Ardea Writes Worlds

AO3 is ArdeaWrites, fandoms are atm Silmarillion & Half Life, plus original fiction if I'm brave enough. Old Millennial Small-Town Nerd. SFW but I will not apologize for being an adult who talks about adult things. 

[ardeawritten]

Blog for writing stuff, life stuff, occasional work rants, rural American lifestyle commentary, and game fandom. Expect the odd writing content, worldbuilding tips, characterization ideas, the oldest Half Life fanart I can scrape from the tumblr archives, plus occasional Dishonored and now also Prey.

Safe for work, story-typical violence aside, but I'm an adult and will sometimes talk about adult life stuff (like idk doing chores.) If in doubt, I don't ship it but also don't care if you do.

AO3 is ArdeaWrites for fan stories and ArdeaWanders for original work. I don't have a consistent tagging system for any content here, sorry! I lied. Try #half life headcannons for all the HL fandom thoughts and #Ardeas original stuff for my own worlds and nonfiction!

[ardeawritten]

Jacks' trailer and general attitude is a shameless hometown cameo in chapter 1; there is in fact a singlewide a couple miles away from my house that was parked on top of a ridge by, allegedly and likely, a Chinook because there's no way a semi ever hauled it up there, there's a guy who will draw a gun on you for simply being in sight (but once reassured you're friends he is super nice and loyal), and a guy who will take payment in alcohol for absolutely anything (until his family got ahold of him and made him quit cold turkey) and every. single. dwelling. that is more than fifty feet from the next habitation has its own junkyard. The junkyards range in size from a small orderly patch of spare parts or a project-in-progress to enormous seas of displaced trucks, tractors, fencing, fuel and other accumulations. All of these once did converge upon said singlewide on the top of the ridge, but that guy is actually long gone (having chronically drunk gun-toting neighbors with a very loose concept of private property can be an experience.) so he was relocated via large sums of money to please move away thank you so he wouldn't shoot into my neighborhood by accident. Then his general attitude was diluted enough to be normal neighborlyness - the former drunk is a great guy who now accepts payment in cookies, the gun-toting dude is consistently the first to call fire watch and will show up to help anyone, and I have built and repaired multiple furnishings and appliances from the junkyard. (The enormous amount of ammunition was not artistic license either)

(for reasons unknown someone decided to save the now-abandoned trailer from being burned down in the last wildfire so it's still there on cinder blocks and scissor jacks.)

[ardeawritten]

New murderbot road trip very good.

Also IDK why my underfunded library consortium got 173 audiobook copies but I am also not complaining about getting my hold immediately upon release? Last I saw they had two (2) print copies and the wait is months long

(update they dropped to 16 audiobook copies but I know that hold list was over a hundred people long and when I checked a few days ago it said over a hundred copies on order)

Their sci/fantasy general audience catalogue is a) public domain b) popular vintage (Card, Heinlin etc) and c) a rotating tiny number of current publication that pops in and out at random and often, to my perpetual annoyance, cycles through a series as it is published so only book 1, then only book 2, then only book 4 etc.

I don't pirate books and never will, but I have a lot on my "when I'm back in civilization" list to enjoy later in life lol. Did pick up the Martha Wells humble bundle and a couple other book bundles tho through there.

[ardeawritten]

just found out one of my neighbors did game programming back in the 90's and was talking about how hard it is to program enemy NPCs that are dumb enough to allow the player character a fair chance, then someone else in the group interrupted to ask about fishing :cries:

[ardeawritten]

Chapters: 22/22

It’s finally done. I skipped the entire generator-coolant sequence because it’s pretty anticlimactic after Xen. 

I wrote the final scene back in 2021 when I first started. It’s where her character had to go, but it doesn’t end there. It might take me another half a decade to do part 2! A bunch of scenes are written already but there’s been some drift to the narrative as well. Stay tuned for Beth and Amber Take on the Apocalypse. 

[ardeawritten]

While yes it is a bit dated, I am appreciating Primary Inversion's play on scifi gender tropes by having its female 48 yr old cynical jaded ace pilot rescue the pretty young prince-in-distress.

also making like half its plot all about its protagonist realizing that massive internalized repressed trauma is best dealt with by actually going to therapy. yay we love to see it.

