#starship promise atlas

[incorrectlovestruck]

Atlas: I don’t get paid enough for this.

Human SP MC: Paid enough for what?

Atlas: *vaguely waves his hand towards the Starship Promise crew*

[babylovestruck]

Made theses draw your squad memes back when LoveStuck was alive 😔 Still Missing you💞💞

[megatraven]

thinking about.....

THEM

THEM

THEM

[smallcjb]

I Need You To Know (Part 3)

- First of all, if you can all take mercy on me 😅 I have not written any sort of Drabble in a LOOOONGGG time. Like 6 years. And I saw a comment that was like, I guess there’s no part 3 and I couldn’t just leave it here. So I apologise if this ends up not seeming cohesive, but I am trying to bring closure to a Drabble series I started when I was a literal teenager 😅 I hope you enjoy! 💜 -

*MC pov*

Later that night I can’t sleep. I lie there, just staring up at the ceiling. Of course I’m just an asset to him. I really was just kidding myself to think otherwise.

An asset.

The words ring out in my head over and over again. I’d put myself in front of GUNS for him. What an idiot.

I feel rejected. Which is stupid because he was never mine. We haven’t even had a real conversation that isn’t around my ‘talents’. But somehow I did feel connected.

I sigh. I can’t just stay here moping. I get up and leave my room. I need to sort myself out, so I go knock on his door, maybe I can get some consolation.

Jaxon opens the door, looking a little confused to see me standing there.

“MC? You alright?”

“Can I come in? I need….I just need.” I don’t finish the sentence. I don’t know what it is I need but Jaxon seems like an easy option. He gestures behind him and I walk in.

“What the hell was that earlier? Standing in front of him like that? Stockholm syndrome? Like what?!”

He starts going off at me and that’s when I just go screw it. I curl my hands into his hair and kiss him. He freezes for a moment before he starts kissing me back.

The kiss starts to deepen and I feel his hand start to roam when….when….What am I doing?! I know I’m sad, but this is irational, this is stupid.

I pull away as quickly as I pulled him in. I see his confusion. It probably mirrors my own. And then I rush out before he has a chance to say anything.

*Antares pov*

As I’m heading to the toilet, the only privacy I’ll get on this ship, a door behind me opens. MC? She’s rushing out of the room looking panicked? And right behind her….

Jaxon…

What did he do to her?! Anger boils my blood and before I’m even thinking I’ve got him pinned up agains the wall.

“What did you do to her?” A growl enters my voice.

At this anger he actually smirks at me. A smirk!

“I didn’t do anything.” He says in a mocking tone. “She, on the other hand, just gave me the most mind blowing kiss I think she needed a minute to cool off.”

My grip loosens at this but my anger doesn’t. She kissed HIM? But? What am I even about to think. I told her she’s an asset, what right do I have to feel jealous. I let him go and walk off.

*MC pov*

The next day, feeling groggy would be an understatement for how I’m feeling. What was I thinking? I mean, I was thinking I was hurt and I wanted to feel something good. But that did not feel good. It felt wrong actually.

I go to grab some lunch when I run into Antares in the canteen. I give him a small smile and then walk past, grabbing what I need. How is he alone in here? Did Orion trust his twin more than we thought?

“Have a good night last night?”

Im caught off guard by his voice.

“Sorry?”

“Last night, did you have fun?”

Is that….hurt in his eyes? Fun last night? What is he….? Oh shit. He saw? But how could he think that was fun. All it was was a quick kiss and me running away?

Finally catching on I answer his question. “You think running out of someone’s room after the most awkward kiss is fun?” I see his eyebrows shoot in before he can train his face into the usual stoic look. “Why do you care anyway? I’m just your asset. I can be an engineer while kissing other people.” He lets out a grunt at that.

Before I get to explore what’s happening here more, Atlas and Orion walk in.

“So, we should be at a neutral colony in the next 5 hours, and we can be rid of our….guest.” Orion pauses on the word, probably trying to determine what matches him best.

“Good. I’ve decided I’ll leave you be with the engineer. I’ve got a back up in mind anyway.”

My heart stops.

He has a back up? Then why the hell would he even bother trying to get me back?

That hurts. Again, for no logical reason. But that I’ve been replaced so easily.

*Antares pov*

Of course I haven’t replaced her, and seeing that hurt across her face again awakens something inside of me. Something that makes me uncomfortable.

But she could see her kiss with Silva bothered me. And I can’t have that. I don’t care.

She is just. An. Asset.

Nothing more. That’s what I need to remind myself. So when I get off this ship, I will find a replacement. She made her choice.

