully, if she places it in the mouth of a corpse, their ghost will also be summoned, to speak to grieving friends or relatives, about how they died or other things they knew in life. Details about any and all afterlife experiences are not available; awareness of events that happened since their death is variable - pretty much standard spirit medium rules there.

Elisa remembers each time Doug summons her (and was very confused and traumatized at first) has a loose idea of what he's been up to in between and why he's summoning her without needing to take time to explain, and is generally willing to help as much as she can, while other spirits have a muted emotional response and a varying range of attitudes, even if almost any of them are at least willing to talk with people they knew and/or help catch and prosecute/punish anyone responsible for their death. They remain intangible, glowing, partial manifestations unless a more powerful necromantic effect is used before the song ends.

I like to be here when I can....


Right.  In spite of all the head explody challenges I've faced I am back home.

Is anyone interested in a trip report?

Too Bad by Doug and the Slugs



I don't see this being a power song of any sort, but I can almost picture Doug quoting the chorus (or possibly playing a clip) as a villain is lead away in handcuffs.

I have been reading Playing Catchup by EvilAuthor, as has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum.

I followed this by re-reading the Fenspace story Candle In The Dark, and Lost Kin by JustAGuy.

Does anyone have other recommendations for stories like these that show clashing societies, rather than just a single (or small group of) fish out of water?

It is the 41st Millenium.

For ten centuries, the God Emperor of Mankind has watched immobile from his Golden Throne.

It is a time of teeming trillions toiling about their days in peace - in hives, on farms, in cities and forges and starships. For every world which dies screaming in the pyres of exterminatus or is touched by the flames of war, a million more spin peacefully around warm suns scarcely aware of the horrors of the void beyond. For every heretic, seditionist or arsonist in the dark, a million faithful hold the line against the night. For every craven coward hiding from their duty and crying against their fate, a hundred step forth on far foreign worlds certain that the home they would never see again and those they still loved would be next if they don't.

The bonds of brother and sister, of common humanity still remain. Parents wish for a better future for their children. Where there are wars against heresy and xenos, there were those who wage their wars of Faith against the ravages of disease and famine. The pen of the mundane adept which condemns thousands in callous error guards millions through thankless diligence.

The Emperor's divine hand touches the living souls of those in need, bestowing upon them the strength to endure even where they alone could not hope succeed.

Even against the Grim Darkness of the far Future, the best angels of humanity still shine.


So long as that remains true, there is still hope.
------

If I can bring Grimdark to to a happy go-lucky setting ----   why not do the opposite?

So it was sometime in late 2023... you know, a little after Mackie fucked up with his Griffon project and nearly got everyone killed at Frigga, and about six months after that whole United Belt Alliance fiasco.

Here's what only some people know about that time... you have to remember that UBA was trying to throw all sorts of wrenches into the JMC works - and it was in a big bid to force us to work for them, or to fold up, and to either way isolate everyone who wasn't under their banner further and tighten up that set of thumbscrews.

Overall, it was a really rough time for everyone out Jupiter way, almost but not quite as bad as the Boskonian War had been for us. After all, I came out of that Milestone Event with a biomod, using a dose of the substance Handwavium to basically change from someone who was rapidly dying to someone who was going to keep on living. Oh, and it included a level of involuntary gender flipping whenever I’d get excited or stressed. But that was usually once a day, tops, and either would reset when I’d get sufficiently calm, or had gotten a good night’s sleep.

A little thing about the UBA situation now that you know about the biomod... my gender flipping had gone into serious overdrive from the stress... I was literally spending, well, not full up days at the time, but I was finding there was less and less male time as the stress had mounted from dealing with what they were doing to be maximally disruptive to our operations, the shift happening pretty much every single day and earlier and earlier in the day. It took months after enough information was found to bring that entire thing down around their ears for us to finally start getting to where we could deliver on time regularly.

My variable gender thing... didn't really recover quite so neatly. I was still finding myself randomly changing, in both directions, with no apparent cause or reason, and it stopped even being as predictable as “early in the day”, to say nothing of the fact that relaxing was no longer guaranteed to shift me back and make it stick. It took a little bit to realize why. Of course, it wasn’t me who realized it first.