[ardeawritten]

Deep love for SW expanded universe, but also, very thick rosy nostalgia glasses. Thought this might be a fun exercise to think back and list off my favorite parts *having not read any of the books in about ten years or more* and seeing ok, what has stuck with me after all this time? What did I actually like? (or at least what did I make up between the lines that might not have happened...)

Dathomir's force-users being divided into "people who can consistently keep their temper and make community decisions" and "people who make a habit of violently losing their temper and only act in self-interest" which actually makes more sense than the Jedi code 99% of the time. A gal had lost her temper, burst a blood vessel (visible scar from dark force use) and was sent to go cool off/heal up and had to think about her actions.

Leih strongly considering marriage as a political alliance that will bring a significant military power to their side. There was an actual weighing-the-benefits conversation and she took it seriously (Han was being an idiot at the time; I have no memory of the other guy but think he had a cool mom?)

Leih sitting down to spend HOURS cracking a keypad to rescue herself from the book's villain-of-the-day. Like she just plunked down and brute-forced the code one try at a time. Time's going to pass anyway, might as well get yourself out. I think she did it too.

WINTER. Winter being the solution to several books' problems just by showing up and solving all the things. Middle-aged action spy cool aunt.

Kyp Duron - exploring "my freedom fighter is your terrorist" taken to the logical extreme when hatred of the empire goes too far. Like went to go save his brother, ended up exploding more worlds than the death star, still not a Sith. All the authors were scared of him after that.

Luke dismantling his hand to borrow the battery to pick a lock.

Luke and Mara having to walk their butts out of a jungle where they have to work together but are also both pretty useless

Corran Horn being a decent pilot with a pride problem who genuinely grows up and gets over his dick-measuring contest with another pilot. Gets captured, lets himself out, shows up to save his best friend from his treason trial. Later probably the best-written "Adult making grown-up decisions about all this nonsense" who gets to give Luke a solid lecture on how to teach, trust and guide his students. Him and Mara teaming up with her espionage and his detective skills. Becomes a detective who is pretending to be a pilot who is pretending to be a Jedi.

The prank war in Wraith Squadron

All of Wraith Squadron. Face especially. The swamp rescue/death scene more especially.

Kyle Katarn having a female business partner, them not being romantically involved, and their platonic friendship still being enough to rescue each other from the dark side.

The empire cult that practiced ritual scarification to mimic storm trooper armor.

the hutt sith!!

Anakin getting a living ship for .03 seconds then it sacrificing itself for him (idk who padme is THAT is his actual start of darkness; twelve year old kiddo gets the universe's coolest talking emotive ship by spirit-bonding with sentient ship-seed babies, grows the ship, gets to pilot ONE TIME and something kills it. I too would have become a sith.)

Honestly everything that was going on with Jana. CW superhero girl stuck in a Star Wars universe. Hot boyfriend(s), cool plots, joins a bug cult, cosplays a reincarnated alien goddess, outlives everyone. No seriously I think she was last skywalker standing after all the bs with jacen's plot? his plot was stupid, I stopped paying attention.

Joruus being so weird that he out-weirded people who had worked with Palatine

Tahiri being Anakin 2.0's manic pixie dream girl, authors had no real idea what to do with her after creating her. Got wrecked by alien cultists, got over it, got Anakin, got over him too, always toed the line of force use because she was an impulsive un-parented teenager making normal teenager choices. Luke being like. what. what are you I do not understand this (very normal 14 year old girl all things considered)

Lots of frank discussions of inter-species romance without any erotica. Just like complete normalization of it. Also alien hybrid kids showing up from time to time.

Isane being an awesome Empire villain with the BEST secret hideout/base/ship/prison ever and being quite truly evil, not just informed-villain.

Rogue squadron having to talk through the difference between attacking an enemy base and liberating the planet it's on, and how the easiest ways to hurt the empire will also do great harm to the innocent people who live there too, and they can't stick around to save the civilians they're putting in danger

Leia trying desperately to turn off a light-switch with the force after she's cozy in bed and it NOT WORKING so she has to get up and go turn it off by hand and that being the most relatable thing ever.

[ardeawritten]

Caught Queen Demon before the rest of my library app's population realized the audiobook was out! yay it was very good. Now there is a queue line for it.