Even if she said it was awkward? Maybe she means she just feels awkward telling me about it.

Whatever it is, this is not good for me. My crew probably already think I’ve hit my head or something. I will get off at this colony, call my crew, and forget about all of this.

Done. Easy.

* 5 hours later *

We land and I hear Orion and his crew speaking about what resources they need to collect before setting back off.

They drop me off in front of a communications centre and say next time I try and board their ship unannounced I’ll have a bullet in my chest. Such gracious hosts.

I call my crew and they tell me they’ll be with me as soon as possible.

Great, so I’ll just wait on this desolate colony. Maybe I should find a bar, get some drinks in me. It’s not like I can embarrass myself in front of my crew anymore.

I head straight to the barmaid and order 4 shots of the brightest green shot they have available. That should dull the last day for at least a little while.

As I’m downing my third shot I catch a glimpse of a familiar face. I turn, my head and I fail miserably at hiding the shock on my face.

MC?

I try to train my face back to neutrality.

“What are you doing here?” I keep my voice bland, disinterested, though that’s far from how I’m feeling.

She looks like she’s trying to bring up some deep hidden confidence. I see her pull a semi convincing confident smile.

“We have unfinished business.”

- That’s it for Part 3. I know, it’s rusty and awful, but at least I’m trying….right? 😅 Part 4 may be coming, or maybe I’ll disappear for another 6 years, who knows 😁 -

[cometthespacechinchilla]

I forgot that during the weddings everyone else tends to wear their nicer outfits and Atlas is just like "bomber jacket IS business formal"

[ewa-jednak-chce-spac]

Congratulations to Sareth fans

Sareth won with Atlas x Starship Promise human mc in my one true ultimate shipping tournament and advanced to round two!

Atlas x Starship Promise human mc fans, don’t weep, because your ship remains awesome!

[hazele-omega]

i constantly talk about writing yet share nothing...i promise i am actually doing stuff lmao

to prove that i really am here is a mostly spoiler free bit of Lucien the Korvax pirate being terrifying (it's not in the chapter I should be writing, which is the main problem here, but y'know)

obligatory robot violence content warning

i am very much looking for constructive feedback from anyone who has any /srs /gen

The Korvax's face-lights switched back on, their carapace sparking. Lucien's eye burned into theirs as it began to happen.

// CORRUPTION DETECTED //

source: [divergent/traveller/bio-??unknown??]

// Atlas Protocol: IMMEDIATE CONTAINMENT //

// convergence signal [REDACTED]/[REDACTED]/[RED-D--D-----

They could feel them leaving. Like a starship running out of fuel mid-flight, the engines going dark; like a sun vanishing below the horizon of a breathless moon, abandoning it to an empty-eyed planet's silhouette; like the tide pulling away at shells on the beach, every memory, every moment, everything that they together knew slipping into the untouchable abyss. Gone.

"You see now, don't you?" Lucien leaned in just a little closer.

"I felt them. I saw how scared they were. Scared of you, the demon, the sinner, who looked too close and saw too much and who could rip their little world apart. And it doesn't matter that you didn't mean to, or that you wouldn't hurt them, because you are nothing more to them now than the information you hold."

Gone. Gone. The Korvax didn't know how to move.

"Chances are, your existence has already been erased. Now it's just the two of us - the only souls in the whole world that understand what I saw. I am the only one who knows you...what was your name again?"

Their name. They could not remember it.

"It doesn't matter," Lucien continued, "because when this is over, I will wipe you from my memory. Every piece of self that you still carry within you, and every piece that I have seen, will disappear. Permanently."

The shivering Korvax did not resist as their head was gently lowered, little lightning jolts scattering as Lucien lifted a panel from its back. An electronic mind was revealed - glowing softly, slightly warm, small lights slowly flicking out.

Ever so delicately, they lifted it from the head, nanites running between their fingers.

"Now let me show you," they whispered, "what it's like to be forgotten."

They clenched their hand, crushing the brain within.

[dizzy-pixels]

Starship Promise Lore

_________________________________________

Backstory

So basically it was a time when more and more sentient beings were entering space and the humans saw this and wanted to establish diplomatic relations with them as well as explore the galaxy for more. They established the Union for this purpose. But soon what started as an endeavor for exploration quickly turned to colonization and exploitation. This resulted in the Colonial Wars. During the war, a faction rose to challenge the Union's rule, the Empire. While the universe is in a state of disarray, some try to take advantage of the chaos to establish themselves and gain great wealth resulting in the Underground where fortune hunters, bounty hunters, space pirates, arms dealers, and other shady deals take place. Sometimes either faction of the war may secretly use their services to gain an upper hand over the other.