*****

I woke up in the middle of the night with the overriding need to use the head, and did what I always did up until that night, padding into the head, pulling down the front, standing over the toilet and doing the business, as it were.

I didn't hear the sound, at least as soon as I should have... but the warm, wet sensation that unexpectedly spread down my legs brought me right awake.

*****

Nene woke with a start to a muffled groan almost becoming a scream from the head of the small sleeping area aboard Starbug 1. She quickly threw off her side of the blanket and rushed into the head nestled between the two cabins. Jeph was there, leaning against the wall, panicking a bit... her underwear still bunched down around her hips and dripping with something that clearly wasn’t water.

"Jeph... are... are you all right?"

Jeph seemed to come back to herself, her lips quivered, and she lunged against Nene, grabbing her into a hug and practically sobbing.

"Nene... nene... it... make it stop... I... i can't..."

Nene did the only thing she could, taking Jeph into a hug, lowering her carefully down to the floor and seating herself to cradle her, letting the crying fit run it's course, stroking her hair and making soothing sounds. "Jeph... it's all right... it'll be all right…”

*****

I don't remember, honestly, how long the sob attack lasted. Nene held me until it had properly passed. I felt more than a little wrung out.

"Ne...Nene... I... gods I just want this to be stable..." I sniffed, straightened myself back up, then leaning against the bulkhead. "I need to just be one gender for a day... just one damned day..."

Nene looked at me, and there was that look again, the one that told volumes about the depths of the love she could hold.

"Jeph... OK, first of all, take a shower... a good soaking long shower, as much as you need, OK? I'll go down to the galley and put on some of that Death Wish on the pot and a couple of bagels in the toaster. You come down as soon as you're ready and decent, and then we'll talk about what we can do, OK?"

I nodded. I was a bit numb as I showered... I hadn't woken up female like that in a long time, not since sometime in the middle of the War, and that had been a week that included a major flashback to nearly getting killed... and something had hit me really hard about it when I'd felt my underwear get soaked when I expected the stream to just hit the bowl… and it was clear the last bit of gender consistency I’d had - waking up in male form - was no longer going to be.

I yanked myself away from that, and worked on getting myself cleaned up, washed out my hair just to be certain and to partake in the ritual of cleansing, so to speak, and rustled myself up some clothing while wrapping my hair up in a towel. Pants, shirt, undershirt ‘waved to become a bra (which it did immediately) shorts, the whole drill at the time. And I slinked down the stairs, feeling a little more out of sorts than I had been feeling of late, while smelling the sweet roasted bean smell of caffeine ready for the cup.

Nene had gotten the coffee and bagels out as she'd threatened, and had even taken the time to make scrambled eggs and bacon, which had become a fair luxury of late for us as they still haven’t figured out a way to vat grow a satisfactory form of bacon. She put a steaming cup of coffee and a nice, hot plate of breakfast down on the table, and indicated the chair. We both sat down, and she watched me intently as I ate and drank, and gave me a few minutes to eat in silence before she sighed.

"OK... I'm just going to take a page from Priss' playbook for a change and just come right out with it, right now, and spare us a lot of drama and misunderstandings and everyone else around us second guessing all of this. Something's been really off since all the business with Maico and her Saber Chase, like it’s thrown your balance way off and you’ve never really recovered it, and given the way it's gotten even worse now, I think I have some idea, after all these years, what it's all about." She took in another breath, held it, let it out, then,

"Jeph... all of that stress, then dealing with the Griffon fallout... there's definitely been a lot more to the variable gender thing you have than most anyone have been aware of." She gave me a look, much sharper than I was used to seeing on her face. "It... it's like it’s been part of a mismatched and bodged up coping mechanism, isn't it?"

I looked at her, still trying to shrug off the awfulness of the morning thus far, as she pulled out her laptop, opened it, and read the file that was already pulled up on it. "OK... I'm going to ask a few questions, and I need you to answer them completely, and honestly. This comes from those Biomod Psych Tests that Peters came up with."

She asked me the question: What was my name before I went Up and joined Fenspace. I said it, three names. First, middle, last.

Her expression, it didn't quite sour, but it got more thoughtful. "Uh... huh."

She asked a few more... all of them were about my past, how I grew up.