[ardeawritten]

if you liked Project Hail Mary you may also enjoy David Brin's work. Lots of hard work, alien aliens and worthwhile endings in his books as well.

[phantomrose96]

Hey yall I had a fuckin thought 

So, as it’s roughly explained, the state alchemist program is a kind of “recruit potential human sacrifices” mechanism, with a side-order of “brute strength for the army”. But basically, the state alchemist title is mostly about being a researcher–given people like Shou Tucker exist, and given that the only requirement to stay a state alchemist is to submit a yearly report of your research that says “look I’m still being a useful scientist”.

So far, so far this is sensible, yeah? Father and the delightful children from down the lane are running a recruitment program for potential human sacrifices. So sure–butter them up! Give them lots of money, get them buddy-buddy with the government, and give them endless resources for research. It’s be pretty easy to trick a state alchemist in that position to open the portal if Sugar DaddyBradley is nudging them to do it.

And I’m still willing to go with this logic for the whole “draft the state alchemists into war” move. They make it pretty clear that was something of a last-ditch effort. And the blood transmutation circle around Amestris was an absolute necessity for Father’s plan. So the risk of a few state alchemists dying or resigning from your Potential Sacrifice Pool is worth it for the completion of the circle.

Now. To get to my fucking thought. 

Edward fucking Elric. This fucking fight-me 12 year old troglodyte shows up to the exam and performs circle-less transmutation in front of mother fucking Bradley, demonstrating to one of the seven Actual Fucking Homunculi that he’d already opened the portal. Ed was literally prepped as a human sacrifice before he showed up to Central. A fully set human sacrifice showed up at the homunculi’s door, said “hey look what I can do!”, proved he’d opened the mother fucking portal already, and said “hey yeah hire me”. Human sacrifice, free shipping, no assembly required, handcuffs not included!

They could have just tossed Ed into a shoebox and kept him there until the Promised Day. They wouldn’t even need to make up an excuse he attacked the f u  c k i n g president. That’s fucking treason babey. He’s 12, he’s an orphan, he’s from a rural town in buttfuck nowhere, he’s literally the easiest person alive to disappear. They could have arrested him for assassination crimes, kept him in gay baby jail, and just popped him out for the Promised Day

What do they do instead?! “Oh lmao this kid’s great. Let’s give him infinite money, no supervision, no governmental responsibilities, access to all our secret resources, and toss him on a train to who-the-fuck-knows-where-land”

They fucking did that

And like? They then had the audacity to be concerned when Edward “Fight Me” Elric almost got himself killed about 293 times. Just an endless game of “I thought u were watching him” from one homunculus to another when Ed fucking absconds half-way across the globe to go entice some other hostile entity into murdering him to death. That’s the whole series. Every arc is Ed baiting death while the homunculi are in the background like “:/ wish he wouldn’t do that”

This only gets worse when you consider they later learned Al opened the portal too because really?? These two stab-happy globe-trotting public menaces are 40% of your final evil plan for godhood. 40%. Almost half. You couldn’t fucking set aside a cardboard box to keep these idiots in?

We all knew Father was terrible at planning when we learned his thousands-of-years-in-the-making-plan involved him procrastinating until the last five minutes to get his last sacrifice, while he was?? playing chess in his fucking basement, I guess. But it’s like every time I think about it like really think about it I find 7 more reasons Father was a fucking shit idiot moron, king of the stupid fucking idiot club, flesh and blood founder of seven other established dumbasses, all living in their idiot hovel under central, just giving random dumbass 12 year olds infinite money, j u s t  b e c a u s e.

[phantomrose96]

People in the replies trying to explain Father’s actions fall into one of three categories

Father didn’t baby-gate Ed because humans are like ants to him and he had no concept of how thoroughly Ed and co. could fuck his shit up

Father and the Hot Topic Brigade didn’t lock Ed up because they recognized the unbridled chaotic 12-year-old energy compressed into such a small vessel and they understood no jail cell on earth would reliably hold this thing

Father and his sin-sonas didn’t put Ed in a box because locking Ed away in their lair would mean dealing with Edward Elric day-in and day-out in their own home for the next four years and frankly even godhood isn’t worth certain flavors of hell.

[darkaviarymc]

I have another possibility.

Fuhrer Eye Patch saw Edward “Catch these Hands” Elric and thought oh. He’s gonna cause problems.