_________________________________________

The Union

The Union's official name is the Union of Democratic Star Systems. It was started by humans for space exploration and diplomacy with other alien planets and those it established diplomacy with entered the Democratic Star Systems. But the Union's benevolent image is propaganda which conceals a history of unlawfully occupying planets, seizing their assets, and oppressing their native residents. This resulted in the Colonial Wars and a faction that split into what would become the Empire. The Union's military is ruled by a collection of admirals and runs on representative democracy. Because the Union was started by humans, most high positions are filled by humans. Aliens may be faced with prejudice when attempting to rise the ranks. Admirals in the Union are dressed in pristine white uniforms with shiny gold trim on their uniforms. Underlings wear the same style of uniform, but colored in earthy tones.

• Admirals: Sol, Mirra, Vyrnas, Evander • Lieutenant: Aquilla • The Fire Falcons: The Fire Falcons was a Union Fighter Pilot Team. Atlas was once a part of it. It's now inactive as most members of this squadron have died. • Mechanized Forces Team: Constructed under Project Bahamut, The Union develops powered mech suits which include functions such as speech commands, flight, ammunition, and a shoulder cannon. These mech suits are only given to the Mechanized Forces Team which is led by Tyrian Aquilla. However, under Operation Echinemon run by Admiral Vyrnas, he implanted a chip in the robots. It's a failsafe in the suits the team members are unaware about where the Union can control whoever is wearing it by overriding the person and shutting off their feelings. Turning them into essentially killing machines.

_________________________________________

The Empire

The Empire's official name is The Galactic Liberation Front. It's goal is in the name, to liberate the Galaxy from the colonization of the Empire by fighting back and then establishing themselves as ruler and protector of the galaxy. However they too aren't immune to using force to accomplish this goal, such as taking planets by force to expand their reach over the Union and believe the end justifies the means. For example, in order to keep their military supplied, they sow disorder in the colonies they rule over and leave them rundown so that they can get more recruits trying to leave poverty and join their military for a better life. Their military is ruled by its Emperor and his heir, Imperial Princess Vespira. The Empire consists of humans and aliens alike working together for liberation. Though there are sperate cells in the Empire who have conflicting opinions on how to reach this goal and don't agree with the current way. Officers of the Empire wear black uniforms fairly dripping with gleaming gold accents. Officers often wield "beam sabers," and can use them to deflect blaster fire.

• Commander: Bazirg, Fox, Petros • Admiral: Fairchild • Empire Black Ops: The Empire Black Ops was a small elite force of empire soldiers. However, it soon became a corrupt branch of the Empire military that participated in crimes. The group was disbanded after all its members were dishonorably discharged. • Super Soldiers: Dr. Xendalia often works commissions for the Empire. She herself is working on an army of Super Soldier clones. They are referred to with Greek letters. There's Alpha (aka Nova), Beta, and Gamma. • Super Weapons: Besides super soldiers, the Empire puts its resources into creating other super weapons. The main one was the creation of a super weapon named Ragnarok. The superweapon was intended for fighting smoke aliens. However, since they also used it to destroy smoke-infested planets while people were still living on them and not evacuating first, the Starship Crew destroyed it. Another superweapon was the creation of a nanobot swarm called Fenrir. They planned to use it on the Union.

_________________________________________

Human MC

Human MC grew up on the Union Colony of Olympus-7 her whole life, never even seeing other systems or planets until the story starts. She worked as an engineer until people started coming after her, and she's capable of quite a lot of technological wizardry. While some routes focus more on her hacking and programming skills, other routes showcase her talents as an inventor. The story (for the original Promise Crew routes) always begins with Human MC making a discovery which draws the Empire to come hunting her, but the nature of that discovery is different in each route. She can be described as smart, quick thinking, but awkward and have a habit of talking to herself and saying things out loud. Her chain of thought bounces around like a ball in a pinball machine, lightning-fast but very easily sidetracked onto irrelevant tangents. But she's truly a genius engineer able to hack, build, and fix anything. She has the ability to solve what was thought to be unsolvable theoretical physics problems. Her other greatest quality is having a big heart. Her abilities cumulates to her saving the world.

