#low sci-fi

[cherrybombfangirlwrites]

The City is Ours ; a WIP Intro

(New and Improved Re-Introduction!)

Genre and Setting

low urban sci-fi, superheroes, dark sci-fi ; set in big city somewhere northern on a US coast, I'm cautiously giving the city the placeholder name Henderson, modern times

Playlist

Masterlist / Shitty Comic Sans Intro 🤪

POV

third person limited, multiple characters (about 5-6)

Status and Length

First Drafts, roughly 2k ; 5 book series, no idea what the wordcount will be yet, maybe 100k per book?

Tropes and Themes

chaotic teenage superheros, domesticity in between the action, 2012-13 Avengers Tower fic vibes, found family but they're all dumbasses, villain arcs and redemption arcs galore, reluctant villians, superhero team but they're all lower middle class, POC disabled Jewish and Muslim and queer representation, "don't die or i'll kill you", heroes and villains and the chaos that ensues ; are you the hero or the villain, what's the difference between good and evil (is it who's telling the story?), forgiveness and redemption, saving the world vs saving yourself and your family, exploring morality

Warnings and Rating

guns, potential depictions of torture, superhero genre typical violence, blood, depictions of discrimination and bigotry (towards super-powered people mostly), trauma and mental health issues including possible depictions of panic attacks, and a whole fuck ton of angst ; Teen and Up

Main Characters

Nickelle Takahashi (she/her)

Team Leader, Superhero Name: The Icicle

Ice Powers

Japanese American, AroAce, lead singer in a local rock band

the leader who puts way too much pressure on herself, and who will do everything for the people she loves

Asher Romero-Cruz (he/him)

Team Dad, Superhero Name: The Flashlight

Light and Shadow Powers

Gay, Christian, Latino American, LEGO and Star Wars nerd

the Dad Friend of the team who is always looks out for everyone. Has a civilian boyfriend

Gabriella Wilson (she/her)

Team Cheerleader/Suit Designer

No Powers

CisHet, White with long blond hair, very talented sewer and fashion designer

the blonde bimbo who is super supportive of everyone and will be your wing woman ride or die

Kylee Trimble (she/they)

Youngest Teammate, Superhero Name: Now-Ya-See-Her-Girl

Speed and Invisibility Powers

Redhead with pale skin and freckles, Nearsided with Glasses, Nonspeaking Autistic, PanAce, Artist

the artist who is afraid of opening up and being her authentic self around others

Bryson Barns (he/him)

Team Medic, Superhero Name: The Healer

Healing Powers

Black, token straight that's on thin ice, Diabetic (Type 2)

the very tired healer who can heal all physical injuries, but he can't heal himself or mental injuries and struggles with accepting that

"V" Talić (they/them)

Team Cool Big Sibling, Superhero Name: Morph

Shapeshifting Powers

Muslim, Nonbinary Lesbian, Bosnian American, Soccer Jock

Impulsive and reckless, the one who always has crazy ideas for getting out of sticky situations. Struggles with fitting in with their culture/family while also being themselves

Jason Richens (he/him)

Team Asshole, Superhero Name: Hotshot

Fire Powers

CisHet (and an asshole about it)

Thinks he's special because his dad is rich, his character only exists to be bashed

Chase Silverstone (he/they)

Team Hacker and Tech Expert, Superhero Name: TechGuy

No Powers

PanAro, Jewish, Romani American, Bipolar Disorder and OCD, Anxiety and Depression

The team techie who struggles with asking for help and dealing with his mental health issues and taking care of himself

Antagonists

Black Hole - Main Antagonist of Book 1. Alien from Pluto, trying to take over earth as a last ditch extra credit project for his AP Government class. Can absorb any attack and reflect it back

Miss Recluse - Recruited by Black Hole. Has the human sized body of a Brown Recluse spider and the head of a human and poisonous fangs. Can do everything a spider does, and is a bit of a drama queen. Besties with The Magician

The Magician - A sorcerer from the dark ages who accidentally transported himself to the future with no way back. Uses a lot of dark magic that includes illusions- favorite spell to use is blue fire that is immune to water and can burn through metal and stone. Dr. Strange meets Dr. Faciler.

Mr. Cyanide - Recruited by Black Hole, eventually becomes a solo high level threat villain, main antagonist of book 2. Mad scientist with a deadly knack for chemistry. Only cares whether his experiments work, couldn't care less if they hurt or kill people.

Boss Lady - a Mafia boss who is colossally tall and wide, and incredibly strong. Big stronk woman who is working with/for the Snow Queen (her loyalties or questionable). Does have standards but also tortures people for the fun of it so....?