She closed her laptop up. "Jeph... OK... I think... I think we can stabilize this a bit, but I'm not sure how much you're going to like the idea."

I sighed, shuddering a little. "Nene... I need a lot more gender stability than I've been getting... It... it's like I change for no reason now, no stress, no excitement, just suddenly." I shuddered. “It’s starting to feel like Hell.”

Nene reached over, and took my hand in hers. "Maybe... we should ride this day out. Take it as just two girls today. Geo says we're about an hour from landing. Don't worry about changing back for right now, just see if this will be stable for today." She smirked. "If history is any indication so far, it takes anger or a good night's sleep for you to go all boy again, and the latter clearly isn’t reliable at this point. Might as well just work with it." She breathed again. "I also went ahead and rescheduled that one meeting you had today for tomorrow. Explained that we had some unexpected issues aboard Starbug to iron out."

I could only nod. Part of my brain was still a bit all over the place from the really rude awakening I'd received from a body that had, lately, seemed determined to mess with my head.

She got up, got me another mug of coffee, and sat back down. "Oh, and Jeph? That name you went by? Can you say it again? And THINK about it this time?"

I opened my mouth to say it, and thought about it, and right then, I realized it wasn't the name I'd been given when I was born. Not quite. The last name was the same, and one of the other names matched, but wasn't the middle name, but the first. I’d heard of the phenomenon, but it was shocking, if not disturbing, to actually FEEL what it felt like to have had the discontinuities in one’s psyche wallpapered over. Nene's face wore an expression of sympathy as she watched me suddenly find something that I'd not been aware of since I'd gotten biomodded in 2012.

"Jeph... here's the deal... I remember we decided to not sell that lifesaver kit you'd developed... and I know you'd bred that strain of 'wave for it specifically..."

"Yeah... because I wasn't sure it was going to have that effect on others, and we decided not to take the chance."

She nodded. "You were the only one who worked on that strain. I... I think you put more of yourself into it than any of us suspected at the time, nor suspected until recently." She gave me that piercing look again. "There is something else I've noticed, now that I can really think about it, and seeing the stuff that happened with Jet when she incepted Mackie has brought it into stark relief. You're... more comfortable once you've shifted. Every single time. At least once you're past whatever triggered it, whether it be excitement over something, or general stress." She looked towards the cockpit door. "Geo noticed it too, but I didn't really put two and two together myself for a while, and he literally can’t connect the facts because he doesn’t quite understand the reasons, but I think the excitement causes you to drop the barriers you’ve erected, and when it's general stress, it's happening to remove an element of stress to give you more room to cope with it."

"...and what do you think is the stress it... it's removing?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the truth.

"Jeph... I... I think you're just more comfortable as a woman. And you always have been." I opened my mouth to protest. “And no, you know what my history is, both before and after inception.”

“But… but what about… well…”

“In bed?” Nene tapped me on the forehead, three times. "THIS is what I'm in love with... what's inside that thick bone skull of yours. I've... spent time realizing that I don't care about what sort of package it's actually been wrapped in. I love you, the person, not the bundle of hardware you happen to be installed on." She looked me straight in the eyes. “I want you to be happy, Jeph. That’s the one thing in the ‘verse that is guaranteed to bring me pure joy, seeing you happy.” And she snorted. “Besides, has what form you’ve been in stopped us having a little fun? It’s just different avenues to the same end for me.”

<I hate to interrupt the counseling session,> Geo tweeted over the intercom, <but we’re coming into the Ganymede Traffic Control Area. Captain to the bridge, Blue Alert!> I quickly dumped another round of coffee into my cup, slapped the lid on it, and we made our way from the common area to the “bridge”, which was way too small to really qualify as such, but was also ludicrously larger than what you’d really consider calling a “cockpit”. Someone on the internal JMC listserv had once sarcastically suggested we call it the “codge”, but the sheer intensity of the groaning was almost too much and the idea was tabled without further debate.

I sat down at the forward right control station, dropped my cup into the cupholder, looked at the radio, and looked back at Nene. “I… I’m sorry, my throat’s a bit raspy from crying.”