Alien MC

Alien MC was a overachieving accountant major, studying at a big-name university when she fell in love with a private investigator. They became partners, both work-related and romantically. She dropped out of university to work cases with him full-time. On their first major job together, her partner sold her out. A professional and romantic failure. With no degree or other skills, she decided to stick it out as a PI on her own, but the scars of that failed relationship still linger. Not getting proper closure weighed her down more than she'd like to admit. MC's mom doesn't know she's a PI and thinks she thinks she's an accountant consultant. While not a genius like the Human MC, the Alien MC is still a gadget nerd and can repair her tech when it's broken as well as make some small modifications. She modified her wrist tablet on her arm that also has a built in universal translator. She also has great observation and critical thinking skills. She knows how to shoot a blaster, but doesn't know how to fly a ship. Her personality is being married to her job as she basically threw her life into her work after her first love betrayed her. She is more serious and want to be the best PI she can be.

_________________________________________

The Evil Force

The smoke creatures that show up across various route are aliens of unknown origin who move from planet to planet, consuming all life and then moving on. They have the ability to evolve to the point where they have glowing red eyes in the midst of their dark, swirling masses. They can even maintain a form that can impersonate people (though their eyes are still red) allowing them to assimilate among people. Their weakness is bright light or particular crystals. The potential invasion of the smoke aliens is the overarching plot arc in the first few Promise Crew routes.

_________________________________________

Colonies

Space colonization allowed the Union to use outer space for permanent habitation as extraterrestrial territory. They set up colonies on space stations. These colonies have controlled gravity, oxygen, and weather. They are typically named after places of paradise.

_________________________________________

More:

[dazzlerazz]

If memory serves me right I chose August first because I had clicked on him which then lead me to the prologue chapter. I think only he and Reiner had routes at the very start? I also remember Starship Promise only had Jaxon and Orion as routes and then Nova was not long after, and then it took FOREVER to get Atlas to get one and then Antares?

[ramrodd]

What are the merits and demerits of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand?

The essential merit is the triangulation of Dagny Taggart, Barbie and the shower scene in Starship Troopers. The essential demerit is the glorification of the domestic terrorism of John Galt.

COMMENTARY:

The singular merit of Atlas Shrugged is Dagny Taggart. She is the most fully realized female character in literature. She is a masterpiece of characterization. If Ayn Rand had any useful capacity in objective personal inventory, she would have cut the novel by a third around her and written a third novel to complete a portrait of the “sense of life” at the core of her collage of sound bites and syllogisms she assembled around the Virtue of Selfishness. Dagny Taggart is the Princess Leia hologram her narrative created in my mind. Dagny Taggart springs in Technicolor from the drab industrial environment of Pittsburgh when its rivers caught on fire.

There is an important cultural consequence of Dagny Taggart in the popular imagination of the Boomer Generation at the moment birth control became safe, cheap, effective and legal along with Barbie and actual women like Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O and Lauren Bacall and a whole range of Hollywood women. Ayn Rand didn’t understand sex until she took what amounted to a straight Twink as a lover when she was in her 40s and married. She was married, but her marriage to Frank O’Connor was a desperate strategy to remain in America by marriage. Frank is one of the people she sincerely loved, but it was a very porcelain relationship, a sort of running New Yorker cover. But she was entirely submitted to getting fucked on her living room floor on a full length mink coat by Nathaniel Branden, a psychologist who isolated Self-Esteem as a significant structure of the ego when he was in his twenties and married to his college sweat heart, who was later murdered by post-hypnotic suggesting during a telephone conversation with Ayn Rand. Rand fucked with her mind in some way Rand knew Barbara was vulnerable to strobe paralysis, that thing that happened in Discos from people becoming dazzled by the light display like a deer in headlights. Barbara apparently was dazzled by light flickering off the water of an indoor pool and she checked out, mentally, and tripped into the pool and drowned.

And Dagny Taggart was who Ayn Rand was when she was fucking Nathaniel Branden Dagny was an active California Sport Fucker and Ayn Rand wouldn’t have know what that meant until the day she died.

Now, I need to go see Barbie. The connection between Barbie and Dagny and the Cosmo Woman is inescapable. The Sex in the City was the adventures of pre-Reagan Sport Fuckers in a Joffrey Ballet/Studio 54 Tucker Carlson-free Woodstock Nation play ground.

You see, the third of the book I would cut out was when John Galt appears and she becomes her BDSM dungeon master and all the Technicolor disappears and becomes the grubby industrial black and white of the dystopian universe of Donald Trump’s business culture.

John Galt is a domestic terrorist committed to dismantling the administrative state.

Now, everything about Atlas Shrugged is fantasy. When I first started to read it in 1962, I thought it was science fiction like Frank Herbert but with the promise of a lot more sex, with Dagny Taggart the literary come-on of a sideshow bait and switch. I had read Anthem before my sister had a paperback version of the book and encouraged me to read it because it had some interesting ideas. Her idea of interesting ideas were totally elusive to me over the years, but she was a serious campus intellectual and lived that way her entire life.