Blood Debt - Loner (mainly) vigilante who rides around on a motorcycle and kills anyone who he sees fit is deserving of dying, or whoever he gets paid to kill. Does jobs for the Snow Queen, and under the mask he is someone one of the heroes is very close with...

Nightmare - a small time, low threat villain that doesn't actually hurt anyone. Her powers put people to sleep and she takes their energy from them. A freshman/sophomore college student with an engineering major. More of an anti-hero vigilante if you squint.

The Snow Queen - The big bad for the last three books. Only an urban legend/rumor until the last two books. Has ice powers that can control tech and people. No one knows her identity and she is holed up in her lair most of the time, sending minions/Boss Lady or Blood Debt to do anything outside the lair. She is someone all of the heroes know very well :)

Plot

A bunch of rookie teenage superheroes and their journey to becoming the heroes and protectors of their city, and eventually the world, and most importantly- a family. With all of the chore rotations, late night grocery runs, fights for the shower, and everything else that happens along with the action. Full of full scale super powered fights, betrayals and confrontations, cool tech and superpowers, and everything we love about the superhero genre.

Book 1 - The Initiation

Book 2 - The Hunter or Hunted

Book 3 - The Shadows

Book 4 - The Snow Queen

Book 5 - The Forsaken

(all the titles are placeholder titles for now)

Extra Stuff

Chase is a caffeine addict and not only can, but has on multiple occasions mixed coffee and energy drinks

Kylee uses sign language or a text to speech app to communicate, or if she has neither goes old school and writes things down

the city is based on a combination of Chicago and Gotham City

Nickelle has two younger siblings, a brother and a sister who are inseparable, 8 and 5 years old

Nickelle also has a huge extended family that's more traditional and she has to tone down her punk look for family gatherings

Asher's boyfriend is Damian. Damian finds out about his partner's double superhero life when Asher saves him in the mask, and like a dumbass, Asher forgets to turn on his voice modifier and Damian recognizes his voice immediately

Damian is also a Chekhov's Civilian and becomes a vital part of the plot

Nightmare and V have a little enemies to lovers romance that's mostly in the background is is really just there for comedy

The Magician gets a redemption arc and becomes the Hero Team's weird morally gray uncle

Kylee has a brother who is in the US Navy. He is one of the few people that she is comfortable being fully unmaksed around at the beginning of the books, and he is deployed during the events of the books.

Bryson has a weird relationship with his dad, who raised him all by himself and is a full time EMT. Bryson really wants to tell his dad about his double superhero life because it's driving a wedge between him and his dad, but it's not safe and Bryson's not sure how his dad will react

