Fic Update Thread 58: the extra variety

[Mamorien]

San Francisco: 2161 (Star Trek subcreation) Chapter One: Seat at the Table.

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
-- Representative Shirley Chisholm (Earth Human, pre-unity politician)

In January of 2161 C.E., the Prime Minister of United Earth Nathan Samuels sat at a crossroads. The radiation crews were still working desperately to contain the fallout from the nuclear attacks some months before. Though hastily built levee and reclamation systems had mostly stopped contaminated water from seeping into the larger Atlantic Ocean, triage units were daily criss-crossed from the Mediterranean Sea, the Sahara desert, and the Iberian peninsula to respond to new areas of pollution. His government, a coalition but one with a significant majority, was supported by his Deputy Prime Minister, Sarah De Los Santos of the Progressive-Labor Party. In association with his Social Democrats, they were nearly twice the size of the formal opposition, the Democratic-Republican Alliance led by Ramya Bandara, though her occasional vote trading alliance with the Party of Nations could present problems if handled cavalierly. His headaches were personal, rather than political, as the variety of numerically insignificant but loud independent groups within the United Earth General Assembly seemed to take up much more of his time than their numbers supported. These small parties had broken off from the traditional conservative Party of Nations and had become more and more reactionary in their public statements of anti-alien, pro-Human sentiments. “Earth First, Earth Only, Earth Anything they seemed to me at the time; it was hard to stop myself from being distracted, especially when they got someone named Samuel to lead them.”

footnote

Evans, Maxwell. (2187.) Founding Father: The Official Biography of Nathan Samuels. United Earth: Algonquin Books

https://nascentnovice.com/sanfrancisco-2...the-table/

Threads of Destiny (OEX) 453-Shell 1.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21188/...53-shell-1

More Than Meets the Spy (SPY x FAMILY x TRANSFORMERS) Mission 20: Relief.

And we're back with the final chapter for this arc! I was able to get this chapter finished and uploaded a bit earlier than I was expecting to.

I'll preface ahead that not too much excitement happens here since it's more or less concluding things like the store robbery and everyone dealing with the aftermath of what happened to Yor. If the Barricade vs. Yor fight was the climax for the arc, these previous two chapters are the falling action.

See the end of the chapter for more notes.

Alright, that's the final chapter for this story arc. Next time I return to More Than Meets the Spy will be the beginning of the Cruise Arc. Though I guess since technically that arc will be skimmed over to focus primarily on what's happening in Berlint, it'd probably need a different name.

We also get your friendly reminder that Yor Forger is the single most terrifying woman on the planet when she's pissed off. Of course, the robber didn't do himself any favors by a.) targeting a child, b.) said child being her daughter, and c.) stomping on said daughter in a way all too reminiscent of what Barricade had done, slamming her Berserk, Relative, Trauma, and Mama Bear Buttons all at the same time.

If Loid's disarming of the thug seemed familiar, that's because it's a Better Call Saul reference. Specifically, to when Mike disarmed Sobchack (aka discount Trevor Phillips) in the episode "Pimento". Loid's basically doing the exact same thing here since I can easily see him doing that.

Also a friendly reminder that Yuri's durability borders on Toon Force depending on comedy. Originally, I wasn't gonna have it be mentioned how Yuri managed to get all those other injuries between SSS HQ and the hospital, but I figured out how to have it included via Anya's telepathy. One of the people running into him being Mikaela was an admitted last-minute decision because I thought it was funny. Plus, that's twice Mikaela's had encounters with the Briars being... well, the Briars.

I wanted to try and have Anya address a few things with Sari to lie about having not seen anything, but I couldn't figure out how to fit it in, so I figured it'd make for a bit of good tension for later. Not everything has to be addressed in one go, after all.

Same goes for how Yor's recovering from the ordeal and how her family's trying to help. They'll be able to do so much better when they're on the cruise ship.

And now we get to the bigger aspect of the chapter: Bond's visions. See, what he showed Anya is a massive of a "What Could Have Been" for this story.

Now, to fully clarify, I had ZERO INTENTION of killing off Mikaela or Fiona or Martha or Becky's father. I'll say right now that when the above factory incident was the original plan, the only characters I was planning to kill off were the SSS First Lieutenant and Captain Gascoigne, as well as Penny's parents (fret not, she would've been rescued). I only added the details of their deaths here both for the sake of dramatic tension on Anya's part, and to help make Yor preventing that timeline seem all the more significant.

However, after having had some time to think, I decided to throw that whole idea out because it was WAY TOO DARK after we already went through the bleak affair of Yor battling Barricade and coming out of it beaten to near death. Plus, I felt like I was killing off way too many characters too quickly, and that took the fun out of writing and would definitely take the fun out of reading for you guys, and the last thing I want to do is induce the "Too bleak, stopped caring" trope on anyone.

Frankly, after all that, the Cruise Arc serves much better as both a pallet cleanser and as some much-needed brevity for both the readers and cast members. Though that isn't to say things won't be tense, given that, per the new visions, we are getting Bumblebee's first encounter with Barricade.

Another major factor for the change was rereading my previous work, with the moment from Mission 18 where Yor slashes Barricade being what helped further inspire the change for the arc. See, my original plan was for Bumblebee to brush off detecting the sudden Energon signature as a glitch and continue with the factory plan as normal. However, I realized later on that there was no way that'd be a good writing decision because it makes Bumblebee clutch the Idiot Ball like his life depends on it. So, he's now gonna be investigating the Energon signature, which cancels the factory plan, and by extension, the bigger bout between him and Barricade that would've caused a lot of destruction.

So yeah, Yor ended up completely undoing a bad timeline from a writing perspective as well. Everyone, say thank you to Yor!

Anyway, taking a break from this story for now. I'll be heading back to The Silver Raven for a few chapters.

Hope to see you all then!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/406965.../171569107