I don’t think it was her. Most of Women’s Literature is lost on me. There’s a real Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing going on for me in terms of women’s literature, but there it is.

So, I’m not sure what the interesting ideas were for her in Atlas Shrugged, but I wasn’t hooked and decided it wasn’t ever begin to work as an adventure story like, say, Robert Heinlein. And, except for Dagny Taggart, there wasn’t enough sex explicit for my pleasure. By and large, everything sexy happens off stage, sort of like Dezi and Lucy sleeping in twin beds. I mean, i figured out John Galt was the mysterious friend of Dagny’s brother. I quit reading in 1962 when I realized that the play date between Dagny’s brother and the mysterious stranger, was supposed to be a pericope of great subtlety and artistry.

I read it completely in 1995, during a market adjustment when Clinton’s economic policy shrugged off the speculative foam lingering from Vietnam and Stagflation and we almost became the Green New Deal. If his election hadn’t been stolen by the butterfly ballots, Gore would have extended Clinton’s sallt water economics another 4 years that would have completed the paradigm shift from the Military Industrial Complex to the Green New Deal and we would have a permanent lunar colony by 2010,

And during this market flat-line, I discovered that Alan Greenspan was a disciple of Ayn Rand and I was trying to understand what he said was goin on in the markets, which I now know was the Fresh Water economics of the University of Chicago. I could tell that he realized the Fresh Water models weren’t working and was trying to find the language for what was going on.

As a consequence, I had to read Atlas Shrugged. Her collection of essays describing Objectivism didn’t connect with any dots I could discern in Greenspan’s economic modeling. They didn’t share any map sheet with each other nor with anything I found useful. Paul Krugman’s Salt Water economics in the dynamical economies of scale in his Peddling Prosperity is pretty much what I was seeing in the NYSE in 1994 after the Triple Witching in March. Because of electronic trading, there is always a certain level of “chatter” in the markets that didn’t exist before 1979. Nixon’s banking and securities policies anticipated electronic trading and created the structures that created Silicon Valley. During August of 1994, virtually all the speculative and inflationary froth lingering from the financing for the Vietnam war was flushed out of the NYSE as everyone went to the beach and let the programs keep the markets open. In addition, Clinton’s salt water economics fixed a great deal of what Reaganomics had fucked up with the Fresh Water economics of Supply Side Free Market class warfare.

But people who embrace Atlas Shrugged as the operators manual for Reaganomics don’t have any more idea how the economy actually works than Alan Greenspan did in 1994. What no one saw coming was Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House and the transfer of the legislative processes from elected constitutional officers to Grover Norquist, who began dictating economic policy to the January 6 Republicans-in-training as MAGA service dogs.

If Dagny Taggart had exposed John Galt as a domestic terrorist seemingly determined to dismantling the administrative state but actually enthralled by the enchantment of an evil cabal of Criminal Fascists and that she and Hank Reardon embarked on a quest to free John Balt from CAW, the evil cadre causing the social collapse of Atlas Shrugged . She could have ended Atlas Shrugged as a cliff hanger, as thy are bale to co-opt John Galt’s television address that stalls the CAW insurgency from achieving the constitutional overthrow at the end of Atlas Shrugged,

And the third volume in the Sense of Life trilogy would have Dagny saving John Galt and turning the whole world to Technicolor and ending in the Pink Dream House of Barbie, the Movie, on the beach at Malibu with a naked, coed beach volley ball court out the patio in the back. The subtitle for the trilogy would be “Escape from the Parable of the Cave”..

So, the essential merit of Atlas Shrugged is Dagny Taggart.

The essential demerit is is Objectivism is total Free Market, Fres Water Economics, Commercial Fascism crap. It’s the Harvard MBA program business model that the Studio Executives are trying to shove down the throat of Fran Drescher and SAG in opposition to the superior Salt Water Quality Assurance business model of organized labor.

But that’s another story.

[incorrectlovestruck]

[At Orion's funeral] Atlas: *places his hand on the headstone and sobs* Atlas: How could you do this to me? We are so understaffed.

[babylovestruck]

Looking Through My Old IPad and wishing I saved more moments of them 🥺

[megatraven]

actually i hope starship promise gets re-released. i desperately want to reread atlas

[lostgirl97]

Me waiting for Lovestruck to release a route with Alien MC for the best LI from SP(if not the entire app). 

[cometthespacechinchilla]

I haven't thought about lovestruck since the app closed and even before then I'd given up on it but I'm starting to novelize Soulmates I FUCKING MISS ATLAS

[ewa-jednak-chce-spac]