Hello all! I’m limping back to being more active on this forum since I still like it as a digital space. I kinda faded from being here a whole lot after I fell off of working on my one Ranma / AMG fic Divine Patronage. But I’ve been doing plenty of other really cool stuff. And since I got permission from Bob to do a thread like this, I’m gonna shill completed projects, half-active projects I’ve been struggling to chug along on, and projects I keep kicking around. I don’t remember which of these projects I’ve brought up before but what the hell. Hoping people find them cool, that's all.
I'm starting to get my screenwriting groove on, actually, so I might just let fanfic fall by the wayside and focus on that. We will see, I guess.
Back in 2022 I lost interest in Divine Patronage and decided to go back to BGC. Two things I wanted to do were a) establish a fic that could be seen to take place in an AU that would constitute a second reboot of the franchise, with a timeline that could take off from the present and not feel wreathed in the retrofuturism of 2032 or 2040, and b) save Sylvie, as so many fics have, but then do something with her. The result was the only fic I’ve really, truly finished, after a little less than a year. Anatomy of a Lovedoll is about cybernetics and humanity and freedom and yuri angst and epic mecha fights. One of its key plot points will, I suspect, have to be retconned in an awkward way sometime soon but it’s no biggie.
Later that year, I got really into Cyberpunk: Edgerunners despite not really liking the release version of 2077 for a multitude of reasons, and then into a fic that got big in the embryonic phase of the fandom called Group Chat by Arrow S. Morgan. I ended up on the author’s Discord, hung out there a lot, made some friends of dubious merit, and went on to help write a pretty significant chapter in the fic’s back half. The fic starts off as horny screwball comedy and then becomes a bit more action-packed, and, yes, crosses over with the original Marathon trilogy in amazing ways. Very few longer Edgerunners fics hold up, to me, as more than pulpy adventures; Group Chat is one of them.
In early 2023, I started watching the Madhouse Black Lagoon anime. Oddly enough, I’ve never finished all of it because of how unpleasant I find some arcs, but I love the characters, the world, the unhinged action. The pseudophilosophical monologues lack panache to me, but there’s some really excellent fanfics birthed by it (and more than a few atrocities against good taste). So as Anatomy wound down I quickly spun up Bubblegum Black, which is the longest thing I've ever written by a country mile, an unhinged crossover in Roanapur, November, 2069, where the Knight Sabers are hired on by Sylia's sexy ex Balalaika to help her fend off a megacorporate takeover of the city, only for things to spiral out of control in true mecha-hyperviolence style. I love this fic, I want to do so much more with this fic, I have not updated this fic in nine months, I need to winnow this fic's ambitions down significantly. (And I'm envious of those who can sustain other fics longer and with more hits, even if I don't really enjoy their content. I have opinions! Judgements! Complaints!)
Same with something I spun up a year ago with a pal. I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Dust does a lot of very odd things as far as Edgerunners fanfic goes. It uses the BGC206X (The all-new, all-unhinged continuity for Anatomy and Black) timeline more than it does Cyberpunk's but still takes place in Night City; It's a pre-Sabers prequel involving Celia; It's also a 'Gloria lives and gets to do things' fanfic, since I seem to have an attraction to turning fridged heroines into badasses. I think the cowriter and I are onto something, but, again, time! The foe of all beautiful things, the high-octane fuel in the engine of entropy!
Let's see, what else... Nene Romanova god of the internet is a two-part atrocity against good taste where Nene and company deal with cyber-future 4chan and also Knight Saber real person fiction. The New Wave Empress uses interview format to imagine what it's like to talk to Sylia's public persona as a fashionista, especially when you're getting on her nerves. I like those shorts. They're pleasant chunks of nonsense. I think that's about it.
The one idea I'm having if I can't justify keeping up with writing big serialized fanfic is rewriting an old OVA episode or two, or just writing something that could fit in an episode and has tight structure. Revenge Road sticks out in particular; I just finished the original The Warriors novel, the Sol Yurick one, the one far more freaky in the best ways than Walter Hill's movie (which is itself a forerunner spiritually to streets of fire, then to Megazone 23, then etc etc etc), and I keep thinking about the world it crafts and how well it gets inside the heads of its protagonists. There's something there.