Nene gave me a sympathetic look. “It’s OK.” She sat down at the station right behind me, and put in the headset mic. “CQ CQ CQ, this is Starbug 1 to Ganymede ATC, we are on approach, and requesting a landing course, over.”

“This is Ganymede ATC to Starbug 1, we have you on scope. Landing course is already open on Beta 5, destination pad is your usual green zone.” There was a pause, and a new voice came on. “This is Commander Hayes, is everything all right over there, Romanova? Usually Captain Antilles speaks for Starbug 1. Over.”

Nene sighed. “This is Starbug 1. Nothing a little bit of rest won’t solve, Commander. We had a little bit of a rough night after the last course correction. Over.”

“Ganymede ATC, anything you’d need to report? Over.”

“Starbug 1, negative Commander, it was all internal logistics, we have it under control for now. Over.”

“Ganymede ATC, understood, happy landings, over and out.”

“Starbug 1, over and out.” Nene pulled the mic back off, and sighed again. “You know, they’re going to ask after the next town hall.”

“I know. I’ll have to figure out what to say… at least, once I figure out what I really need to get on and do about this. Geo, you have the course?”

<Yeah, Boss, all green on my boards. Need me to take us in?>

“Knowing my state right now, I’d probably manage to bang into the pad and bend one of the landing legs. So yes.”

Geo made a happy chirping noise. <I don’t get to park us often enough. Consider it done. You take it easy and let me handle it. Like a pillow made of feathers.>

Nene mock quailed. “Oh no, I’ve heard that before… we’re going to crash, and then explode.” She dropped the mock quail, and got thoughtful. “Or was it explode, and then crash? I can never keep the correct order straight in my head.”

<Har har sis.> Geo twitched his head back and forth in an expression of annoyance, only made mock by holding his holoprojector up. <I’m only going to take it gently because I know Hayes would demand you uninstall my flight controller software.> The last was one of the raspy blurts that was the astromech form of a raspberry.

“OK, OK, you two, settle down. I just want to get home. You can be bratty siblings all you want once we’re at home and settled back in.”

“Awww…” Nene mock groused as Geo chortled. <You got it, Boss.>

Ganymede got much bigger in the viewports, the ground rushing past as the horizon went from curved to flat quickly. We’d made this approach so often that I could almost see the exact moment of the transition between the two now, and then the beautiful, glittering domes of Serenity Valley appeared from behind one of the last crests of mountains. For once, not distracted by the task of piloting, I felt the catch in the back of my throat… as pedestrian as the sight was to me these days, there was still some level of beauty in seeing it, of coming home after weeks out in the black pursuing business.

<Bay doors are open, starting the landing cycle,> Geo reported as the engine’s timber changed, and we felt the angle shift, our ship slowing down considerably, and the landing legs rotating from travel mode to landing mode, as we slipped past the huge hanger door meant to accommodate the much larger Blue Midgets, then spiraled in and passed through a much smaller door into the dedicated parking slip that was only marked with a big green “1” above it.

Starbug 1 slowed further, kicking up a cloud of dust in defiance of all physical laws, spinning almost in place above the turntable pad before finally settling down on her four pads, even as the door we’d come in dropped closed and a gangway extended from the staging walkway nearby.

<And we’re down.> Geo stated as the engines spooled down, from a rumble to barely a vibration of anything. <And not a moment too soon... Boss… something really didn’t feel right about something in that landing, but I can’t pin a servomotor on what’s wrong.> I paused, going over it in my head, then nodded.

“I’m not going to trust my senses myself, given the way the morning’s gone, Geo… schedule the deep inspection team to come in and give the ‘Bug a proper going over.” I unbuckled my harness and stood up, reclaiming my coffee cup from the cupholder and brushing bits of peanut shells from the seat of my shorts. “Right now, I just want to get home.”


-----

OK, yes, I'm finally putting paid to part of why Jeph's biomod worked the way it did. Feel free to chime in with your pieces if you have any, since I'm starting to post it. Also, I'm hoping doing some posting will help me kick the rest of my writing of this story into gear. There is still more to come that's in the datafile.

Renegade Game Studios is getting ready to release RPGs based on GI Joe, Transformers, and Power Rangers
https://www.enworld.org/threads/lets-hav...EvIfg3lieQ