But. You can’t look me in the eyes and tell me that Brad the Pissed Off didn’t also anticipate Roy “Don’t Mind Me Just a Manwhore Passing Through” Mustang causing problems at some point.

The solution? Give Elric to Mustang. The Human Blowtorch is going to spend so much time chasing and corraling the 6th grader who can turn his arm into a sword at will that it will be impossible for him to cause problems for CopyofHohenheim.exe.

What King Grumpy Pants didn’t anticipate was the two youngest state alchemists in history going hey, we cause a lot of problems separately, but imagine the chaos we could wreak if we joined forces!

[tokkibean]

i do not “delete sentences” when they start “hindering the plot” i COPY PASTE THEM into a SEPARATE DOC made just for keeping all my USELESS LINES that i will also NEVER USE so therefore i should JUST DELETE THEM but i DONT because id FEEL BAD if i did

[pivsketch]

testing some brushes with gordon the freeman

[kritzenkriegen]

*thinks up an idea for a silly quick piece* okay haha let's whip something up real quick

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

oh no

[ardeawritten]

Weather still too good for writing, still too outside and social for locked-in-on-keyboard.

but Beth is still alive promise, she is road-tripping north to Canada through monster madness with an RV full of physicists. Also, dragon girl is still happening, but Moral of the Story has struck and now the magic system is more developed, there's an actual religion and I'm attempting to drag the setting from Generic European Fantasy into something that isn't that but also isn't Generic Asian Fantasy. For a low effort stress relief fluff about a girl having a black-stallion story with a young captive dragon, it's gotten significantly more effortful.

[ardeawritten]

Am listening to David Webber/John Ringo's "march to" series and have decided that while yes it is a deeply flawed ridiculous adventure scifi throwback (it is also great background noise where I can tune out 50% and still follow the other 50% just fine) there's a part of me that really wishes it had had an iota of influence on the Avatar franchise.

As far as "random generic white dude dropped into Barbarian Alien Planet who then Out-Barbarians the Natives and Leads Them To Victory" goes, it is vastly more comprehensible with significantly less cultural appropriation.

In a rough sketch: Entitled brat is dropped on a jungle death-world populated mostly by things that want to kill and eat him. The natives are six-limbed eight-foot tall horned amphibians whose civilizations vary from loose family groups to industrial city-states. The main character and his buddies pull "white savior" on occasion by providing the locals with technology needed to solve some particular problem, generally involving winning a battle against superior forces with the power of Having Bigger Guns and/or Geology. Main character discovers a spine, a conscience, a moral compass and a (human) girlfriend. Then everyone goes home.

Between it and Zahn's (very very good) Manta's Gift, there are ways to do this story well without making a hash of indigenous cultures or re-treading early 1900's exploration fantasy or reducing earth's colonial history and tragedies of exploitation to a Disney fantasy.

It takes a great deal of skill to split the hair of making a relevant commentary on historical tragedy and real-life ongoing cultural erasure while also making a piece of fiction that thrills its audience and provides narrative resolution; I wouldn't say the "March To" series is that, (its authors are NOT subtle with their own commentary and it's pretty sharply American militaristic) but tbh I think it gets closer than Avatar.

Bonus points for no cross-species romance, having more alien aliens, and lots of alien protagonist characters who are just as, if not more, fleshed out than the human characters and carry their own stories forward in parallel with the main narrative. (Points deducted because I think the authors forgot about 'female' aliens until like half way through then had to scramble to include them later, the villains are painfully one-note, and it's got a lot of very dated military humor) but all that to say, it does read as more original of a setting and cast than Avatar ever did.

[ardeawritten]

I don't want a program to write my story for me, I want a program that will translate my spoken vocal inflections back into text with punctuation. I have a microphone and was experimenting with dictating but got frustrated with the resulting walls of text from the recording programs already onboard with microsoft word and google docs. Anyone got a recommendation for an app or something that will take spoken word and put it into legible text, like the inverse of an audiobook?

[ardeawritten]

Dragon Girl's wish-fulfillment isn't "girl gets to be a dragon rider," or "to be chosen by speshul magical creature," or "sexually partnered with the hottest other thing," or "develops overpowered magical abilities,"

it's "the dragon and I are in agreement that everyone needs to chill for a sec and we have the power to actually enforce that."