And finally, some memes for your viewing pleasure:

~~~

The City is Ours Taglist: @friendlyneighborhood-writer @jessica-writes22 @rose-bookblood @yejidoesthings @space-writes

General Taglist: @enchanted-lightning-aes @thatprolificauthor @wip-nook @writeblrsupport

[roleplayfinder]

18+ ;

literate to adv. literate writer looking for fandomless threads, ocxoc and open to all gendered pairings.

mostly looking for mxm (trans friendly) or mxnb at the moment! nsfw can be included to advance the plot and i'm open to any role, i lean towards playing switches but i'm good with anything.

doubling is optional, but very welcome.

my ideal reply lenght is about ~30 discord lines per response, though it depends on context and quality matters more than quantity.

my favourite genres are modern settings, urban fantasy/low sci-fi, character-driven, (usually darker) slice of life and dystopia.

i'd like to include some mild dead dove themes ; we can discuss details in private, i already have a few loose plot ideas. 👀

like and i'll reach out ♡

.

[prologusblog]

Lora Beth Johnson: Istennő ​a gépezetben (Istennő a gépezetben 1.)

Lora Beth Johnson “Istennő a gépezetben” című regénye egy lenyűgöző sci-fi kaland, amely tele van fordulatokkal és izgalommal. A könyv alapfelvetése nagyon tetszett. Ennek lényege, hogy a közeli jövőben hibernálnak embereket egy űrhajón, amíg elérik a célállomást. Viszont valami mindig balul sül el az ilyen regényekben és vagy mindenki meghal a főhősön kívül, vagy más bolygóra érkeznek vagy pedig…

[mothcpu]

copies of copies

[videoreligion]

Dark Universe (1993)

[utopicwork]

Habitat

ID: A ring shaped orbital habitat made up of floating plates of land and sea. Clouds float above the plates following the ring shape and a small fake sun is floating in the center

[obvdrc]

Neptune. An older original character design of mine - originally designed them for a shirt print that I kept looking at and felt like I HAD to make them a model.

Model, texture, and animation are all mine own on this one.

Sketchfab link: https://skfb.ly/oTtQL

[cf-12]

[writeouswriter]

You ever come up with a story concept and think oh this is brilliant, this is so good, this is so clever, I'm a genius, people will love this, and you brainstorm and you outline and you create a whole host of details about it, but also you... don't want to write it, not in a "I dislike writing" or "I want someone/something else to write this" type way, but in a "I love and enjoy this concept and want to be the one to execute it if it ever comes to pass, and yet this story/genre just isn't really me" way, like this is good but I'm not the one to do it, but also I'm the only one to do it, it's mine

[humanoidhistory]

Illustration by A.R. Lowe from Science Fiction Monthly, November 1975.

[whereserpentswalk]

Don't shame people for writing or enjoying more grounded settings. People writing speculative fiction that cares about realism in certain aspects isn't stopping you from writing something that doesn't care about realism. "It's fantasy that shouldn't matter" isn't universal, if someone cares about that part of their worldbuilding you don't have a right to say they shouldn't. Just like how somebody talking agaisnt your world for being unrealistic in a place where you don't care about that level of realism sucks, it sucks an equal amount to dismiss someone striving for realism because you'd personally be fine with those aspects being unrealistic.

"Just let people enjoy things" applies to hard science fiction and low fantasy as much as it applies to soft science fiction and high fantasy.

[scipunk]

Apex (1994)

[sffinsiders]

Review: Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland — SFF Insiders

[spiral-down-the-rabbit-hole]

Space Channel 5 - Ulala's outfits appreciation post

[24meiocardia]

✶Mouthwashing – a narrative driven first-person psychological horror game following the dying crew of a shipwrecked space freighter.

The Pony Express long-haul galactic freighter Tulpar is stranded within an uncharted region of space. Emergency life support systems saved the Captain and crew of four. The ship will run out of power within six months, food rations long before that. Adrift far off their shipment route, they know the chance of rescue nears zero. Opening the cargo hold is strictly prohibited by the company, but the contents could mean a prolonged chance of survival.

🔗itch.io site 🔗steam page #recommendation g.ep12

[vaguely-concerned]

Origins is of course the DA game most closely in conversation with and playing around with Tolkien (right down to the walking talking poetree haha) -- and even more so than most works in the larger western fantasy tradition derived from Tolkien's work that DA:O also hails from and owes a lot of its Stuff to, what makes the game so great to me is that it's doing so very deliberately, and is subverting and deconstructing those tropes and entrenched ideas in some very interesting ways without at all denigrating what it's commenting on. (it doesn't have the almost disdainful undertones of the vein of fantasy that seeks to make the world more 'realistic' ala the more tedious reactions to G.R.R.Martin's work, for example, despite having the darker fantasy bent to it.) among other elements it adopts, what I find the most fascinating is the choice to use the same literary device/conceit Tolkien did in ostensibly only having in-universe biased sources and works to deliver the world through (which I feel is an underappreciated thing about his approach but is part of what makes his world so enduringly compelling and real-feeling -- the feeling of real scholarship devoted/applied to a made-up world. the grounding effect of a good diegetic footnote about source criticism, truly).

many things to be said there, and I'm glad each following game has taken on different perspectives and lenses and traditions to view the world of Thedas through because if you stick with that one too closely for too long I fear we could teeter precariously close to Pratchett's famous and bitingly accurate accusation of most modern fantasy of that era just being about rearranging the furniture in Tolkien's attic lol. and while you could accuse DA2 (my perfect wife who has never done anything wrong in her life to be clear) of many things, that's not one of them, they are pulling on some completely different strings for that one and both the game and DA overall is better for it, to my mind. as so many things in this series: worth staying with and exploring for an installment even if it might get stale if all of it was like this! people are understandably sad about the elements from previous games that they liked which were lost along the way, but that capacity for reinvention is to my mind a huge strength of dragon age as a whole.

(I think Veilguard is coming in as a close second in Tolkien conversation-ness if only in outlining/revealing the worldbuilding that indeed may have been planned since DA:O around the animosity that SHOULD by all rights exist between dwarves and elves in this universe (as per Tolkienesque tradition standards). but doesn't really because you see: politics and the many pitfalls of conservation of knowledge over the ages. our ancestral enmity got semi-intentionally lost between the floorboards of history and you know what. maybe for the best. the humans are already up to so much shit you gotta keep your eyes on them at all times you can't be brawling with each other in the deep roads while they're still around getting up to their nonsense or they'll just pile up even more of it)