Hope this is interesting to someone!
I'm starting to get my screenwriting groove on, actually, so I might just let fanfic fall by the wayside and focus on that. We will see, I guess.
Back in 2022 I lost interest in Divine Patronage and decided to go back to BGC. Two things I wanted to do were a) establish a fic that could be seen to take place in an AU that would constitute a second reboot of the franchise, with a timeline that could take off from the present and not feel wreathed in the retrofuturism of 2032 or 2040, and b) save Sylvie, as so many fics have, but then do something with her. The result was the only fic I’ve really, truly finished, after a little less than a year. Anatomy of a Lovedoll is about cybernetics and humanity and freedom and yuri angst and epic mecha fights. One of its key plot points will, I suspect, have to be retconned in an awkward way sometime soon but it’s no biggie.
Later that year, I got really into Cyberpunk: Edgerunners despite not really liking the release version of 2077 for a multitude of reasons, and then into a fic that got big in the embryonic phase of the fandom called Group Chat by Arrow S. Morgan. I ended up on the author’s Discord, hung out there a lot, made some friends of dubious merit, and went on to help write a pretty significant chapter in the fic’s back half. The fic starts off as horny screwball comedy and then becomes a bit more action-packed, and, yes, crosses over with the original Marathon trilogy in amazing ways. Very few longer Edgerunners fics hold up, to me, as more than pulpy adventures; Group Chat is one of them.
In early 2023, I started watching the Madhouse Black Lagoon anime. Oddly enough, I’ve never finished all of it because of how unpleasant I find some arcs, but I love the characters, the world, the unhinged action. The pseudophilosophical monologues lack panache to me, but there’s some really excellent fanfics birthed by it (and more than a few atrocities against good taste). So as Anatomy wound down I quickly spun up Bubblegum Black, which is the longest thing I've ever written by a country mile, an unhinged crossover in Roanapur, November, 2069, where the Knight Sabers are hired on by Sylia's sexy ex Balalaika to help her fend off a megacorporate takeover of the city, only for things to spiral out of control in true mecha-hyperviolence style. I love this fic, I want to do so much more with this fic, I have not updated this fic in nine months, I need to winnow this fic's ambitions down significantly. (And I'm envious of those who can sustain other fics longer and with more hits, even if I don't really enjoy their content. I have opinions! Judgements! Complaints!)
Same with something I spun up a year ago with a pal. I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Dust does a lot of very odd things as far as Edgerunners fanfic goes. It uses the BGC206X (The all-new, all-unhinged continuity for Anatomy and Black) timeline more than it does Cyberpunk's but still takes place in Night City; It's a pre-Sabers prequel involving Celia; It's also a 'Gloria lives and gets to do things' fanfic, since I seem to have an attraction to turning fridged heroines into badasses. I think the cowriter and I are onto something, but, again, time! The foe of all beautiful things, the high-octane fuel in the engine of entropy!
Let's see, what else... Nene Romanova god of the internet is a two-part atrocity against good taste where Nene and company deal with cyber-future 4chan and also Knight Saber real person fiction. The New Wave Empress uses interview format to imagine what it's like to talk to Sylia's public persona as a fashionista, especially when you're getting on her nerves. I like those shorts. They're pleasant chunks of nonsense. I think that's about it.
The one idea I'm having if I can't justify keeping up with writing big serialized fanfic is rewriting an old OVA episode or two, or just writing something that could fit in an episode and has tight structure. Revenge Road sticks out in particular; I just finished the original The Warriors novel, the Sol Yurick one, the one far more freaky in the best ways than Walter Hill's movie (which is itself a forerunner spiritually to streets of fire, then to Megazone 23, then etc etc etc), and I keep thinking about the world it crafts and how well it gets inside the heads of its protagonists. There's something there.
Hope this is interesting to someone!
