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#PennedPossibilities 584 — What is your antagonist’s / villain’s legacy? What do they want to be remembered for and what might they actually be remembered for? CW: Deep background spoilers for the Reluctance series that should not make much difference to the stories.

By my calculation of the Reluctance Series timeline (subject to change), the singularity event that ended our civilization happened in 2540. Reluctant Moon will take place in what would be about 5900 and Reluctant Accomplice exactly 200 years later in 6100. Keeping in mind that the main series antagonist is immortal thanks to technology, her legacy is three-fold. By the latter date, there are still 240 million people alive. The Earth is still minimally habitable. And, thanks to interstellar travel (the means for which she discovered), they may yet find another habitable planet. Whether she is blamed for causing the Earth to die or for keeping humanity from going extinct will depend on the historian. If they give her bad press, they may die an early death.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2502.10 — MC POV: What was your relationship with your parents? Siblings?

Sighs. "Do I have to talk about them?"

[The author says, "Yes."]

"The only thing my mother thinks about is running her warehouse business. Her disregard got so bad that my uncle, who was a lazy man to start with, who only had to run errands for her and take care of me and my two sisters, had a bloody-nose-and-bruises fight with her before he disappeared. My grandmother had seen no need for education, other than teaching my mother and uncle to help run the business, so my mother is more narrow-minded than most.

"She sees people who aren't her "kind" as being some level of trash (though she employs them), but sees my girlfriend Thorn Rose's people as being the oppressor. Blames them for the bad state of the neighborhood, fees, laws favoring "those people," and what she sees as harassment of other businesses by the constables, though I've never seen it. That Thorn's mother is a refugee and is looked down upon by even her "oppressor" people doesn't matter. Thorn helped open my eyes.

"Because my Uncle left when I was ten, being the boy I got saddled taking care of my 12-year-old and 8-year-old sisters. Since uncles raise kids, and my sisters' education matters more than, I ended up juggling my school work, keeping house, shopping for food, cooking for all three women, making sure my sisters did their homework, got their sundries, and behaved. Behaved was the worst. While Mom and Uncle had disciplined me, my siblings had never really been. My older sister modeled herself after Mother, fashioned herself independent, and ran wild. She refused bedtimes; both girls did and I barely got my homework done.

"A year later Big Sis brought a boy home and, as she put it, "I tattled." I don't have a good relationship with either of them, and I suspect when they're grown one will run the business and the other will leave. Both will expect me to take care of their kids the way "good brothers" do. That's going to be a train wreck.

"Don't get me started about when one of the daughters of one my Mother's big clients got interested in me.

"Satisfied now?"

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 18 Nbr 10 — Who is your narrator?

Three answers and two narrators and one's meta.

  1. I, as the author, am always the narrator. My stories are meant to be read aloud, which I do. This reinforces the assertion.
  2. My stories are always written in the first person, therefore the voice of the narrator is always the main character.
  3. There are two main characters in the Reluctant Moon. Thorn Rose: She is shy, brainy, usually has the right answer, comes off as arrogant, is super ambitious about learning everything, and she dissects the world in her narration with logic. Streak Carryingaton: He is very supportive, has common sense informed by his restrictive gender role, (as his name telegraphs) prefers working physically but is actually pretty smart, and will put his desires aside for those of friends and family. His narration centers around people's problems and figuring them out, often comparing them to his relationship with Thorn.

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Replied in thread

@Zekovski oh je me suis déjà amusé à relier mon blog wordpress à un compte dédié comme ça : automatisation ;)
quand j'aurai repris le rythme de republier dessus

Pour mon #JDR c'est de la #SF il adapte un univers que j'avais imaginé (débuts de plusieurs tomes écrits) il y a + de 20 ans...
Rien de très original pour du Planet Opera (bcp de trucs qu'on retrouve dans les Dune, Star Wars... sans qu'ils ne m'aient inspiré...)

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 18 Nbr 09 — Tell us about a writer’s block that scuttled a project. Would you like to revisit it?

Okay. Depends on your defo of blocking.

I stopped writing Reluctant Accomplice nearing two years ago in March because of some overt nudity that I felt was a non-starter—together with realizing I disliked the vibe of making the heavy a gay man. Felt stereotypic. Got beta reader pushback (the nudity). Yes, I want to revisit it. This story is hinted as having happened in a series sequel as something foundational. Since blocking, I've worked around the main issue in my head (and in Reluctant Moon). I think making the heavy a woman who presents as a man will work a lot better.

I also stopped writing Inklings, despite having a viable full novella storyline and ending. It had a nice female character not realizing she was a woman acting badly. Her naïve forwardness was a little more than I could handle (okay, rather outrageous), so I stopped. Since then, I've breezed by her behavior in the current WIP. I hope to revisit it with a properly more jaded attitude.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 583 — Which of your characters are most likely to be activists, and what kind?

None of them are likely to be activists. Streak should be. He's subject fairly frequently to what the reader should see as sexual harassment, but he justifies it as part of his gender role. He is too wrapped up in school and his girlfriend Thorn to care to do anything other than gripe when he is the 1st person POV narrator..

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Replied in thread

@SFFMagazineCovers
I /was/ going to bow out of this, on account of the number of these I seem to produce, but then I had an idea...

--------------

Tixzul grinned with both of their mouths as the tractor-beam boats brought the hostage building aboard their ship.

These primitive worlds were all alike, it was simple to steal some landmark or other, ransom it for gems or fuel or biomass, and then send back a replicated copy. Then they could sell the original to collectors anywhere in the galaxy.

It was a good scam.

All alike, Tixzul thought. Huh. Maybe we hit this place before.

That was the last thought Tixzul had, as the thermonuclear device in the top floor of the bell tower detonated inside the hold of the ship.

They had been right. They had raided this planet before, and recently enough that they knew to take precautions.

#SFF#SF#microfic

#WordWeavers 2502.09 — How many people can your MC call their support system?

In Reluctant Moon, Thorn and Streak are really the only support system the other has. These older teenagers have families, but they're emotionally absent and, as the story demonstrates, often outright antagonistic. Rainy Days, the main series antagonist, is trying to add herself to both of their support lists—via gifts of restricted knowledge, her personal training, and sex—but it remains to be seen if she can totally earn their trust.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2502.08 — Share the first thing your characters would see, feel and hear if they went outside in the last indoor scene you wrote.

Just wrote those scenes, so to summarize:

Streak (male MC): A nature reserve. It resembles an African savanna. A hot wind whistles and rustles the leaves of widely spaced trees while causing the tall grass to wave. Teepee-like tents of silvery material are scattered around small white-painted park outbuildings. A black night angel—wearing gold reflective wraparound sunglasses and carrying a sleeping mat under her arm—giggles as she waits to pull him toward the shade of an acacia. It's in full bloom with yellow flowers. She's pregnant and barely showing. He will notice.

Thorn (female MC): A railroad switching yard across the enemy border. Smoke rises from distant city buildings afire and alarm bells clang. Train cars have been scuttled blocking the nine branching tracks. Steam whistles out of a locomotive (it resembles a Mikado 2-8-2) that has been irreparably sabotaged, blocking the main track. If she were to look, she'd see the smear of blood from a murdered train engineer dragged across the ground, but the people she's with will ensure she misses it. They need her to move the locomotive...

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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